If you believe that social distancing can save lives, and you believe anything that can be done online SHOULD be done online right now, then why should voting be any exception?
Should it be acceptable for people to die from a paper ballot? Or FOR one?
Paper ballot voting crusaders have long behaved as if they would rather die than see digital voting prevail in the United States. It turns out, they would rather see you die too.
Let’s get very real here. The COVID-19 pandemic is shutting down virtually every facet of normal society that isn’t already online. Every day, the list of public gatherings to be cancelled is growing. Colleges are closing in-person classes for the semester and moving to remote learning. Public schools are closing indefinitely and many will also attempt to educate online.
All of the efforts to move activity online are an attempt to “flatten the curve” of this pandemic. While it remains to be seen how much mitigation will be achieved by our ability to do so many things online, it unquestionably is better than if we had none of this remote capability.
The personal computer may have been a groundbreaking technological achievement. But without the subsequent proliferation of broadband, our society would not have transformed the way it has.
If it seems that we can do almost anything online today, it is because we can. So much of our daily activity can be carried out over broadband, that we will undoubtedly achieve a level of social distancing during this crises than we would not otherwise achieve without much greater impact on average daily life.
Perhaps tens of millions of people will not have to choose between physically going to work during a pandemic or not working at all. They will work from home. People, who were told for years that it was not possible for their jobs to be done remotely, will in very short order somehow be doing their jobs remotely.
The social isolation, and all of the psychological damage that goes along with it, will be far less severe due to our online connectivity.
Many activities, from sporting events to Broadway performances, will take place. They will be performed, not in front of live audiences, but streamed online.
Despite the wave of new online activity due to this pandemic, on top of the plethora of things we have already been doing on the internet for decades now, I know that I can safely predict one activity which will not in any way be carried out remotely.
Gee, you guessed it right away – Voting.
There will be no online voting in 2020. Election officials and administrators, elected officials, and of course election “integrity” types will likely universally scoff at any mention of “socially distancing” the vote. They will strongly declare it to be a very bad idea. Because of the hackers, don’t you know.
I probably need not repeat once again the actual FACTS about online voting. I have written often enough on this blog, for almost a decade, about the track record of digital voting in real life vs. fear-mongered public impressions. I have pointed out enough times that online voting is AT LEAST as secure and reliable as the things we most depend upon in our lives – online banking, online tax filing, online stock trading, online, e-commerce, online health care information. The list goes on and on. I interviewed the CEO of one of the nations most successful and reliable online voting providers over eight years ago.
But of course it is hard to get any kind of actual discussion about digital voting beyond the “what about the hackers?” knee-jerk response. Yes, what about the hackers relative to online banking, online tax filing, online stock trading, online e-commerce, online health care information and the rest of the list? Of course there is risk in online activity. Yet despite risk, we DO IT ANYWAY. We forge ahead, digitizing our entire world, except for voting.
Folks, the “Voting is different. Voting is more important” attitude is becoming too ridiculous to abide at this stage. The United States averages some of the lowest turnout percentages for elections in the world. Let’s stop pretending voting is too important to make more convenient. It is a dangerous perspective to take as it pertains to participatory democracy. And now, with COVID-19, it will be a deadly one.
People are going to die this year because we don’t use online voting.
Online voting is available and reliable, but we will CHOOSE not to use it. Instead, while some primary elections will be postponed, others will still be held. Today, March 17th – while Ohio decided to postpone the vote (hours before the polls were to open) – Florida, Arizona, and Illinois went on as planned.
Not like there are any older, high risk voters in Florida or anything.
So, at a time when virtually all nonessential in-person activities and business are being suspended, with as many as possible continuing online, voting will once again be a blindingly glaring exception. Only this time, it won’t just be voter turnout and democratic representation that will be at risk. It is voters lives.
Let us also pause to reflect on the implications of postponed elections with regard to the online voting. The hypocrisy of paper ballot polling place advocates in this respect should not be overlooked.
Much of the fear mongering surrounding digital voting, over the last two decades, has centered on the concept of a digital vote tally being manipulated in such a way that “nobody would know about it until it was too late”. If I heard that expression from a paper crusader once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. “Too late” refers to after an election has already taken place. The premise is that voting is somehow hacked “midstream” between the voter and the tally and changed. Once votes are tallied and it is discovered that some breach has occurred, the cry is that it would be “too late” to do anything about it. Too late to hold another election? Yes, according to them.
They treat a delayed or voided election, requiring another election, to literally be the fall of democracy. At least they view it that way when discussing digital voting. Of course the crusaders ignore the fact that an online election, if it ever did need to be redone, would not face the same cost and logistical barriers as in-person elections. It would be totally feasible to schedule another election online in short order at little additional cost.
Indeed, the notion that a delayed election would be the end of democracy, like so many other things, seems to only apply to digital voting. If it’s a paper ballot primary and you have to delay it, then it magically is no big deal.
Meanwhile in reality, if Ohio, Louisiana and soon many other primaries were scheduled to take place online, they wouldn’t need to be delayed at all. It is only because of dependence on antiquated election technology that these states will need to postpone their primaries at all.
No doubt, delayed primaries are more responsible than holding one in Florida during a pandemic. It isn’t only the voters, who may be on average older, who will be more at risk. It will be those who work the polling places.
The average poll worker is a senior citizen. Holding a primary now means putting every single one of them at risk. They can wear gloves, sanitize, and do every measure possible to protect themselves. But that isn’t good enough. If that were good enough, we wouldn’t be shutting down all the schools, restaurants, and ski resorts.
People are going to die because we don’t vote online.
We don’t vote online because the subject has been fear-mongered for 20 years. It is pretty ironic that the thing we have been told to be so afraid of is the only logical answer to voting in person. And voting in person is something everyone should be afraid to do right now.
We need to close the polls and get the voting online NOW.
Any election integrity “expert” who says you have no choice but vote in person, because we can’t trust online voting, is putting your life at risk.
They may prefer death to online voting.
Do you?