Page 242 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power
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Information Technology and Political Engagement
These largely null findings about use of the information technology
and political participation lead to the question of the ultimate “on line”
political act: Internet voting. A few remarks about this question are in or-
der. In the United States, experiments with use of the Internet as a polling
mechanism were under way even prior to the 2000 presidential election
problems with the machine counting of physical ballots. The most im-
portant public election in which voters were permitted to cast ballots
through the Internet was the Arizona Democratic primary in 2000. In
that election, about half the ballots were cast through the Internet rather
than using traditional means, and of those, over three-quarters were
cast from computers located in voters’ homes. 52 The expansion of this
practice has important implications, especially if taken from traditional
desktop computers to handheld electronic devices, which might permit
voting from literally any location around the globe.
A set of important technical and constitutional matters at present
limit that expansion. In January 2000, a commission appointed by the
California Secretary of State that was expected by many to endorse
Internet voting in the state most responsible for the development of
Internet technology, recommended otherwise. The California Internet
Voting Task Force found that “technological threats to the security, in-
53
tegrityandsecrecyofInternetballotsaresignificant.” Whileoptimistic–
probably unduly so – about the long-term possibilities of the Internet
for reducing barriers to voting, the commission urged “evolutionary”
rather than “revolutionary” changes in balloting practices. To the sur-
prise of many, given the strong representation of the computer industry
52 Internet straw poll voting was also permitted for selected precincts in the Alaska Re-
publican caucuses in 2000, but only about three dozen votes were cast this way. See
JamesLedbetter,“NetVotingExperimentLeavesAlaskansCold,”TheStandard,Jan.26,
2000,http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,9163,00.html.Otherminor
Internet experiments were also contemplated and conducted between 1998 and 2000.
For instance, as of early 2000, the Federal Assistance Voting Program, an absentee
ballot system for overseas U.S. military personnel set up by the Defense Department
in 1986, was being modified to permit a pilot group of 350 military personnel to
vote by Internet. See Fred Solop, “Digital Democracy Comes of Age in Arizona: Par-
ticipation and Politics in the First Binding Internet Election,” paper prepared for
the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C.,
Aug. 31–Sept. 3, 2000; Deborah M. Phillips, “Are We Ready for Internet Voting?”
(Arlington, Va.: The Voting Integrity Project, Aug. 12, 1999), http://www.voting-
integrity.org/projects/votingtechnology/internetvoting/ ivp title.shtml.
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California Internet Voting Task Force, A Report on the Feasibility of Internet Voting,
Executive Summary (Office of California Secretary of State, January 2000), p. 1,
http://www.ss.ca.gov/executive/ivote/final report.htm#final-1.
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