Sure, someone in the Philippines is probably working on a virus that will make Imelda Marcos our president. But Internet voting will be here some day, and probably sooner than we expect.Are we finally ready to begin choosing our political leaders on the Internet? Is it time to do our civic duty in our pajamas? Will we at last be able to message our friends, watch a Youtube video and cast a ballot at the same time, trying hard not to accidentally “like” a presidential candidate and “vote” for “Charlie bit my finger,” instead of the other way around? It’s been nearly 14 years since I first wrote about this. That was in the context of the 2000 presidential election, in which rooms full of Florida election judges tried to decide the fate of the presidency by examining punch cards that hadn’t been punched very well. At the time, I interviewed Scott Howell, a Democratic state senator who worked for IBM. He predicted Internet voting would be a reality within two years.
To be fair, the world seemed a bit skewed at the time. It was easy to contemplate just about anything happening to fix what seemed like a never-ending crisis in democracy. But all these years later you may be interested in knowing people have not given up on the idea, notwithstanding the NSA, the Target credit card scandal and all that malware on your computer.
In their just-completed annual session, Utah lawmakers rejected a bill that would have tried to make the state’s presidential primary the earliest in the nation. That was a good thing, given the havoc that would have ensued if the greatest republic on Earth were to face the prospect of winnowing its presidential candidates through a different small, politically insignificant state than Iowa or New Hampshire.
But a part of the failed bill that didn’t get a lot of attention would have given the Legislature the power to direct that the primary be held electronically.
Full Article: Will Internet voting ever be a reality? | Deseret News.