There are, I’m sure, no Irreal readers who don’t understand that online voting is a really hard problem and that, currently, there are no good solutions. Those without a technical background don’t understand this and ask questions like, “If we can do online banking securely, why can’t we do online voting?” It’s a reasonable question. Take a second and think how you’d answer it.
Undoubtedly, most of you hit on the main issue: unlike banking, voting has to guarantee anonymity. If you’re like me, you tend to think of this as less important than security. After all, living in a democracy, I don’t have to worry about a strong man making sure I vote in an approved way, so what’s the big deal? But, of course, democracies can be corrupted in different ways. Votes can be bought, corporations can “strongly suggest” that their employees vote in some specific way, or even extreme social pressure can be brought to bear. Anonymity guarantees that these things don’t happen. In many states it’s even illegal to take a picture of your completed ballot in the voting booth specifically because of these issues.
Ars Technica has an interesting article that considers the question why is online voting harder than online banking? The major issue is the anonymity but they also point out that online banking isn’t really that secure. Indeed, the yearly fraud involves billions of dollars but the banks understand that they have to balance security with user friendliness and therefore write off a certain amount of fraud as the cost of doing business. That attitude obviously doesn’t work in an election.
The Ars Technica article does a good job of covering the issue and answering the question. If Aunt Millie asks you why we can’t vote online, the article provides a good, easy to understand answer. It’s definitely worth a read.