campaigning in the midwest before tuesday's us election. more than 85 million peoiple have already cast their vote, leading to predictions that this year could see the highest turnout in over a century. the number of americans testing positive for coronavirus has passed nine million — with the us breaking the record for the biggest rise of cases in a single 2a hour period. over one million new covid—19 cases have been reported in the past 1a days. the british government may be considering whether more coronavirus restrictions are needed across england — after medical sources said the country was at a "crunch point," with rising cases of covid—19. british media reports say a second national lockdown, could be imposed as early as wednesday. now on bbc news, it's click.

halloween is here and this week, we have robotic tricks. sailing treats. yearly earbuds. and... a presidential election! welcome to click. i hope you're 0k. listen, halloween might not be happening outdoors this year. but i tell you what? it's certainly happening indoors here at least. let's cross to lara's haunted house and see what horrors await. wow, you've got lots of halloween there! yeah. turns out i do.

do you think i've overdone it slightly? oh, no, i love it! you have gone stylishly minimalist as always, i see. yeah, all i could find was this skeleton in my closet. i don't really have anything else to decorate the house with. do you know, i've never been trick—or—treating. have you not? well, look, many of us won't be trick—or—treating this year but there are some people who try to make it as safe as possible for the kids who do pass by. trick—or—treat! this is luke key from austin, texas and he's out to save halloween. he's been finding ways to dispense sweets from a distance. he's experimented with dropping them from a drone and even firing them from an air cannon. but i think his star creation is this, artie the robot. after eight years of tinkering, its latest skill is distributing

socially distant sweets. it runs on arduino microcomputers, weighs in at about 140 kilograms, and has been shrunk down to avoid scaring the kids. goodbye, guys. just readjusting the lighting to something more sensible because straight after halloween, there is another american horror story. never mind who wins, the run—up to the us presidential elections has been a political nightmare for many. two candidates yelling at each other, misinformation completely clouding the very real issues that the country is having to deal with, and of course the debate over whether masks are too scary to wear. now, for a long time there have been attempts to try and engage younger voters and also to make voting more accessible for people with disabilities. in the us, a few states have been running small trials to see whether technology can play a part and james clayton has been to one of those states to see it in action.

america is about to hold an election that feels like a crossroads for the country and already, tens of millions of people have already voted either by postal voting or voting early in places like this. but is there a simpler or technologically advanced way of voting? you can do your banking, even your tax returns online. so, why can't you vote digitally? well, you might not know this but in some states, you actually can. this is terra from west virginia. she's been disabled since the age of two. it was very simple. i mean, literally in less than 15 minutes, i had gone online, entered the information, got ballot, voted, signed it, and sent it off. several companies are trialling mobile voting in this presidential election in a very limited way. those who are eligible are members of the armed forces and people with disabilities.

one called voatz does it by mobile. another called democracy live uses web browser. so, how does it work? when finished filling out your ballot, select continue at the bottom of the page to move on to the final step where you will sign your ballot and review your ballot packet. well, every state is different but all of the pilots need some kind of verification that it's actually you. that could be facial id or a photo of your id or a signature. then, it acts very much like a postal vote. that's until you send it off. voatz uses block chain to store your vote. democracy live keeps the data in amazon's cloud. a copy of your ballot is also printed out. the voatz app is being trialled in a county in utah. democracy live in west virginia, injurisdictions in oregon and south carolina.

it's not a huge trial. at most, a few thousand will vote this way. the pilots are all being funded by this man, bradley tusk. an early investor in uber, he's got deep pockets and big ambitions. you know, i'm not doing this just because i want to make it easier for military to vote or people with disabilities to vote but because i want to radically increase turnout overall so that we move things into the centre, right? and so that everybody votes, and that means having technology that can handle millions of votes. so, why aren't we all e—voting? why aren't we all voting on our mobile phones? well, it's because there are a lot of people who are very sceptical of the technology and some believe there are some serious security flaws with some of these apps. i caught up with michael, he's reverse engineered these two electronic voting systems and says he's found security flaws in both. i'm definitely surprised that it was as easy as it was. i think there is a lot of things they could have done to make it much harder.

but overall, those sorts of problems are not necessarily solvable in using the current technology which is one of the reasons why you want to take a look at the system in the first place. here is the example he gives. remember the online banking comparison? what this is why he thinks that's not a fair parallel. when you bank online, you can actually see a transcript of how you spent your money. you can say, "hey this transaction says that i spent $500 in the uk but i live in boston and have never been to the uk. therefore this is obvious he freshman, right?" you can't do the same thing with funny because if you can prove the way that you voted and have this transcript, someone and have this transcript, someone else and have this transcript, someone else can and have this transcript, someone else can get a hold of it. i put some of these criticisms to both of these companies. first, democracy live. at some point, we can't hold back the tide, right? next—generation voters are

going to demand next—generation voting technologies. we're going to learn lessons, right? that's why we're starting small and responsibly with voters that would be otherwise disenfranchised. we don't have all the answers right now. the academic community and the security community don't have all the answers. that's why you do smaller responsible testing, learn the lessons, and then build from there. and that's what we're trying to do right now. and we're starting with groups that are today who would be otherwise disenfranchised. i put those same questions to the founder of voatz. obviously, it's new so there will be criticisms. so, we welcome the scrutiny but at the same time, a lot of that is hypercritical. just by looking at one piece of the system without actually transacting with the system in any meaningful way often would lead you to incorrect or incomplete assumptions.

