Imagine a world …

Sometimes it seems hard to fathom how much the world has changed in the last 20 years. It has changed so much that it is now equally hard to fathom living without so many of the things that are part of the fabric of our existence today.

Imagine if you need money having to go to the bank, wait in line, and cash a check for cash, which is still predominanatly the way that people buy things. Even if you only want to find out the balance in your account, you still have to go to the bank and wait in line. If you do buy something with a credit card, you can wait while the merchant looks up your card number in a big book that is published every few days, to see if it has been stolen.

Imagine, if you want to look up any bit of information, having to go to the library and search through periodicals and reference books for hours hoping to find the answer.

Imagine, if you want to buy something from your home, having to look through a catalog, put a check in the mail, and wait weeks to receive the item, with no way to track the progress of the shipment.

Of course i can go on with examples of how our online world completely didn’t exist only a couple of decades ago.

And imagine, when you want to exercise your right to vote, having to physically go to a specific “polling place” and pull a lever, or fill in a bunch of ovals on a piece of paper with a pencil. There is no online voting.

Oh, right, that is the world today. It hasn’t changed.
And some say it can never change, should never change. Even though everything else HAS changed.

Remember only a decade ago, when critics said that E-commerce was impossible, would never happen, should never happen. They claimed with surety that consumers would NEVER ever give their credit card information to someone online to buy something. No way. No way? Can you say Amazon dot com? or Ebay? or Paypal?

Next time you consider giving the benefit of the doubt to the arguments against online internet voting, the claims that it could never be safe enough, please give the same benefit to your own eyes and ears, your own common sense, and most especially your own understanding of the world in which you live.