Why Americans Still Can’t Vote Online

We can vote for people on American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and other contestants on reality shows. And we can vote in consumer polls offered by various organizations. But we still can't vote for people running for office, or for public changes, such as bond issues, online. Why not? Well, according to Doug Gross of CNN in a recent post on the web version of the news organization, it's because nobody trusts the Internet enough to make a go of it. At least not in this country.

Other countries have tried it, though only one allows citizens to vote for national leaders though the Internet: Estonia. The fact that one country not only has tried it, but has adopted it means that it can be done. Of course that country has also adopted a national ID card program which is how people vote online. We haven't exactly embraced that idea either.

It all comes down to two issues: trust security. In order for any voting system to work, the people that use it have to believe that it's reasonably honest and fair. Otherwise, why bother. If it's rigged, voting is moot. The other issue is based on the first. In order to put a voting system in place, there needs to be a certain degree of security in the system. Not absolute mind you, because we all know the system we use now isn't one hundred percent foolproof. It's just secure enough that we believe it works pretty well, and then to accept the outcome of elections as honest representations of how we as a people have voted.

And that's what's holding up Internet voting. Sure there is probably some fraud involved with voting on American Idol, but really, other than the contestants, who cares? It's an entertainment show. If it became known that fraud was actually going on though, people would probably stop bothering to vote. And that's the whole problem with setting up a system of voting for important things like elections. How could we possibly set up a system that was impervious to hackers bent on messing with election results? The answer is, right now at least, we can't. And that's why we can't vote online yet.

It's too bad though, because in places like Canada where they have set up online voting for local elections, they've found voter participation increases on the order of 300%, which would be a vast improvement over the paltry numbers that we now have voting in our so-called most important elections.