Internet Voting: An Alternative for Michigan and Florida?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/us/politics/22web-seelye.html?pagewant…This New York Times story revisits one of the topics that we’ve been discussing all semester: internet voting. In the face of a tight Democratic primary season, Michigan and Florida are scrambling to find a Plan B that is palatable to voters, candidates, and party officials alike. Some think that internet voting is the answer.

One of the points that this article brings up is the idea of universally accessible voting. Many say that internet voting is prejudiced against minorities, and some of the comments submitted by their readers believe that it is prejudiced against the elderly. It seems to me that some of these people need to be a little more go with the flow about change. So… a person does not have a computer in their home, but they left the house successfully to vote in previous elections when they went to a polling location… what’s stopping them from popping by their local library to use the computer there? Most likely a program to train librarians to assist the process could be developed. This whole reasoning just seems a little wonky when you could feasibly vote in a Best Buy these days since they have open computers with internet connections.

A point that Avi Rubin brings up in this article is a little problematic, as well. He suggests that there is no way to effectively test internet voting because no matter what small scale tests are done there is no way of ensuring success on voting day. A little fatalistic isn’t it? I, too, believe that this next step to digital voting can be troublesome, but there must be a way to at least try.