*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do ***


Over the last few months dozens of reporters have asked me about
online voting (more story URLs at very bottom). I send them
toward Marc Strassman if they are looking for an advocate. Or to
Kim Alexander, with the California Voter Foundation, if they are
looking for someone with election information online experience
and to Gary McIntosh, with the Elections department in
Washington State if they are looking for a thoughtful election
official. The reporters almost always mention that the only public
advocates they seem to find are those hoping to technically design
or sell such services or legislators who wants to study the idea
because of all the press attention.

I attended the National Association of Election Directors
<http://www.nased.org> meeting this summer. While I predict that
more and more state legislators will propose studies into matter, it
will not be until the election director community is comfortable with
this issue that it will ever be presented in a cost-effective manner
for a transition (I don't know if that is possible) to online voting.

There also seems to be an assumption that if you can vote
electronically some how we have decided to vote more often on
more things. As it was put to me once, "a technology just wants to
be used." I think use will radically vary from state to state and
locale to locale. Minnesota is not and initiative and referendum
state and while I am supportive of more local referendums I don't
see how voting more often would be a dramatic benefit to state
policy making or effective citizen involvement.

My relevant comment from my Democracy is Online article is:

Neither the voting technology nor online polling justifies either one’s
official use by any government. Their technical existence will not
bring about more frequent use of referenda or a more direct
democracy. The decision to apply technology in official elections
will be a difficult political choice. It will have more to do with how
those in power feel it will influence voting outcomes than whether
the public wants the option.
More: <http://www.e-democracy.org/do/article.html>


I also believe that adoption of Internet voting will come only through
either a ballot initiative or as part of grand compromise between
voting by mail advocates (Democratic benefit) and online voting
supporters (likely more Republican benefit). We will have
registered "at-home voters" (like in Washington State where you
can permanently register as an absentee voter) and "polling place
voters." At-home voters will receive their ballot in the mail with their
secret PIN number. They can use that and a digital signature to
use their ballot to vote via the Internet, use a touch tone phone to
vote and leave a digital voice signature "I hereby state that my
name is Steven Clift and I voted in accordance with the law," or fill
the paper version out and mail it in by a certain date. Internet-
connected polling places would allow those who missed the
deadline to bring their ballot to any polling place and vote on
election day. Polling place voters would be able to vote anywhere
convenient to their home, work, or school.

For those pushing online voting, the first strategic step will be to
network the polling places based on the argument to election
directors that this will be the quickest, cheapest, and most efficient
way to count votes. Then you would free up location as an
absolute requirement for where you vote. Add extremely cheap
touch screen voting stations (think about adding online voter guide
information access - particularly on those obscure races no one
hears about) and average voters will begin to say - hey why can't I
just do this from home. I figure it will take at least five years,
probably ten before the first completely home-based ***binding
vote*** for a government elective office or referendum takes places
online.

All and all I remain and intrigued fence sitter on whether this will be
a net positive to democracy. I assume it will happen, but continue
to find my passion in participatory democracy. Voting is just the
starting point in civic responsibility and what happens between
elections is the more interesting and often the most important.
What I fear is the development of online voting in a vacuum without
participatory democracy online. While both can evolve at the same
time, there is a compelling need for more local, regional, and
national online applications that build an interactive foundation for
everyday citizen participation in government and community
decision-making. Short of voting on everything, we need to
incrementally build the capacity for citizens to discuss and
deliberate with one another and decision-makers online. We need
to create meaningful online pathways that actually get people out
of their homes to community meetings and the real physical world
of politics.

For each news story on Internet voting I'd like to see us push
compelling examples of how people (citizens, governments,
companies, the media, etc.) are using the Internet to fundamentally
improve their communities, public policy development, and solve
public problems. We see lots of stories on candidate or advocacy
use of the Internet, but very little of this is transformative. The
candidate is still trying to get elected and the advocacy
organization is still trying to generate one-way noise into the mail
bags of the traditional political process. I continue to promote
better and better examples on the use of the Internet in traditional
politics. But I do have to ask as we head into the next century,
what can we do together with the Internet to fundamentally improve
democracy and the world around us? By "together" I mean
something that won't exist unless the public, private, and non-profit
sectors do it in partnership versus alone in our separate projects
and organizations.

Any ideas?

Steven Clift
Democracies Online Newswire
http://www.e-democracy.org/do

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date sent: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 11:47:12 -0500 (EST)
To: e-lection@...
From: Yen-Ming Chen <yenming@...>
Subject: CNN article related to Internet voting

Hi,

There are a few articles related to Internet voting on CNN. Two of
them are identical as in Slate.com just with a different title on CNN.

"Virginia to conduct Internet-based mock election"
By Dan Caterinicchia
CNN (from IDG)
Oct. 25th, 1999
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9910/25/net.mock.election.idg/index.html

"Intenet revolution pushing way into voting booth",
By Wolf Blitzer
CNN
Nov. 3rd, 1999
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/11/03/net.voting/index.html


The following two are from IDG, and they are the same as the ones you
mentioned in the e-lection mailing list from Slate.com:

"Will Internet voting be good news for American democracy?"
By Jacob Weisberg
CNN (from IDG)
Oct. 28th, 1999
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9910/28/net.voting.pros.cons.idg/index.htm
l

"Internet voting is to democracy what Amazon.com is to books",
By Jodi Kantor
on CNN (from IDG)
Nov. 9th, 1999
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9911/09/internet.voting.part.two.idg/index
.html


--
Yen-Ming Chen

======================================================================
This message was distributed through the e-lection mailing list.
For info and archives see http://www.research.att.com/~lorrie/voting/
======================================================================






- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Steven Clift - E: clift@... T:+1.612.822.8667
Info - http://publicus.net DO - http://e-democracy.org/do
Web White & Blue - http://webwhiteblue.org
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


*** Please send submissions to: DO-WIRE@... ***
*** To subscribe, e-mail: listserv@... ***
*** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE ***
*** To unsubscribe instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE ***

*** Please forward this post to others and encourage ***
*** them to subscribe to the free DO-WIRE service. ***