Online Voting: The future of elections?

For a country which seeks to lead the world in terms of technological innovation and has spent billions of dollars in modernising their election process, it seems puzzling that online voting hasn’t made more progress in terms of becoming part of the United States electoral process.

Maybe this is about to change. On Tuesday 22nd March, 2016, the Republican party of Utah (Utah GOP) offered online voting as an option to registered Republican voters seeking to cast a vote in their presidential preference race.

Caucuses and Primaries – How do they work?

Before elaborating on the specifics of how that system worked, it’s worth explaining how presidential candidates are nominated in the US. Essentially the process falls into one of two camps – primaries and caucuses.

Primaries are akin to the standard election process that most of us will be used to in which the voter gets the opportunity to cast their vote in private using a traditional paper ballot.

Caucuses are ‘gatherings’ or meetings which take place at designated locations called ‘precincts’. Party members assemble, debate amongst their friends and peers and attempt to garner support for their preferred candidate. At the end of the caucus meeting, the votes are cast using either papers ballots, a show of hands, or even standing in a certain corner of the meeting room to demonstrate support for your preferred candidate.

Clearly the notion of voter secrecy goes out of the window along with the principles of accuracy as anyone who saw footage of the Iowa caucuses will testify.

(If you didn’t see it, watch what Trevor Noah from The Daily Show thought about the Iowa caucus).

But what if you cannot attend your primary or caucus event? What if you are military personnel who is overseas? Your ability to participate is limited to casting an absentee or postal ballot, which as we know rarely make it back in time to be included in the final vote tally.

It seems inconceivable that in arguably the most democratic democracy in the world, that the key principles of accessibility, voter secrecy, accuracy and transparency do not count for more when it comes to nominating a presidential candidate.

Surely there’s a better way. There is and it's called online voting.

(Read the full article at WebRootsDemocracy).