Online Voting

From MashupCamp

America's Third Party recently attended MashupCamp6 in Silicon Valley. David Jon Sponheim, America's Write-In President, Ran a break-out session about online voting. This is an interesting concept, but technical details need to be addressed before full nationwide implementation of online voting can occur.

The topics to be addressed in the session were: Access Compliance Transparency Validation Verifiability

Major Conclusions were reached as a result of this session:

1. When a voter registers to vote, their personal data should be stored off-line. This ensures personal security. Each registered voter will be assigned a voter ID number that is not their Social Security number. This Voter ID number and the actual votes will be the only information stored online. The idea of people choosing a voter ID number was also discussed. As an added security measure, David Jon Sponheim (America's Write-In President) proposed the idea that Each person could be assigned a "thumb-drive" with an EPROM chip at time of voter registration for Fingerprint identification when voting.

2. The technology currently exists to provide ACCESS to voting in a variety of ways. However, this technology has yet to be implemented. We envision people being able to use either their phone, PC, mail-in paper ballot to cast their vote, as long as we can ensure 1 person gets only 1 vote. People could even vote at a traditional polling place if they wanted to, and the polling place could be open on multiple days. This provides more access to voting which will encourage voter participation. Perhaps we can finally get more than 50% of the voting population to actually vote.

3. People who cast their ballot would be sent an email confirmation of their vote, much like is done when on online purchase is made. Then people can confirm that the vote was recorded correctly.

4. People could also be able to check the database for their number and ensure their vote was recorded correctly. This provides a redundant point for validation and verification.

5. Copies of the database could be stored in multiple secure locations to provide another layer of security.

6. We plan on starting by implementing a trial run of the online voting system. This would be by congress members implementing a system where their constituents can "vote" on issues the congress members are preparing to vote on.

Other ideas that were discussed: Parliamentary system prevents gerrymandering and applicable to mobile world. Amendment to constitution may be necessary.