It had also turned voting into an act indistinguishable from any other online interaction. And what my eyes and body had just offered me was an experience more like shopping than voting. It's a sorting out of desires, leaving some inevitably unmet, even when the process works very well. What most disturbed me about voting online, however, was its efficiency. This may sound odd, since speed is a good thing in a computer system.
Networks have to be fast.
And the Web voting page gives the illusion of cleanliness, efficiency. It projects the idea, by its very visual representation, that government, like trains perhaps, should be made to run on time. But efficiency is a machine value, not necessarily a human one. In a relatively democratic system like our own, it's perhaps better if change happens slowly, after much debate. As I write this, for instance, in the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 8, we still don't know who will be the next president of the United States.