In a recent New York Timescolumn, commentator Katharine Q. Seelye invited her readers to share opinions about whether Internet voting could be used to bail out Florida and Michigan, the only states that were excluded from the Democratic presidential primary election process. The good news is that more people are starting to think about Internet voting as a real possibility for the U.S. The bad news is that this is not the time to use Internet voting to quickly save the two miscreants from their punishment.
The DNC (Democratic National Committee) did the right thing, and kicked the state parties out of the game by refusing to seat their delegates at the August Democratic Convention in Denver. Now the two states are sorry. They are asking for special treatment, which would allow them to seat their delegates. But the problems surrounding this notion of an Internet-enabled rescue far outweigh any possible benefits of providing justice for the voters.
For starters, if Florida and Michigan implemented Internet voting to remedy this situation, in the future, other states would then try to cheat as well (seeing that there is no risk in it), moving their own primaries to a preferred date. Furthermore, would a hasty Internet election solution really be fair to the voters?
Someone could set up a Website to vote on in a short time. But that still leaves a lot of tough questions unanswered. For instance, who is going to pay for it? The DNC? The state party committees? The state taxpayers? The two candidates?
Even if they can agree on this, do the states have the infrastructure necessary to provide for the non-computer owners, the house-bound, the disabled, the homeless, or the klutzes?
Michigan Dems experimented with a limited online primary vote in 2004. Also, the Dems set up a secure Website for a week this year, which allowed overseas voters to cast a primary vote. Both these efforts tried to provide for secure online voter registration. For example, in Michigan, Dems had to apply for a paper ballot long before the voting started. This was sent to them with an ID number. They could vote by mail or on the special Website using the ID number. About one third of them (46,000 out of a total of 163,000) e-voted.
However, a lot depended on the honor system. Hence, there are no statistics on how many people applied and received multiple paper ballots. All you would need is the name and address of a registered Democrat. It wouldn't matter if he or she were dead; had ever existed; had moved out of the state; were of voting age; or was really a citizen or not. Nor is it known how much vote buying and selling went on.
With all the paperwork this process generated, one wonders what the benefit of Internet voting was in the Michigan primary of 2004. And, who is ready to trust the Florida officials to do this right? Remember the picture of six perplexed Florida officials gazing at one hanging chad? Florida has roughly 4 million registered Democrats. Are they going to have Internet voting on the honor system?
So, the message is clear: We need to do this thing right. A keystone-cops approach to a quick rescue of these two misbehaved states risks giving Internet voting a bad name. I say let Florida and Michigan sit in a corner this August, and let the rest of us start preparing carefully for the inevitable national, state, and local Internet voting we will one day have.
If we are still having problems with voting machines at polling stations, why would anyone believe, even for a second, that Internet voting would fly? (DOS attack anyone?)
A few years ago some Government security agencies took a look at Internet voting. The answer: no way, not ever, not even close.
Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Interference, Denial of Service, and Elevation of Privilege are just too easy. (Remember STRIDE). Not only the contending party bosses, but some anonymous guy in Ugabugastan could bend the election.
The answer is paper ballots, marked in ink, or a ballot marking machine, and read with a scanner.
As an Independent, I'm annoyed every 4 years, as in my state (NY), voting in primaries is only open to Democrats or Republicans. I do believe that all states are not like this, however. So, I never even get to express my opnion on who runs.
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