A brief report from the 51st State

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.

•  I voted online too

  And it was a revelatory experience. Imagine how many would vote if all they had to do was go to a website?

  by slash196 on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 08:42:50 AM PDT

  •  As an IT Director? I Imagine Nightmares

    As an IT Director with 25 years programming experience, the idea of Internet voting with no paper ballot trail gives me the total vapors, as one might say down south.

    The security issues are almost insurmountable right now, given the current state of the Internet, and blinding ease with which traffic can be monitored, intercepted, altered (man-in-the middle attacks).

    The hardest thing for me as a Directory of IT is to keep explaining to my users from top to bottom of our organization that their convenience must not trump security.

    by HeartlandLiberal on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 09:13:15 AM PDT

    •  I defer to expert judgment

      but I still think it's a goal that should be striven for. When voting becomes that convenient, you could incorporate direct democracy MUCH more easily.

      by slash196 on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 09:24:22 AM PDT

      •  This can be accomplished by postal mail

        See Voting in Oregon - Vote by Mail  

        Very successful. Clear identity trail with signature. High rate of participation.

        It is BECAUSE of my more than 25 years as a professional in this field (right now managing about 600 computers of all strips and two dozen networked servers) that I am absolutely opposed to electronic voting. I can accept electronic scanners of hand filled ballots that can be read by human eyes as audit and control measure. Anything all electronic WILL be subverted, WILL be hacked, and control and integrity of elections WILL be lost.

        Right now, the crime wave on the Internet has reached such epic proportions it is difficult to explain it to the non-technical end users. Suffice to say: the majority of Internet connected computers are probably either hacked and owned, or at the least infected with adware and spyware. The botnets that exist number networks of 100's of thousands of owned machines in some cases, some experts think more. They are used routinely for spam email blasts and denial of service attacks extorting money from web sites. They are used as resources for rapidly rotating and moving fake web sites to which people are lured by phish emails to divulge identities and confidential banking information. It is literally verging on out of control.

        Just search google on botnets crime. Here e.g. an article from last summer:

        FBI: Operation Bot RoFBI: Operation Bot Roast finds over 1 million botnet victimsast finds over 1 million botnet victims

        And this, just from end of last year:

        Crime and punishment: The botnet barons

        We spend much of our time anymore just on security issues alone. It has become a nightmare over the past five years.

        by HeartlandLiberal on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 09:41:34 AM PDT

      •  Amen

        I've been reading all week about the nightmares at physical polling stations and caucuses - voters in Kansas braving arctic winds for two hours to enter a church, polling stations running out of ballots, registered voters being forced to use provisional ballots, boxes of ballots disappearing. If we haven't overcome those voting nightmares after 200+ years of trying, I'd say they're pretty much insurmountable.

        by cadejo4 on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 09:53:02 AM PDT

•  tip jar

  What do you think?

  by Marcus Junius Brutus on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 08:44:05 AM PDT

  •  tip for taking the time

    from your vacation to vote!

    internet voting scares me because of security reasons - but i know nothing about the internet (i just hear stories about someone hacking big companies...)

    but maybe one day internet will happen -- when we can get everyone connected.  the people in my area don't have it; they don't even have caller ID.

    by sc kitty on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 08:53:49 AM PDT

•  Good effort for typing that on a iTouch!

  The keyboard works well, still thats quiet an amount of text to type on it.

  by back2basics on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 08:44:17 AM PDT

•  NO WAY

  to internet voting!

  You want our votes to forever be fucked with? How would you ever do a recount? How would you ever know who is really voting?

  Technology is good for somethings but NOT with our votes!

  Washington Woman

  EENR

  by kevin22262 on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 08:46:28 AM PDT

  •  It occurs to me it could be audited very easily

    For example, we were each given a ballot number. To audit the system, all the administrators or clients would have to do is pick x number of ballot numbers at random, e-mail whoever got those numbers and ask them to confirm their vote.

    by cadejo4 on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 09:03:23 AM PDT

    •  NO WAY AGAIN

      I guess you are OK with electronic voting machines also?

      Email does not confirm anything. Also, what are you going to do with a recount?

      Also, what if someone changes their mind after they vote, are then "emailed" to check how they voted and they say hell no... I wanted candidate X not Y!

      Paper ballots are the ONLY thing that is needed!

      Washington Woman

      EENR

      by kevin22262 on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 09:52:34 AM PDT

      •  Sorry, to say it

        But this reminds me of the big phonics debate decades ago, where teachers with 25 years of experience were so opposed to adopting a new system.

        Instead of looking at it from the perspective of "no, it can't possibly be done", why not look at it from the perspective of "this is really cool, I wonder how it could be done better"?

        I'm all for anything that will improve our dreary voter turnout in the U.S.

        by cadejo4 on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 10:02:30 AM PDT

        •  Well

          What about an electronic voting machine?  Oh, wait.

          by TruthOfAngels on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 10:49:18 AM PDT

•  Hmm

  Remember that time, not long ago, on dKos when somebody hacked teh Internetz?  If you don't, I'll summarise:

  Somebody posted a diary with a link in it.  If people clicked on that link, it messed with their rating abilities.  Their recs turned into troll rates.

  Want that to happen to your vote?

  No, I didn't think so.

  by TruthOfAngels on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 08:55:44 AM PDT

•  Voted by Internet, too

  I loved voting in the comfort of my home over a cup of coffee. It was indeed a satisfying experience. Don't know about the system's back end security, but the front end was more secure than a credit card transaction and very user-friendly.

  (For the record, I think we get 7 pledged delegate votes, and we have 4 super delegates. There are apparently 22 delegates with a half vote apiece. I keep intending to read up on it, but would just forget it again if I did.)

  by cadejo4 on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 08:57:32 AM PDT

•  E-voting can work here is how I would like to see

  it done:

  You go to the polling place and cast your vote on a touch screen, the touch screen prints out the ballot with a copy for you to carry home with you and then you put the paper ballot in the box.  Votes would initially be tallied electronically but the final vote would be tallied from the actual paper ballots.

  And what about that receipt?

  Well it would allow you to check your vote on the web....

  When you have that many auditors of the election possible it makes it really toug to steal the thing.

  by skippythebox on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 09:40:23 AM PDT