In computer news this week:

Online voting is on it's way; it has to be ....

Back when I was in college, in the late 60's, I was active in politics and was a precinct committee person. One of my duties was tosit on and appoint people to the local precinct voting boards, and we would sit at the poll, hand out ballots, check voter information, and put the ballots in the voting box. The ballots were IBM punch cards. After the election closed, we would count the ballots and then drive to the courthouse and deliver them, where our count would be verified, and then the ballots would be run through a punchcard reader and tabulated. One time our count didn't match the courthouses', and we had to return in the night to recount the ballots. What an incredibly inefficient way of doing this task.

Since this, the pc revolution came and went, virtually everything today is computerized, and you can gain information on any political candidate from websites, discuss politics with people in online discussion groups, and research any issues you are interested in. With the emerging Internet economy, you can buy anything from a music cd to a house on the internet, bank via the internet, invest on the internet, conduct millions of dollars of business on the internet.

But next week when you vote in the presidential election, you will have to do it exactly the way we did it in the late 60's. You have to drive to that church or school where the polling place is, get out of your car, chat with the people on the board and verify your address, be handed an old fashioned punch card ballet, wait in line for a voting booth to be ready, put your ballot on the special holder, punch out your choices, then hand your ballot to a polling person that will put it in the ballot box, Then when the election is over, they will count them and take them to the courthouse for tabulation, as Yogi Berra would say, de ja vu all over again.

In the 1996 presidential election only about half of registered voters voted. The most common excuse was that it took too much time, and people didn't have the time to go to the voting place and stand in line.

Of all the transactions you can conduct on the internet, voting in an election isn't one of them. To date, 2 states, Arizona and Alaska, have allowed some computer voting in primary elections, and in Alaska it was because of heavy snow which hampered people getting to the polls.

What's wrong with this picture?

Opposition to online voting includes the argument that it would be available only to people who had computers. About 2/3rds of American households have computers and are on the internet. The other 3rd still would have to go to the polling place. I think if you really want to vote , you would do it whatever way available.

Britain is looking into public supermarket computer voting booths and also mobile ballot boxes.

Security is an issue, but if you can buy a house or a car and bank and invest via the internet, it seems there might be a secure way created for voting, if there isn't already one. I can't imagine security issues preventing online voting.

President Clinton has already ordered the National Science Foundation to conduct a one-year online voting feasibility study, and I mentioned previously that the 2 states have already used it in primaries.

It seems that there's couldn't be a less efficent, more costly way than the way we do it now, so hopefully something will come of this study.

For Raw Bytes, this is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 Email: fdspokane@aol.com