Electronic voting will become 'fraud proof' and it will prompt more people to vote: Adobe CEO

Updated Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 9:22 AM 2 min read

It may be hard to believe. But despite President Trump’s unsubstantiated undermining of mail-in ballots, one day Americans may actually do their voting on a personal phone or computer. In fact, the voting process is already making its inevitable technological march forward.

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen spoke of some of the changes already underway in an interview that aired Monday as part of Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit.

“The voting process itself and when you go into a voting booth has become electronic,” Narayen said. “If you remember, we used to have to write that out. And now, increasingly, a lot of that is electronic.”

Adobe (ADBE) is well known for its suite of creativity tools. But its PDF and electronic signature products could be instrumental in a push to digital voting.

MUMBAI, INDIA - MAY 3: Shantanu Narayen, Chairman, President and CEO, Adobe, photographed during a roundtable media conference in Mumbai on May 3, 2017. (Photo by Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint via Getty Images)

“There are some countries — for example India — where, you know, the voting actually goes on for well north of a month,” he said. “The entire process of how you understand the voter registration lists and manage all of that, PDF has been used, you know, to a very significant extent in those particular cases.”

“It’ll prompt more people to vote”

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has advocated modernizing voting as part of his 2020 platform. According to his campaign, “The machines being used in most locales are also as vulnerable to tampering and hacking as modern technologies.”

Adobe’s CEO sees electronic voting as potentially more secure and simply part of the natural progression of our digital shift, especially as we move more of our everyday life online and become increasingly comfortable with online forms.

“You're going to be able to authenticate who you are and validate it and then just submit it,” Narayan said. “And I think that will make it fraud proof. That'll make it faster.”

As we watch thousands wait in long lines to cast their votes during this 2020 pandemic election, Narayen sees a solution that will also bring more voters into the fold.

“It'll prompt more and more people to vote,” he said. “Because at the end of the day, that is our biggest civic responsibility.”

Jen Rogers is an anchor for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @JenSaidIt.