I apologize for what by necessity must be a brief diary, with little further participation by myself. You see, I am writing this via my iPod Touch(tm) and a finicky open WiFi connection from my room in a small guest house in the Chinatown district of Bangkok, Thailand. I just returned here from a 10 day tour of Cambodia, including Angkor Wat, Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville. (In brief: a "wow" vacation.) I return to my regular ex-pat life in Oslo, Norway on Sunday.
As a registered member of Democrats Abroad, I signed up for the Global Primary which will be sending, l believe, 22 delegates to the Democratic convention.
Now here's the thing. Had I stayed in Oslo for February 5th, I could have attended the primary event in town or mailed or even faxed in my ballot. (I last resided in California stateside). But since primary day found me in the outback of Indochina, I availed myself of a last, and fabulously historic option. I voted via the internet. From a rundown, dialup iCafé
with a thatched roof in Sihanoukville, Cambodia.
In what I hope is a auger of things to come, I actually was able to vote for my candidate from the leisurely access of my keyboard. Granted, I did have to search a bit for an iCafé with a modern browser and when I finally got down to it, the hourglass spun for what seemed like ages before my vote registered because of the slow connection, but damn it, it was easy.
Registering online by January 31st took minutes.
In theory, I could have rolled out of bed at home in Oslo on primary day (online voting actually lasts for a week, February 5-12), typed a ballot number I received via email, voted and then type in a confirming PIN and been done voting inside of 3 minutes. Now granted, this only currently works for Presidential candidates in the Democratic Primary, no other races, parties nor in the general election. And I'm sure there are security issues to be considered. And it is currently only available to us ex-pats, the so-called 51st State.
But think about the possibilities: near universal enfranchisement, ease of use, access through any internet connection. Yes, I know not everyone has home or work access to the Internet, nor some smart phone or other device such as I am using to write this diary.
I'll leave to whomever chooses to respond to this diary to argue the pros and cons of Internet voting, I'll just sign off with the satisfying feeling of knowing that I took part in the most important election cycle of a generation.