After the fiasco that was the Iowa Caucus, the already questionable concept of mobile voting is fully being unwound before consideration for use in upcoming elections.
Currently, mobile voting is in its testing and planning stages, with only a handful of apps being used in a variety of locations. Shadow Inc. is the company that was in charge of the Iowa Caucus and a called off Nevada Caucus, along with other locations that are available for mobile voting, such as Washington, Oregon, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, and West Virginia.
However, in Seattle, mobile voting is being seen as a savior.
The district that houses Seattle, the King Conservation district, has what can only be considered a repugnant voter turnout. Last year for the Board of Supervisors election, King Conservation got a measly 3,000 voters out of a possible registered 1.2 million.
In the last decade, the district’s closest connection to electronic voting has been letting their voters print out the ballot from online. However, this issue is only present with the smaller local government elections, as the district had an 80% turnout for the general election.
When it comes to mobile voting, peoples’ biggest concerns are that of security. While many argue that mobile voting is an overall good, because of easy accessibility to veterans, old people, and people with disabilities alike, the thoughts of security still loom.
Recently in a FOX article about the benefits of mobile voting to military or handicapped, MIT researchers looked at the app more deeply and realized that it had “vulnerabilities that allow different kinds of adversaries to alter, stop, or expose a user’s vote.”
Another problem with mobile voting is ill-preparedness. The reason that the Iowa Caucus failed to get results back in the allotted time, was because the app wasn’t prepared to handle the volume of the election statewide.
The truth with mobile voting is that people are still debating if democracy can be put in the hands of something that isn’t fully secure; yet mobile voting is still in its newer stages and hasn’t been given time by the public and critics to grow and expand.
