Elections Online: Assessing Internet Voting in Light of the Arizona Democratic Primary
The public furor surrounding the Florida vote count in the recent presidential election has focused attention on election administration and the need for reform. Mistakes by voters due to confusing butterfly ballots, along with difficulties in counting punch card ballots due to stubborn chads, led to legal challenges by both presidential candidates that made their way to the Supreme Court. The Court's opinion in Bush v. Gore condemns "arbitrary and disparate treatment" of voters and mandates "specific standards" and "uniform rules" for the exercise of the vote to ensure "that the rudimentary requirements of equal treatment and fundamental fairness are satisfied."' While the Court itself was not specific on what those specific standards should be, one potential response to the Court's mandate is a move to electronic voting. As a commentator in Wired remarked: "The 2000 election highlights the fact that American democracy hinges for the most part, on 1960s technology. ... So is electronic voting at precincts, if not Internet voting from remote locations the way to prevent further crises in our democracies?"2 Proponents claimed that, among other benefits, a move to electronic voting would have prevented ballot spoiling, allowed for immediate vote counts, and prevented the early guesswork by television networks that led to the misreporting of state results.3