The fact that “Internet voting…will this year be part of the first U.S. presidential election season of the 21st Century” (“Double-click to cast your vote,” Editorial, Feb. 21) shows that nothing is quite so powerful as a bad and dangerous idea whose time has come. It is the latest in a series of gimmicks designed to attract the lazy and unknowing into the voting booth.
The question is, why?
In the 1970s, we were told that lowering the voting age to 18 would be a healthy shot in the arm for America’s disaffected democracy.
Later it was motor-voter–allowing anyone to register to vote when getting a driver’s license or applying for welfare. Last November, Oregonians approved yet another remedy–scrapping voting booths and conducting all elections by mail.
Despite all this, voter turnout in the 1996 presidential election fell below 50 percent and plunged to 36 percent in the 1998 mid-term elections, the lowest level in 56 years.
Why exactly are we so desperate for the ballots of people who won’t vote unless voting is made utterly effortless? Why pander to people who can’t be bothered to get off the couch and go to a polling place once a year?
It might not be so bad that some people don’t vote. According to a Washington Post-Harvard University survey taken shortly after the 1996 election, so deep is voter ignorance that 40 percent of adults couldn’t name the vice president, almost half failed to identify the speaker of the House, and 60 percent believed that the government spends more on foreign aid than on Medicare even though foreign aid is only 2 percent of the budget.
In recent days, computer saboteurs shuttered popular Web sites for two and three hours at a time. Similar Cyber-vandals could shut down selected polling Web sites on Election Day. Hackers stealthily could vote early and often, all from the privacy of their own homes.
Worse yet, they could even alter the totals.
Enough Americans have died in battle to safeguard this freedom that it’s not too much to expect civic-minded Americans to get off their sofas, put on some clothing and actually present themselves at the polls.
