As Election Day looms, millions of Americans will head to the polls to have their say. Obama? McCain? Rail? ConCon? In this day and age, however, many folks are asking, “;Isn't there an easier way to do this?”;

We're talking, of course, about voting over the Internet. Many folks pooh-pooh it, claiming we have enough problems with the conventional style of voting. But the fact is that the technology to facilitate Internet-based voting already exists.

For several years now, many large corporations conduct shareholder elections via the Internet. Many might question the judgment of such corporations in our current economy, but Internet-based elections have, or are being held in a number of jurisdictions. Such elections have proven to decrease the number of invalid ballots due to over-votes or similar reasons.

Globally, the Internet-based election with perhaps the largest impact occurred in the small Baltic nation of Estonia. With an eligible voter population of about a million folks, Estonians conducted their first nationwide election, albeit for local races, in 2005. About 9,000 folks voted over the Internet. This was a dry run for the 2007 national election, in which more than 30,000 folks voted over the Internet.

The Democratic Party in Michigan allowed Internet-based voting its 2004 primary caucuses, and reported more than 40,000 ballots cast over the Web. This year, Internet votes will be cast in the presidential election for the first time. About 600 military personnel in England, and Japan will have a chance to cast their ballots online. These folks are residents of Florida, where their ballots will be counted.

Internet-based has even been tried here at home. In 2007, the Honolulu Neighborhood Board garnered more than 4,000 votes—out of a total of more than 44,000—over the Web.

To be sure, there are many problems to overcome. Obviously, Internet-based balloting won't be plagued by hanging chads. But other, more insidious problems could occur. Chief among these of course, is ensuring accuracy. This includes correctly recording and tabulating votes.

An interesting advance in auditing and accuracy is the use of audio. Rather than provide a voter with a piece of paper to confirm their vote, selections are read back audibly. Audio-based auditing has proved to be much more successful than paper.

We have an Internet infrastructure today that facilitates secure transactions of billions of dollars per day. Certainly this infrastructure could be used to facilitate a large-scale election. While this may not happen in the next election, we expect to see progress in the next few years.

In addition to increasing voter participation, such technologies could be used to let our elected representatives know exactly where we stand on every issue, not just at election time.