Some feedback on a couple recent blogs showed that I didn’t do such a great job on defining how our OVR work creates public benefit. So let me try again, with thanks to a canny reader who pointed out the subtlety involved. But first, let me restate what our OVR work is: online voter registration assistance technology for NGOs like RockTheVote and government organizations like state and local boards of election. Through our work with RockTheVote, a large and expanding number of good government groups and other NGOs can quickly get an OVR system of their own, without deploying software or operating computers; and some can take advantage of options to largely re-work the appearance of the OVR web application, and/or integrate with mobile clients and social media. We’re also helping drive registrants to the government organizations as well, for those states with a strong online voter registration systems, who have requested that the Rocky OVR system give users the option of registering with the state board of elections. Then, out at the bleeding edge, it is even possible for local or state election officials to piggyback on the OVR system to have their own 100% election-official-managed online voter registration assistance system, with the same look and feel as other county or state web sites, and all without any procurement or deployment.
So, fair enough, we’re the technology provider in a mix of many organizations who either want to help people register to vote (NGOs) or are have a basic mission of helping people register — county registrars and state election officials. So where is the public benefit? And where is the subtlety that I mentioned? Many people would say that in a broad way, the public as a whole benefits when more eligible voters are registered and participate in elections — but not all. In fact, that is a political issue that we at OSDV want to steer clear of, especially given the political conflicts between some, who wish to aggressively register people in droves and who are more concerned about participation than eligibility, and others who are concerned about possible fraud and are more concerned about eligibility that participation. The debate about voter registration practices goes from one extreme where an election is tainted if it seems that a single eligible voter was barred from participation, to the the other extreme where an election is tainted if there is a suspicion about a single ineligible person having cast a ballot.
Full Article: TrustTheVote – An OSDV Project » Public Benefit from Online Voter Registration?.