Hackers gathered in Las Vegas to test the vulnerabilities of a new online voting platform called Secure Internet Voting (SIV). The platform allows people to vote from their phones or computers and has been used in small pilot programs in the United States. However, most states do not allow widespread online voting due to security concerns and prefer paper ballots.
SIV founder David Ernst believes that modern tools can make online voting hyper-secure, even more so than paper ballots. SIV has already been used in selecting a congressional candidate, Republican Celeste Maloy, who went on to win a seat in Utah’s 2nd congressional district. With concerns about election security in the upcoming presidential and congressional elections, the SIV team has offered hackers $10,000 to identify flaws in their system.
The event took place at the DEF CON Hacking Conference, organized by DEF CON’s election security group “Voting Village.” While the technology shows promise, the possibility of widespread online voting may take decades to realize, according to Voting Village founder Harri Hursti. He mentioned that there are mathematical approaches that could make internet voting possible in the future, but it may not happen in our lifetimes. This highlights the ongoing debate over the security and feasibility of online voting as a potential solution for modernizing the election process.
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