so what did terra think of her expensive voting online?” click it for people with disabilities because it gives us disabilities because it gives us options and we need options. because some of us us options and we need options. because some of us just can't get out. some of us require special tools in order to write or speak. and i think that it isa or speak. and i think that it is a good option for people like that. but i am not necessarily an advocate of electronic voting without a lot more security around. both types of voting have been used before in local elections and both companies say they've never been successfully hacked. is electronic voting for future? our voting stations like this the past? not so fast because even the advocates of this technology say that technology is not quite there yet forget, which makes the question why is it being tried

ina us question why is it being tried in a us election? but but perhaps these small trials may help to one day offer another safe and secure form of voting in america, just maybe not quite yet. james clayton there. this is not just a james clayton there. this is notjust a debate limited just to the us. the pandemic has played havoc with erections around the world and the arguments for and against online voting systems have been given new life. but in one country, it has been a reality now for well over a decade. way backin now for well over a decade. way back in 2005, digitally savvy estonia became the first country to allow online voting in elections. skip forward to their 2019 general election and 44% of voters filled out their ballots online. and there have been other examples of positive engagement with internet voting across the world. back in

april, the labour party elected their leader in an online ballot in which a 70% of its 550,000 members voted. this way of voting makes a lot of sense, it is less expensive than the traditional in person system and for many it is just easy. and could internet voting be the way to engage a younger generation? as time goes on, online voting will become more and more important for young people. because society will become increasingly online. also at the same time our voting system will look exactly the same as those that existed in the 1800s. therefore you are going to have a big divide between democracy and the way people live their lives. we can have elections but there are still thousands of people who can't physically vote and therefore we have elections but we are not a full democracy. however, many claim that online

voting is still too vulnerable to cyber attacks and security breaches. malware could tamper with votes before they reach government servers and hackers could create mirror versions of an election portal, steal voter credentials, or even attacked the computers that count the ballots. but in estonia, there have been no serious security issues. however, crucially, online voting is linked to the country's state—of—the—art electronic id cards which estonians use for everything from paying taxes to accessing health records and not every country has such a solid digital infrastructure in place. and in some countries just don't want to take the risk. after years of testing for example, switzerland was hoping to push forward with online voting. but in 2019 decided to end trials after flaws were uncovered in the proposed system. regardless of whether you are for or against

internet voting, all would agree that the stakes could not be higher than in major elections where there could be zeroed out cast on the outcome. so we may have to settle for waiting in line at the ballot box for a little while yet. —— where there can be zeroed out cast. hello and welcome to the week in tech and it was the week in tech and it was the week that harley—davidson revealed its electric bicycle, the syria one will go on sale next month. the ceos of google, facebook, face hours of questioning on censorship and misinformation on their founders, and allie bob's new online payment group and details plans for a stock market next month, it is said to be the world's largest ever. it was also the week that spacex satellite internet service started recruiting beta testers with low expectations to test its broadband. for fairly steep $1199 a tester will get a router and terminal to

connect to the satellites giving access to what an e—mail that describes is better than nothing internet service. the release of the highly anticipated game cyberpunk 2077 norma mack has been delayed again to december the 10th. a letter from the developers apologise for further delays and say they knew the announcement would raise emotions and questions. normal mac spot the boston dynamics robot dog was sent to chernobyl to help sniff out radiation. 30 yea rs to help sniff out radiation. 30 years on from the disaster, 200 tonnes of radioactive fuel is still thought to be the area. we met another robot named spot who is also wanting to behave how we die. a team from johns hopkins university are training this robot using dog training tech that not when it is tested well, it gets a treat for some researchers k it can achieve in two days what would usually ta ke two days what would usually take a month in training. —— say it can achieve.

the headphone market is seriously overcrowded so companies have had to get a little bit more creative today. take a look at that's, it looks like one speaker and it is in this form, you call this party mode but you can also separate them into two and paste them up to 22 feet apart to create stereo sound. plus take a look inside and you've got a pair of true wireless earbuds. each pa rt true wireless earbuds. each part of the speaker has six hours battery life and the buds can be recharged when they are sitting in the speaker. i had a bit of a problem with getting earbuds to fit and stay in my ears. as i have said before it could be because i have strange yea rs could be because i have strange years but these ones actually fit very well. they are great for strange years. this isn't the most amazing audio i've ever heard but for something so versatile at this price point, i don't think i complain. and now something for a quieter life. cocoon relax are claimed to be the world's first sleep

aid headphones so they hope to help you get