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Story: US abandons Internet voting

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The scraping of internet voting is a big surprise. The IRS department lets people pay their taxes from the internet, even with a credit card. So why would the US decide that the internet is not secure enough to let a person vote? Is this something where they can give the government money, but can’t have a voice?

I’ve thought about this a good 15 minutes how the program could guarantee that it would not be misused. If those wishing to participate in it signed up through normal mail providing their registration form, party indicator, signature, social security number, and photo id, perhaps with a few extra forms of identification that the government might require, then a voting code could be mailed back to the person. They could check the site at any time but only vote once per voting season. Perhaps they would have to register once a year, and provide a $10 fee for postage. The only checks the site personal would have to do is a death check list to see if the person is really alive, and to check against live voting to make sure there’s no double voting made. A simple ‘report my vote as being not from me’ button on the site would keep any hackers from using the system efficiently. IP addresses can be recorded and stored.

Anyone that knows how to use the internet well would figure out that these features would make it secure. If a person really wants to make their vote on the internet, they would go to the trouble of verifying their registration. I think this has more to do with cutting voices that the government doesn’t want to be heard than the current status of the internet today.

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