It’s been a while since we’ve heard about an online voting program, but this new development is exciting. It allows each county to keep track of the voters that have cast their ballot by using photo identification cards. The cards also have an electronic signature, making it very difficult for someone to cast a fake vote. The system works like this: each time the voter goes to a county courthouse and casts a vote, their picture is taken and sent to the computer program running the system. Then, it compares the card to the photo on the voter’s card to ensure that the voter did cast that vote.
Although this sounds great in theory, many countries have been trying for years with no luck to get this system to work. In some cases, they have tried to use online voting systems independently and have had almost as much trouble as the counties that chose not to participate. No matter how many times they were rejected, they always tried again until they were approved. Now, perhaps they have learned their lessons and can overcome those hurdles and make a system that will work in local elections.
The second part of the online voting program allows each county to keep track of how many votes were cast. When a county wins a contest or a runoff election, they receive a certificate. The certificate shows the number of valid votes cast, and there are typically quite a few of those votes. If all of the voters who voted in that race received a certificate, then the race is considered a win. In a normal local election, however, many voters are absent or just too busy to vote.
So why did the counties choose to use this program? There are several reasons. One is the cost. Some counties have already established themselves as budget-friendly and can cut back on operating their offices and maintaining their websites and voting sites. That means that there is less chance that the election results will be skewed toward one party or another in these types of economically challenging times.
Of course, there is still some concern about election integrity because there is no way to see what the voters have decided. Many counties have already moved towards automatic tabulating, but they still rely on the local voters to punch in their choices. They have created so many different voting systems that it is difficult to keep track of which machines provide the most accurate results. Sometimes the results may not match the voter’s selections the way that they expected them to. That can confuse and, of course, election corruption.
