Why Aren’t We Voting Online Yet?

By JASON WALKER, Columnist

Now that the election is finally over and history has been made, blah, blah, blah, let’s get the voting process fixed up.

Why should we have to leave home or work early, drive out of our way and fight traffic getting to some random elementary school just to wait in line for hours to cast a vote where some near-sighted grandma with a clipboard is the last guardian protecting the so-called sanctity of our democracy?

It’s time we take voting online. Security may have been a concern in the past, but the strides we’ve made in online security and identity verification have made the possibility of voting online a much safer alternative.

Nothing is 100% secure, but I’ve been doing my taxes online for almost 10 years and I can barely clear security to view my own information. I have to change passwords every other week to log on to my computer at work. I have to type in two barely legible words compiled of random letters to buy tickets on Ticketmaster. I can access all my banking information and pay all my bills from my cell phone, but I’m still filling out a Scantron card in some dank firehouse to elect the new leader of the free world?

Can’t we get Apple to take a year off from creating a smaller iPod to create some new proprietary voting software? I can’t get any of the stuff I downloaded from iTunes to play on a non-Apple devise. They probably already have the technology to allow you to vote from a Nano iPod, so why should I have to leave my house?

There are already several companies specializing in online voting. It would probably create jobs and help stimulate the economy if the government outsourced the creation and maintenance of its online voting methods.

Any company with a fat government contract should be motivated enough to ensure the security of your vote. To be sure, you could have their systems and results audited by other contractors. Sic PricewaterhouseCoopers on them and I bet they’ll keep their affairs in check. Throw a little cash around and there will be more than enough checks and balances in place to assure an accurate election.

At this point the list of benefits far outweighs the negatives.

There would be fewer avenues for tampering or error. Your ballot can’t mysteriously end up in the trash. Some absent-minded yokel won’t be scanning your ballot upside down or incorrectly instructing hundreds of people how to fill out their ballots. Even the most competent volunteers with the best intentions can make mistakes after 10 hours of manning a polling station.

You could vote from anywhere in the world online, and participation would increase. More college students, military personnel and travelers would be voting since there would be fewer hoops to jump through. Registration would be much easier or even done away with completely. Slackers like me would have fewer excuses not to vote. Poll results would be gathered in a fraction of the time. Less traffic f’ing up my morning commute.

No more navigating through crowded municipal parking lots like it’s Christmas season at Garden State Plaza (big up Jersey), trying to find a spot and standing in miserable November weather for hours.

Around now maybe you’re thinking “What about the people who don’t have Internet access?”

1. They won’t be reading this so I don’t care.
2. Everyone at least knows one person with Internet access.
3. You can go to a café, a library, a church ― pretty much everywhere in civilization, you backwater Neanderthal, get a computer already!
4. If you’re old and all this new-fangled technology goes over your head, we’ll keep the polls open for you on Election Day or send someone to your nursing home with a laptop to walk you through it.

While we’re at it, we should move Election Day to the weekend. The whole reason we vote on Tuesday has become irrelevant. With early voting becoming more popular we’re already moving away from a single-day election. It could even go from Saturday through Tuesday if you’re really that attached to the first Tuesday tradition.

Other countries have shown that multi-day elections increase voter participation. Also, holding an election online over a period of time would not be as costly as the elections we run now. Actually, there would be more money to be made.

SNL can run specials for a week straight. The 24-hour up-to-the-minute polling results bonanza would have every anchor, reporter, politician and pundit on the edge of their seats for days. Live television coverage and YouTube videos of people submitting their votes would canvas every media outlet. Election-themed parties would happen all weekend! Drink specials would be available at bars and clubs without the burden of having to go to work the next day! Candidates would be crisscrossing the country as results came in trying to boost their numbers in various states, like a coach making in-game adjustments! Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together … mass hysteria!

Jason Walker may be reached at Jason_R_Walker@comcast.net.