E-Voting playing with Democracy

E-Voting is one of the most criticized IT projects in the recent history. While the voters go in to cast their valuable votes on November 7th one third of the voters will be using the new machines for the first time. These new machines had to be made a part of the elections in 2000 but due to continuous failures and criticism they were not introduced.

The question that remains the center of the controversy is are these machines efficient enough to play a role in such an important occasion.

The core of the controversy is related to the Hardware and Software systems used in the machines. The controversy exaggerated when anonymous source mailed three disks containing software used in these machines. The availability of the code made the voters think about the potential security of these machines.

In Illinois around 1.3 Million voters learned that their personal information was exposed when a computer used the store the election results was hacked by a political group who were opposing E-Voting.

In the latest controversy there are questions asked on the use of machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems whose parent company SmartMatic is owned by Venezuelan nationals who have political tie-ups with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's President who recently remarked that President Bush is ' A devil'.

Via: eweek