According to a FoxNews.com report, some Democratic politicians based in Iowa have started to push for the implementation of an Internet-based voting system that would be in place in time for the 2016 elections. That’s when the next presidential election is set to take place.
The proposal was put forward during a recent Democratic National Committee gathering, and supporters of the idea claim that Internet voting could provide greater access a variety of party supporters, including absentee voters, members of the military who are stationed overseas, and other groups of people.
“We’re looking at different options,” Iowa Democratic spokesperson Christina Freundlich said when speaking to FoxNews.com about the proposal. “Democrats are always looking at ways to get more people in 2016 to participate in the Democratic process.”
The idea of Internet-based voting isn’t exactly new though, and test runs have already been conducted. One of these trials occurred back in 2010 in the District of Columbia. Only a few days into the trial, the District of Columbia’s Board of Elections and Ethics shut down the experiment after people who were present during the tests were greeted with the University of Michigan’s fight song when they were trying to vote. This was the work of UM professor who, though he was reportedly helping with the Internet voting trial, urged his students to hack into and penetrate the system, which they did successfully.
Considering the rocky roll-out of the Obamacare sign-up websites, we’re willing to bet that a significant amount of people won’t be so quick to warm up to this possible melding of government and technology. Nevertheless, it’ll be interesting to see whether this catches on as we steamroll towards the 2016 election cycle.
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