Technology and the US Election

Countries that utilize electronic voting make themselves heavily susceptible to foreign interference, a point that several nations have come to realize. Germany, Paraguay, The Netherlands, Ireland, and Japan are a few examples of countries that initially sought to incorporate voting machines into their election processes to some extent, but eventually discontinued doing so due to the associated risks. On September 10, Microsoft announced on their blog that multiple cyber attacks were being launched against the 2020 US elections, targeting both the Democratic and Republican parties. Iran, China, and Russia were identified as the host countries for these perpetrations, using attacks like spear phishing, password spraying, and brute force attacks.

This has been a hotly debated topic since Russian interferences during the 2016 election. Many argue that the US should rid itself of electronic voting altogether, and revert to voting via paper ballot like Germany and Japan. The fact of the matter, however, is that electronic voting doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, and the countries making use of it must instead learn to safeguard this voting process.