The Unfortunate State of Democracy in the 21st Century

Here we are, a little past the beginning of the 21st century. We have made many great leaps, we are doing the previously impossible. Indeed, we are a constantly changing civilization of freedom and liberty. But, with all these advancements, we cannot be so naive, for there exists something stronger than our civilization, and it has existed since the first of man. We call it power.

Power is the main driving force behind any political system. Democracy is dependent on a balance of powers, to make sure that a single individual doesn't gain too much. Thomas Jeffferson once said "I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be". There will always be those who will seek power. As history teaches us, power corrupts.

As with everything else, voting is being transformed by newer technology. Voting is not like other technology. Voting is one of the major driving forces behind democracies. And this, is where democracy is being attacked. At its foundation. Electronic voting machines are starting to gain popularity. These machines are not being taken seriously enough. There are no computer systems in our age that are perfectly safe. They mostly have been proven unreliable, and, if they have not, then its only because they have not revealed the "brains" of their machine. Machines have been in use for quite a while, but until recently, they were still in little use. Now, with them dreadfully becoming widespread, we are going to see more problems become visible, but by then, it may be too late.

Machines are not alive, they are not magical, they are logical. Unlike humans, machines do not have a sense of patriotism, guilt, or reluctance. They do exactly what they are told. Just recently, a group from the University of Berkeley were given full reign on a variety of voting machines, and they were all hacked successfully. There are those who believe that the United States elections of 2004 had votes altered. A group of people formed the organization Black Box Voting, fighting to stop ballot tampering. There is an HBO documentary on ballot tampering, where Black Box Voting uncovered some scandalous facts.

While I don't live in the United States, it makes me sick to see the power of democracy falling out of the people's hands. Lives were given in its name, and the power is being whittled away from we, the people. Here in Canada, the use of electronic systems are starting to come about. I have yet to encounter one, but it seems only inevitable as the seducing flood of "apparently reliable and safe" technology comes about. For an underlying foundation of our political systems, our approach to new technology is a joke. In Canada, I believe the ballot counting should remain the way it mostly is, in peoples hands, not machines.

Voting is a time for people to put their heads together, and to decide on the fate of their country. It is one of the few times that direct democracy almost occurs. It's a process of openness. We, the people, see how the process works while we control the counting. When we use machines, we cannot see how their "brains" work, the doing of proprietary code. We are depending on a select group of people. Are we slowly on our way to a dictatorship? After all, we can consider the select few as an "elite group of people" at the forefront of decision making.

Edit: Kate pointed out this article - Surprise: U.S. Electronic Voting Systems Fail Security Tests!, showing some of the actual security exploits. Thanks Kate!