Pen And Paper Is The Only Way To Vote At Elections
It is unusual for me not to advocate for an IT solution that could save megabucks.
In this case, though, I was unequivocally of the view that sticking with pen and paper was vital.
I went online to affirm the electoral registrations at the family home.
Having done so, I was redirected into a survey which asked me whether I thought online elections or American style polling booth voting machines were good ideas.
Superficially, we might think that they are.
Voting online rather than at a polling station on a cold, wet day has to be a good thing.
Numbers of votes cast might increase with the online option, making elections more representative.
Saving the cost of hiring and manning polling stations from early morning to late at night would be a significant benefit.
Either online or machine voting would eradicate the cost of counting through the night and results could be known almost as soon as polling has closed.
So, why am I against it?
Because no system is, or ever could be, immune to fraud.
We know this from banking world.
Every measure the banks take to protect online accounts from scammers gets defeated in time.
Banks appear to accept a level of losses through crime as a cost of the massive savings automation has delivered.
That view is impossible with elections.
What small percentage of fraud would be acceptable when a poll can be decided by a single vote?
Elections demand trust in the process. Whilst many Democrats in America are convinced Russia hacked their voting machines last time out, we can still take our handwritten pieces of paper and recount them.
