Indeed, the Internet seems to be ideally suited to the task. Electronic ballots can be cast from any computer with online access, enabling a person who lives in remote Wyoming to vote just as easily as someone living next to a polling station in Chicago. Moreover, ballots can be verified and counted in real time, making it possible to issue election results as soon as the polls close. After all, the technology for it has been available for several years. The answer lies in the endemic sluggishness that pervades politics.
Economic changes come quickly, as witnessed by the flourishing of e-commerce.
Changes in the political system take a lot longer. Two major obstacles to online voting are security concerns and the fear that putting elections on the Internet could have the unwanted effect of deepening the digital divide that separates the rich from the poor. In today's America, white families are more than twice as likely as blacks or Hispanics to have Internet access at home. That could translate into increased political clout for whites in any election that uses the Internet. People in higher economic levels are more likely to vote than poor people, and this will just make it worse.