The Thinking Press

The American democratic experiment continues to grow and change with the world around us, yet we are faced with some growing disparities on the trouble some groups face when asked to cast their ballot. Poor, uneducated, minority voters have the greatest trouble, waiting in line for hours to cast a ballot and being the subject of intense voter intimidation and “dirty” tricks. New media technology, and making the shift to a remote democracy, may be able to solve these problems. In effect, democratizing the infrastructure of democracy.

An Argument for growing the role of Web Technology in the Voting Process

In 2008 a little over 30% of American voters cast votes on electronic touch screen machines, I was among them. A few weeks later I was able to log into the Georgia Secretary of States Office and check the status of my vote, and though I was not able to see a copy of the electronic ballot I cast, I was able to see my ballot was recieved and counted.

If we were to take this concept a few steps further:

- Imagine that the voting machine you placed your vote on this year produced a PDF (a secured, electronic portable document format) print out of your completed ballot which was then stored, along with the electronic information for tabulating votes as they are currently maintained, on highly secured databases that could be maintained separately for further enhanced security. This creates redundancy with two separate methods of maintaining the information, one (the PDF) that is more difficult to change in large numbers, and another that is quickly able to be tabulated.

- Two separate groups, perhaps one governmental agency (Federal Election Commission) and perhaps a non partisan third party voter verification agency of some sort, could maintain these files while vote tabulation and verification occurs for independent verification of the vote.

- You could instate redundancy standards in electronic ballot management to insure that software failure in one instance can not swing an entire election, creating separate facilities to oversee counting of tabulated data from the voting machines as well as a separate system to scan each PDF ballot returning results in the latter case from a file the voters themselves are able to verify.

- Each PDF ballot, stored in a nationwide database as a backup for any possible recount and removes the need for the mechanical problems caused by a “paper trail”, is stored in an online database which is accessible by the individual voter for verification of that ballot.

One step further…

- Paper ballots, which are still in use in 70% of American precincts, could be scanned into this electronic system as well. This would allow voter verification of the vote being passed, and with some creative problem solving, could allow a voter to dispute an incorrectly counted ballot. Kind of like an individual recount.

- Eventually, this online voter management system, could be used to place those ballots in a secure environment free of manipulation or intimidation of any kind as well as immediately solving the problem of enormous lines.

- If online voting was effectively put in place, it would reduce the cost of running elections enormously, especially as the technology gained the trust of the voting public over time, hence the enormous need for vote verification standards to further underlie that trust.

Why would we do this?

Since 2000, and the raucus legal dispute over counting and recounting votes that occurred that year, there has been an enormous scar on our electoral system that persisted through the 2008 election. It is the very nature of the question: Was my vote counted?

If we are, as the London Times calls us, A Masterclass in Democracy than we have the enormous burden of preserving the brilliant concept of clean and clear democratic elections as an example to the world of how that must be done. The standard must be that every legal vote be counted, and counted correctly, and the only question then becomes how do you adapt the technology of our age to the task of ensuring that standard.

Before the advent of easily transmitting and storing enormous amounts of data this standard was far more challenging to ensure as it would have been impossible to have individual verification of each ballot. Today, however, we are able to institute such a system and could do so with relative ease.

The advent of that technology, and the very real possibility of no verification standards at all for our most sacred individual act of governance, could very well lead to an erosion in the quality of our electoral system and our ideal. With computers that produce no hard evidence of a vote placed upon it you are placing an enormous amount of power in the hands of corporate hardware and software developers who, in every case, have legal protections (see Trade Secrets) that disallows independent oversight of the vote counting software. If we do not pursue rigorous verification standards we leave ourselve open to a level of vote curruption never before so easily manufactured.

Our democracy will inevitably move toward electronic data and away from paper for clear logistical reasons, and it will likely do so within my lifetime, so the question becomes how do we plan to do so in a way that preserves the American promise of representation in government. This country was founded not as some have suggested in a tax revolt but in a revolution driven by a need for representation in government. “No Taxation without Representation” was the early call of the revolutionary war which led to the declaration of independence which laid out those sacred “inalienable Rights.”

The right to vote is among those inalienable rights and it is imperative we protect it as the soul of this country’s continued growth and prosperity, and preserve our example to the world.