The Case for Internet Voting
I’m not a voting expert. But it doesn’t take an expert to see that we having gaping flaws in our voting process: specifically, the way we cast our votes and how they are counted. An Internet-based voting system would have avoided this whole debacle.
I’ve heard all the arguments about why an Internet voting system wouldn’t work, and I don’t buy any of them. Look at all the problems we’re now mired in: double-punched ballots, voter intimidation, the slow trickle of overseas votes, missing ballots and possible corruption.
The problem of double-punched ballots alone screams for an Internet-based, or at the very least a computer-based, solution. Voters shouldn’t have to decipher the mechanism; they shouldn’t even be aware of the machinery involved. We all remember those awful fill-in-the-bubble SAT tests, where we expended more energy bubbling (and frantically erasing) than we did pondering the questions--and you never truly knew whether your bubble would really register with the grading machine. The same problem plagues the punch-card system, which doesn’t check for accidental responses.
With a computer-based system, the computer could verify your vote to ensure that you really are voting for the right candidate. Even better, the computer could display large fonts for the visually impaired and even speak the choices for the blind. In this way, the mechanism assists your voting process rather than hindering it.
An Internet-based voting system would ameliorate the problems of intimidation, slowness, inconsistency and lack of security with its greatest strengths: privacy, expediency, consistency and security.
On privacy: Polling places have always provided far too much insight into voters’ business. Nobody should know when and where you’re voting, because it’s too easy for them to bully you, even unintentionally. I’ve had polling place registrants tell me, “Be sure to vote Republican!” and “If you’re not voting Democratic, you don’t get a cookie!” Sure, these are lighthearted comments, but I’m sure some people have been told these things in a much more threatening vein. With Internet-based voting, this entire threat is removed.
On expediency: We’ll never truly know if all the overseas ballots have come in because we don’t really know where they all are. While I find our mail system excellent, mistakes do occur, and sometimes a letter takes three days; other times, it takes a month. We shouldn’t trust our votes to this process. It will always be ideal for delivering packages, but votes don’t consist of physical weight; they’re just information and should be delivered at light speed via cables.
On consistency: The report of a ballot box left behind, while apparently a false alarm, nevertheless indicates how easily ballots can be left uncounted. How can you prove that your vote was even counted? With an Internet-based solution, it would be easy to log on, punch in your Social Security number and check that your vote really was tallied. As it stands now, for all you know your ballot card sits behind a file cabinet somewhere.
On security: Many in Florida have questioned how sacrosanct their ballot cards really are, when you combine Gov. Jeb Bush’s clear bias with a police force of dubious ethics. The fact is, there should be no “middle man” handling the ballots at all.
The case has been resoundingly made in Florida that we urgently need an Internet-based voting system. I’m not so naive to believe Internet voting wouldn’t introduce its own set of problems, but I guarantee they wouldn’t be on a level with what we’re now facing.
