A friend points out this MP3 featuring a Andrew Rasiej of the Personal Democracy Forum and Allison Fine of Demos appearing on WNYC radio. They’re the authors of this book about the future of democracy.
Rasiej and Fine mention Internet voting as the wave of the future. They then took three or four calls, all of which consisted of cogent arguments for why Internet-based or electronic voting is a disaster in the making. One pointed out that it will be too complicated to make sure your vote is complicated. Another contended out that Internet-based voting disenfranchises poor people. When Fine responded that poor people could vote with their cell phones, a third caller pointed out that this would undermine the secret ballot.
Fine and Rasiej, obviously exasperated, conceded that, yes, current voting technologies had some kinks. But they insisted that once those kinks get worked out, we’ll all be able to choose our next president on our cell phones.
Fine and Rasiej struck me as irritatingly airheaded. If current e-voting technologies are deeply flawed (which they are) it’s irresponsible to be writing book chapters and giving radio interviews disparaging paper ballots as outdated. And it’s especially irritating that their support for e-voting seems to be entirely based on a gee-whiz sense that paper is old-fashioned and boring while touch-screen machines are new and exciting. This is not a serious argument, and if that’s all you have to say on the subject, you should leave scarce radio time to people who know what they’re talking about.
Incidentally, the book in question is an edited collection featuring a bunch of really great writers, including Clay Shirky, Yochai Benkler, and Brad Templeton. So I’m sure there’s some great stuff in there, even if the chapter on e-voting isn’t so good.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.