The age of technology may be upon us, but not all are convinced we should cast our votes online. The Heritage Foundation has released a paper, "The Dangers of Internet Voting," chronicling other countries' experiences with online voting and arguing that America is not ready for it.
We talked with Hans von Spakovsky, the paper's author, to learn more. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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The problem with Internet voting is kind of inherent in the technology itself. Hardware, software, and computer scientists almost overwhelmingly say there's almost nothing that can be done giving the current state of the technology — the way the Internet is designed — to actually make a safe system. Those risks way outweigh any possibility that it might increase turnout, and actually, there's evidence from some other countries that have actually tried Internet voting that it doesn't really increase voter turnout. It just makes it easier for people who would vote anyway to cast their ballot, but it does it at a much greater risk.
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Everyone knows very well the huge breaches of security we just had with not only the Office of Personal Management, but now the IRSI. It was suspected in the OPM breach that this was part of a special team that the Chinese government set up some years ago. There have been a number of newspaper rticles that have talked about this — how professional hackers are being used by the Chinese government. This kind of system in a U.S. election would be a prime target, not just for individual hackers, but for a government trying to get into the system to manipulate elections.
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