A bit of Internet and political history was made last week when Arizona Democrats by the tens of thousands cast digital votes over the world wide web. It was inevitable that this would happen of course and it is only a matter of time before other states jump in. But is it a good thing?
I voted on Super Tuesday--the old fashioned way. And while California doesn't allow for net balloting, I'm not sure I would have pulled the lever online anyway. My local polling place is just up the hill from me in San Francisco, in some guy's garage. There, next to a washing machine and boxes of who knows what, I participated in our democratic system. Folks going in and out smile at each other and if they're like me, walk away with a little buzz... that patriotic rush I've gotten every time I've voted.
And while I'd do just about anything else on the web, this isn't one of them. But not because I don't trust the technology.
You may wonder whether voting online is secure. After all, if vandals can hack into the FBI's web site, why not an election site? In Arizona, voters were mailed PIN numbers and asked for a host of personal information to verify their identity. Only then were they allowed to vote. Encryption many times more powerful than that used by Amazon or EToys protected the votes from prying eyes. Compare that to my experience at my neighbor's garage where I wasn't even asked for a photo ID.
But wait! Voting in the U.S. is supposed to be ancnymous. Now these clever folks in Arizona can tell exactly how everyone voted right? Nope. That's because you can separate the Voter identification process from the actual act of voting. You just have to trust that Arizona actually did that. Just as of course, you also have to trust that the paper ballot you cast isn't marked.
The only real objection to online voting that I can sympathize with is that, for the time being, people with computers and web access tend to be richer and whiter than the rest of country. I don't know whether there are more republicans online than democrats, but the so-called digital divide between rich and poor is very, very real.
About 40 thousand votes -- or about half of Arizona's ballots were cast this way. In 1996, only 12 thousand people bothered to go to the polls at all. It seems likely that this year's democratic voters in Arizona probably looked a lot more like the web population and a lot less like poor rural voters.
Sure, voting online allows rural folks to avoid a long drive -- or in some states a snowmobile ride -- to the polls. And that saves gas money. But those same people often have to pay long distance charges to get on the web. Of course an 800 number could solve that problem
Because of the digital divide and the resulting imbalace in the demographics of online voters, I'm guessing it will be another 8 years before we see online voting in a November presidential election. You could argue that elections are already biased and while I may not argue with that, you can still count me among the folks who would push for a pretty slow adoption of web-based voting.
We shouldn't tinker too much with a system that has served us well for 200 years. The Web is too new and unproven. Plus, voting from your office PC deprives you of a few paid hours off of work and eliminates those patriotic goosebumps of being in a voting booth.