Online voting should replace traditional voting.

I staunchly disagree! Online voting should NOT replace traditional voting. It holds far too many ways to fail than suceed. Idealy, yes, for convenience sake online voting would be far superior to traditional voting. However it makes the already problematic voter fraud even easier then it already is. While you have listed ways that you think will be able to prevent this, I shall now go through and show how each is inevitably able to fail to virus', hackers, and general vote bombers. c-1: Voting fraud on this site has not been unheard of, and debate.orgs 'fail safe' with cell phone identity is a speed bump at best. All one needs is a phone number that can recieve text messages, an viola, that account can vote. I do not have a phone that can recieve TM, and so am unable to confirm my identity, though I know I exist. This means I can't vote, which is very inconvenient. However, if I so chose to I could get one or convince a friend or even steal a phone and "confirm" my identity tot he satisfaction of debate.orgs fail safe, though as you can see there are more dishonest ways to pass this than the honest one. Now, for your example of what I am assuming are serious political elections, you say that a social security number will do the trick. Not so. Just as with the cell phone all one needs to do attain a SSN, and they are now that person whether they are or not. If you have contention with this then you are probably not aware of identity theft [http://www.ftc.gov...]. Now as you'll have surly noticed this site is not just about what identity theft (IT) is but how to fight it. I fully admit that there are ways to fight IT after it has happened, though they are often lengthy, inconvenient, and costly. In all cases, IT could be fought but not after the damage has been done. This means that in a serious election, the mere possibility of the damages of IT far outweight the benefit of convenience. An election where seemingly thousands have voted could just as well be 1 person, or group with a particular agenda. Even if 1 vote is not that of the legitimate holder of the SSN, your fail safe has failed. It is far more pssoible than not, and for this reason, online voting clearly fails. C-2: If we lived in a perfect world then you'd be right. An electronic voting system would be more relable in counting votes. That is, if those votes were real and reliable. As I've already shown, the reliablity of votes is already in question. But whether a real person in any degree cast those is also in question. A virus, especially a well designed one, could easily pass through a fail safe of any kind, and perform a simple operation of changing a 1 into a 2, or 3, etc. Hacks and viruses into what where thought to be secure systems is all too common, and a simple google search can reveal hundreds of stories of real life scenarios where such a thing happened. Here's on that happened just 2 years ago [http://www.crn.com...] and a famous story where the FBI's database was hacked into [http://www.computerworld.com...]. The moral of the story is that if there is a will, then there's a way, especially when it comes to computers. Vote bots exist, and are able to be purchased easily and effectively, as well as (obviously) designed [http://cheatingnetwork.net...]. So again here, electronic votes fail as they would only suceed if there were not people who would exploit them. C-3: Sure they do, but it isn't as easy to fraud those as it is from a computer. With absentiee votes there is an official form, that has to be filled out be hand. A very lengthy process and definetly not immune to the effects of fraud, but it would take more time and resources to produce anywhere near the amount of damage that can be caused by a few key strokes. I believe I've sufficently described how that can happen above. C-4: Undoubtably, but like I've shown, for every honest elderly shut in who could use the technology to vote, there are more who would use it exploit their own agendas dishonestly. CONCLUSION: Given the unreliabilty and accessibility that a hacker or virus could take advantage of over the web, online voting does more harm than good. With traditional voting, were one has to go into a set voting center, and show an ID that matches the person to it to another living person, the chance of fraud exists but is minimalized by the ability to verify the actual physical existence of a person right then and there. Opperations to commit fraud with traditional voting are far more costly, time consuming, and active (as in one has to get up and go do something) than it is with a computer. No system is perfect but a computerized voting system is far more so in the ease that it could be hacked. So while we are not in contention that a online system would do some good, I hold that it's far too easily penetrated by wrongdoers for it to become the mechanism that decides the course of an entire country, or even county.