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To Our Readers
HAS the voting process always been this controversial? The last two elections have thrust the nuts and bolts into the limelight, upstaging victors and vanquished alike and making Dwayne Yoshina, Hawaii's erstwhile anonymous chief elections officer, almost a household name. Internet voting
-- a better way?My own experience at the polling place last month showed technology has not triumphed. A conga line snaked around Kamiloiki Elementary's cafetorium with at least 70 ballot-clutching voters waiting their turn at the scanner -- a real bottleneck compared to the good old wooden box with the slot in the top.
After Florida's fiasco, returning to the chad-plagued punch-card system isn't (forgive me) in the cards. So, how can we do it better? Kim Alexander of the California Internet voting task force said on Public Radio this week that Internet voting might be the answer -- or not.
There are two kinds of Internet voting, Alexander said. The first, which California experimented with, is from computers in polling places. The other, which Arizona tried, is remotely from homes or workplaces.
The big problem with remote voting -- even when using PINs (personal identification numbers) -- is that it makes vote swapping and selling too easy. It could also lead to coercion, with bosses looking over employees' shoulders to see how they vote.
Putting computers into voting booths has some real advantages, though. More booths can be set up -- in convenient places, such as banks, malls and supermarkets, for example -- and the risk of losing or spoiling ballots is reduced. Computers can be programmed to prevent selecting more than one candidate per race or one party per primary, for example. They can be more flexible, too, allowing us to review and change our choices until we finally cast the ballot.
Alexander says security is still an issue, however, and the most tech-savvy people are the greatest opponents of Internet voting. When she asked fellow task force members what they thought about it, one, a known hacker, said, "It's cool! I can't wait to see whom the hackers want as president."
John Flanagan is editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin.
To reach him call 525-8612, fax to 523-8509, send
e-mail to publisher@starbulletin.com or write to
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802.