People continue to be hesitant of electronic voting because of the prior miscalculated elections. For example in the 2000 Presidential election, the tallied votes for Al Gore in Florida were 16,000 fewer than casted. The company, Diebold distributed the majority of voting machines, however many voters are weary of their votes accurately being counted with no written documentation to confirm that their vote was in fact correctly tallied. The reason for concern is machines are not 100% reliable due to technical malfunctions and also honest being compromised and undervalued. Investigations of the Diebold company discovered that they controlled the electronic voting conditions regarding the machine with “uncertified software,” retreiving the memory cards as well as utilizing it. Those three factors hold a large amount of control over the voting results- the means to voting, retreival and calculation. It does not seem fair that one company pulls such a great of weight on such a large outcome.
The voting results rely on whether or not those in power are honest individuals. Whether or not the votes are calculated manually or by a computer, there will be an inaccuracy due to corruption. However, I feel that voting machines are the better way to calculate votes, yet should be operated by a multitude of companies providing the machine. Instead of one company monopolizing the voting machines, they should be spread out. According to Chris Hood, “Someone could get hold of all the technology- for manipulation- if they knew the inner workings of just one machine.” While, it inevitable that computer hacking occurs, the best way to ensure that the votes are accurately counted would be to politically spread the power of who is closest to the votes.
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