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Our Blogs Fuzzy Logic - Your personal technology evangelist Can e-voting problems be solved by SMS text messaging?
Our Blogs Fuzzy Logic - Your personal technology evangelist Can e-voting problems be solved by SMS text messaging? | Can e-voting problems be solved by SMS text messaging? |
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| Written by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Friday, 23 November 2007 | |
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Page 1 of 3 Acision says that although the AEC has begun trialing e-voting for the 2007 Australian Federal Election for blind and visually impaired citizens, Acision believes that SMS offers a reliable and ubiquitous e-voting method either to replace or enhance the current system of in-person and remote postal voting. In Australia, Acision provides the SMS platform for three of the four major telecommunication companies, as well as providing the SMS platform for one of the heaviest SMS using countries in the world, the Philippines, with Acision’s system delivering 1.4 billion SMS messages in the 48 hours around Christmas alone. Acision’s SMS e-voting platform is also used by the “American Idol” television program, recording 66 million votes in this year’s final episode, which Acision says is more electronic votes that the total number of votes by citizens in the US Presidential election in 2004. Acision also claim that they are the “partner of choice in high volume mobile data services for the world's leading network operators and service providers”, and that “over 50% of global messaging traffic [is] generated through our platforms”, so Acision’s claim that SMS messaging makes for an ideal e-voting platform for a number of reasons is worth investigating further. Being able to vote by SMS would not just appeal to younger voters, the flexibility it provides accommodates anyone who owns a mobile phone, anywhere they can get a mobile phone signal, meaning those simply busy with work or the kids need only reach for their phone and be done with it, rather than make a trip to the local school or church on election day to vote. People in rural and regional areas who may have needed to travel long distances to reach a polling booth need only to travel to where they can get a solid mobile signal, if they don’t already have one where they live and work. SMS e-voting promises much cheaper costs, more security than paper ballots and far simpler vote counting. The most well known e-voting machines are those from US manufacturer Diebold, whose ATM-style voting machines controversially featured in the last US Presidential election because they did not print out a paper receipt (as do all ATM machines in use around the world today) and reportedly proved incredibly simple to hack into and change the votes, thereby leaving their legitimacy up in the air, as reported by Wired in 2005, and Engadget as recently as August 2007 among many other articles. With the AEC recording the cost of the 2004 House of Representatives & Half Senate election at $117.26 million, implementing e-voting could save the Australian tax payers money as well as time. Acision’s Australian Country Manager, Bill Dekker, saying that in a ‘worst case scenario’, 16m eligible Australian voters at a theoretical cost of 25c per SMS e-vote would total around $4m – well over $110m cheaper than the conventional way of voting. The system can also be designed to stop voters incurring any cost, with the cost picked up by the Government and the AEC. Please read onto page 2 for plenty more on e-voting security and fraud... |
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