Balyejusa Gusite - marked

Using Technology, Could the Elections In USA Done Better.

Technology

Technology is the sum of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation.

Elections

An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.

Voting is a method for a group, such as a meeting or an electorate, in order to make a collective decision or express an opinion usually following discussions, debates or election campaigns.

USA’s Elections system.

During the general election, Americans head to the polls to cast their vote for President. But the tally of those votes (the popular vote) does not determine the winner. Instead, Presidential elections use the Electoral College. To win the election, a candidate must receive a majority of electoral votes.

In the United States, electoral districts for the federal House of Representatives are known as congressional districts (of which there are presently 435; the number can be changed but has remained at 435 since 1912, except for a brief period from 1959-1962 when two seats were temporarily added for the then-new States.

Since 1964, there have been 538 electors. There are 100 senators and 435 representatives which adds up to 535.

Modes of Voting in USA.

USA handles the voting process in seral ways including by mail, early voting, ballot box voting, in person voting, among others.

Voting by Mail (electronic)

Think of this as voting from home, if you’ve always voted in person, this will be a new experience. It may even be easier, in most states, the first thing to do is to request a ballot that will be mailed to you. the rules differ in each state, but in most places you can apply for a ballot online.

In places with photo identification requirements you may have to upload an image of an acceptable Identity card to your phone or computer, or send a photocopy in with your paper application.

Early Voting

Most states and Washington, D.C., allow voters to cast ballots in person before election day at centralized locations.

In most places this means going to City Hall or a local board of elections, though some larger jurisdictions will arrange for regional early voting canters. The pandemic has prompted the use of even larger early voting locations, with major-league sports franchises opening their vacant arenas and stadiums as polling sites.

In-person voting

This is voting the way you picture it in black-and-white movies: On a Tuesday in early November, people line up at middle schools, libraries and churches, chatting with neighbours while navigating past a thicket of campaign signs for candidates on the ballot.

Having explored the election and final voting process of the united states of America, mainly there are two ways American cast their votes, namely the in-person and electronic by email.

Justifying the entire system, technology is a certain extent involved though not fully used for some inevitable factors.

It’s at this point therefore, that I assume that had technology been fully employed, the 2020 USA elections could have been done better in reference to the following arguments.

The Covid-19 pandemic effects.

Bearing the fact that the world is still in the middle of a pandemic. it means that many states have ramped up mail-in voting, added ballot drop boxes or laid out plans for safety measures around in-person voting. But those pivots and new plans have meant some errors and mix-ups. And some of these voting changes have faced legal challenges. Had the entire system been technologized, these mix-ups of ballots would have been waived at as it would be the system to tally and render results of votes national wide but not partially in some states, leaving the rest in a system with manual process that are too prone to too many human error.

Frauds in the manual vote casts

Some of the Americans that for some reasons took the in-person voting, their casts were exposed to frauds at some point. This being bit manual, the casted votes are put in transit to data centers from where they are tallied as evidence to the initial result submitted after the initial tally at electoral centers. For example, a certain transit company was observed where the driver was disposing off some ballot boxes in the USA. Which votes were meant to be delivered and tallied too. Fully embracing of Technology would help solve this as data would now be sent over secure moreover virtual private network channels.

Early voting effects

Early voting has was evidenced in the USA  as a solution to cub some of the challenges that would stop some American from casting their votes, voters endured long lines, hours and hours of waiting and plus some technical delays.

There is no guarantee that all of these voters actually fulfilled their goal of voting that day amidst all of these challenges. In addition, considering the spread of the novel corona, a lot of distancing as a standard operating procedure was implemented. A fully automated voting process would cripple all these issues.

Tallying hardships

Tallying of all the casted votes from the different voting systems or ways and from state to state then to the final tally center was hectic with the presence of some manual routines.

Imagine tallying the electronic system reported casts / votes, then the ballots dropped in ballot boxes, posted to tally centers, the counting would take hours if not days, identifying duplicated implies working critical while analyzing ballots thereby calling for times.

Technology, once fully embraced and employed at every level, it auto counts, as evidenced in some states of USA, But some states couldn’t use it rendering new challenges.

Structural Effects

There are structural effects that affect whether citizens vote or not. In the United States, Election-Day is not a national holiday and above all the voting system is not fully technologized in a sense that it’s the only way to vote, meaning Americans particularly who have a 9-5 sort of job cannot take the day off to vote without risking their financial stability along with it. Legislatures have instituted policies that could make it easier to vote through methods like early voting and voting by mail. The literature suggests that requiring voters to vote will significantly increase the turnout rate. So it becomes logical that at the end of the day some national do not vote for some reasons like tight moreover heavy work-loads, those that operate in factories running machines where access to the computer is limited, internet latency considering the location from which one works from.

Human errors

There is no guarantee that all votes that were casted in the ballot boxes, in-person voting were handled accurately by the respective domain representatives. At different level like counting, verifying and tallying, there is too much suspicion that due to human nature, after handling large volumes of ballots, at least, some error were encountered that either some ballots were left out or actually not represented inform of rigging votes. So the accuracy of this is too compromised hence calling for a bail out that would be availed by the technology ways of handling election and put safe guards in place too.

Real-time monitoring and feeds provision.

Implementing of this real time feeds provision, and monitoring is another challenge yet to be addresses but still prevailing as per now. It had to provide feeds of manual system in a real time way of life, it’s possible only after the counting and tallying. Yet national and actually people from other part are willing to monitor and track the performance of candidate as per state. This inability create room for human activity that might be for personal benefit inform of rigging votes. But with technology, electronic systems would auto compute and render results each and every time a vote is casted by any American and perfectly align it on the side of particular candidates as per the voters interest.

Finally, in terms of examining the entire process that the electoral body of the United States of American passed through, from handling individual ballots, to electoral centres, it was a hard and too sensitive condition to the entire country, which should not be the case, with the advanced technology that particularly the American hold. It would take less time as compared to what it took.  

 

In conclusion, the American people used various ways of voting including the in-person voting call it physical lining, the mails, ballot boxes, early voting, all these to ensure that all Americans participate in the elections of their country. This costed first the country a lot, the individual voters and the respective bodies. It was more of a tiresome routine whose result had to be backed up with strong evidence to create comfort in aspirants / candidates and their supporters. It not that up to now, Donald Trump, has not accepted the results of the election. This cause pressure and tension on different peoples in the country. However, in my view, if the elections were handled fully electronically, each casted vote would be counted and referenced, sum votes at state level, communicate results as per candidate per state, then finally compute the national wide figures which are conclusive in nature. After that thorough follow up from the first ballot to the last, state by state, to the final tally centre computations. With this procedure in place, elections would in the United State of America would be better.

                                                                                             Author: Balyejusa Gusite

References.

Houston, D., & Ong, P. (2020). Determinants of voter participation in neighborhood council elections. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 41(4), 686-703.Coleman, S. (Accessed on 27-11-2020)

Hill, L. (2018). Low voter turnout in the united states: Is compulsory voting a viable solution?. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 18(2), 207-232 (Accessed on 27-11-2020)

 Hubert Sickinger, Politisches Geld: Politikfinanzierung in Osterreich- ein Handbuch (Taur, Tirol: Druck und Varlaghaus. (Accessed on 27-11-2020)

 2 Pippa Norris, Richard Frank and Ferran Martinez I Coma. 2019. ‘Contentious elections: From votes to violence’ In Pippa Norris, Richard Frank, and Ferran Martinez I Coma. Contentious elections: From Ballots to Barricades. New York: Routledge. (Accessed on 27-11-2020)