The recent events showed that the American election process is highly vulnerable to direct outside influence in the form of cyberattacks. Although the elections have always had a number of issues regarding voting and accuracy, the emergence of technological cyber threats undermines the core pillars of democracy. It is evident that the current infrastructure is not fully capable of ensuring the protected process, because it is even challenging to identify the source of the attacks. In addition, modern and reliable technology needs to be integrated alongside the involvement of federal courts. Therefore, the American elections will remain vulnerable to cyberattacks, unless the nation identifies the source of influence, utilizes safe technology, and fixes institutions of justice.
Source of Influence
In the modern world, global processes are taking place to form a new type of society, but, despite this, individuals are still interested in the division and redistribution of influence in the world, issues of dominance, and power. If earlier humanity waged wars for resources from time to time, then in this century, traditional wars have transformed and changed character, becoming economic, political, and informational.
One of the major tasks of defending the election process from cyberattacks is being able to locate the location of attackers. There has been a lot of disagreements regarding the source of hacking during the 2016 presidential elections. Liberal party confidently claimed that Russia was directly involved in undermining the voting process in order to aid Trump, whereas the conservative party took an opposing position (Justice & Bricker, 2019). It is evident that the lack of capability of correctly identifying the attackers is the primary problem of vulnerability of American elections. Information impact increases in proportion to the development of social ties in society and is directly dependent on the development of new technologies. This impact will only increase and take on even more sophisticated forms and methods. US security in the information and cyberwar is impossible without accurate analysis and timely countermeasures.
Technology
The implementation of security technology is paramount for ensuring the accuracy of the election process. Election audits are an essential centerpiece of providing risk tolerance of the procedure, but there is a lack of efficient technology, and the majority of audits are conducted through hand-counting. This poses a risk in case of a hacker attack, where millions of ballots need to be audited. It is stated that the use of a scanner in conjunction with digital signatures and hash values can significantly increase the overall speed of audit and security (Burke, 2018). Scanning will be much faster and reliable by introducing hashes and signatures. In addition, these devices are not connected to the internet, which makes them vulnerable to direct attacks during the manufacturing process (Burke, 2018). However, such a scanner would eliminate any potential long-distance and online cyberattacks, which will greatly reduce the influence of other nations on the American elections.
Information security of the audit of elections is an indispensable tool for research and evaluation of the information system, ensuring its successful functioning and development. The task that the information audit pursues lies in the timely and accurate assessment of the state of information security at the current moment of a particular voter, as well as the conformity of the set goal and the task of conducting elections, with the help of which the audit of activity should be increased inaccuracy. The election audits through information security is a systematic process of obtaining objective assessments characterizing the state of security.
Supreme Court
Lastly, toter protection is an important issue that needs to overall involvement of all institutes of justice. It is stated that in order for a voter to vindicate his or her vote, he or she has to go through unfair challenges and procedures, which deprive the voting rights (Milkovich, 2018). The Supreme Court’s reluctant nature in the given problem is one of the reasons offororlnerable American elections. It is critically important for all justice organizations to be actively involved in ensuring and preserving voter rights through effective hearing procedures.
Conclusion
In conclusion, American elections are highly vulnerable due to the widespread increase of cybercrime and the improved potential of cyberattacks. In order to strengthen the entire election process, there needs to be a number of major changes, such as attack source validation, technologically advanced scanning, and improved voter protection on the federal level. The combination of these proposed solutions will create a strong, secure, and resilient system that ensures accuracy and fairness of elections.
References
Burke, P. (2018). Scanners, hashes, and election security. Journal of Physical Security, 11(1), 1-19.
Justice, J., & Bricker, B. (2019). Hacked: Defining the 2016 presidential election in the liberal media. Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 22(3), 389-420.
Milkovich, S. (2018). Electoral due process. Duke Law Journal, 68, 595-637.