Hi Folks, Though the election is over, the vote counting continues in Florida as well as in California and other parts of the country. Over the past week I have been giving a lot of thought, as well as several interviews about these questions and am taking a moment to share some opinions with CVF-NEWS subscribers. This past week many people have been pondering whether Internet voting would help or hurt the voting process. It's important to realize that computerizing the voting process does not necessarily mean transmitting ballots over the Internet.
Many voters already have the right to cast ballots from home using an absentee ballot.
Allowing voters to vote by mail makes voting more convenient, but that convenience on the front end of the voting process creates a delay at the back end. Much of the delay in counting last week's votes in California and elsewhere is due to the fact that many people request absentee ballots but don't turn them in before the election and then show up at the polls on Election Day. California voters also have the right to return their absentee ballot to their county election office on Election Day, but this convenience also results in delayed vote counts since the election officers have to make sure that voters who return absentee ballots to the county office on Election Day did not also cast a ballot at their polling place. On the issue of a more modern voting interface, I think we all have become better educated in the past week about the limitations of punch card voting. Like many people, I have been surprised and dismayed to learn that inaccurate counts are commonplace with punch card technology, as we've seen with the initial machine count and recount of the Florida ballots, which delivered two different results.