每日英語跟讀 Ep.809: 美國大選手機投票 引發安全爭議 Voting by Phone? Elections App Sets Off Alarm

For more than a decade, it has been an elusive dream for election officials: a smartphone app that would let swaths of voters cast their ballots from their living rooms. It has also been a nightmare for cyberexperts, who argue that no technology is secure enough to trust with the very basis of American democracy.

十多年來，對選務官員而言，一款能讓大批選民從自家客廳投票的智慧手機應用程式，一直是個難以實現的美夢。而對網路專家來說，這卻也是場噩夢，他們認為沒有任何科技稳妥到足以把美國民主的基礎託付給它。

The debate, long a sideshow at academic conferences and state election offices, is now taking on new urgency. A startup called Voatz says it has developed an app that would allow users to vote securely from anywhere in the world — the electoral version of a moonshot. Thousands are set to use the app in this year’s elections, a small but growing experiment that could pave the way for a wider acceptance of mobile voting.

這一長期為學術會議和州選務辦公室次要過場戲的爭論，如今又有了新的急迫性。一家名為Voatz的新創公司表示已開發一款應用程式，可讓用戶從世界任何地方安全地投票，這是選舉版的登月計畫。成千上萬的人將在今年選舉中使用這款應用程式，是一項小規模卻不斷擴大的實驗，能為手機投票更獲接受做好準備。

But where optimists see a more engaged electorate, critics are warning that the move is dangerously irresponsible. In a new report shared with The New York Times before its publication Thursday, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say the app is so riddled with security issues that no one should be using it.

In response to the report, the Department of Homeland Security organized a series of briefings in recent weeks for state and local officials who are planning to use Voatz’s technology.

樂觀者認為這會提高投票率，批評者卻警告說，此舉危險且不負責。在發表前先跟《紐約時報》分享的一份新報告中，麻省理工學院研究人員稱這個應用程式安全問題一籮筐，任何人都不該使用。針對這份報告，國土安全部近幾周舉辦了一系列會議，向打算使用Voatz技術的州與地方官員做了簡報。

“The choice here is not about turnout,” the report says, “but about an adversary controlling the election result and a loss of voter privacy.”

前述報告中說：「決定我們選擇的不該是投票率，而是不容敵人控制選舉結果、選民喪失隱私。」

With security already a dominant theme of the 2020 elections, the debacle at the Democratic caucuses in Iowa — an app used to report results failed to, well, report results — has raised new questions about the role technology should play in American elections and prompted calls for it to be scaled back.

安全原本已是2020年大選的一大主題，而愛阿華州民主黨黨團會議日前發生意外，一項用來回報選舉結果的應用程式無法進行回報，更使人們對科技在美國大選中所扮演角色產生新的質疑，並引發予以限縮的呼聲。

While a return to the analog days of punch cards and hanging chads is unlikely, there is growing unease about how far state and local governments should go in modernizing election infrastructure — from registration databases and electronic poll books to the voting machines themselves.

雖然已不太可能再回到打孔卡與吊著孔屑的電腦模擬時代，但在從登記資料庫到電子投票簿、再到投票機本身的選舉基礎設施現代化上，人們對於州和地方政府應走多遠憂慮日深。

An initial experiment with wide-scale online voting took place in Washington a decade ago. It was called off after researchers hacked into the system, electing HAL 9000 — the computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey” — as mayor and making the University of Michigan fight song play every time a ballot was cast.

十年前，華盛頓進行了一次大規模網路投票的初步實驗，它在研究人員駭入系統，讓系統選出HAL 9000型電腦（源自電影《2001：太空漫遊》）當市長，並且每有一票投下就播一次密西根大學的戰歌後叫停。

Since then, some states have allowed online voting through web portals, emails or digital faxes, despite the security risks. But they have restricted it to groups of people who cannot make it to the polls, mostly overseas military personnel.

自那時起，儘管存在安全風險，仍有些州允許透過入口網站、電子郵件或數位傳真進行網路投票，但僅限於無法去投票所投票的群體，主要是海外軍事人員。

Source article: https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0067/350337/web/