OnlinePrimary: Towards an Internet Election System
During my current trip to the US, I've been following the US presidential primaries - it's hard not to, with the blanket coverage on CNN and in newspapers. Coincidentally while trying to hail a taxi after the Crunchies ceremony, I bumped into a man who is building an Internet version of the primaries. Called OnlinePrimary, it's an experimental project by Jim Edlin to create "a new, Internet-age way to do elections".
Jim Edlin has a long and distinguished history in the IT industry, including being the co-founder and first editor of PC Magazine. While giving my family and I a lift back to our hotel after the Crunchies (the taxis were non-existent that night!), Jim explained to me more about OnlinePrimary.
Jim Edlin describes OnlinePrimary on his website as "a personal project launched out of dissatisfaction with both the U. S. presidential primary election process and the current direction of using technology in elections." In a follow-up email conversation, he explained that "over the last year I have become increasingly distressed by a couple of things about how we do elections here in the US." The first is "the circus that [the] presidential primary system has become", such as states madly scrambling to get their primary earlier in the sequence so it will be more likely to affect the outcome. Also part of the circus is "horse-race-style media coverage that all-too-often becomes self-fulfilling prophecy." The second thing that prompted Edlin to start OnlinePrimary was "the disgraceful showing that technology (my field of endeavor) is making as it moves into the mainstream of the election process." He thinks that technology has failed in elections thus far:
"I don't understand why the straightforward process of casting and tallying votes should require special-purpose machines costing tens of thousands of dollars each, from companies so suspect of fraud and incompetence that they have to change their names (as Diebold Election Systems recently did) to hide from the shame."
Thinking big, Edlin decided to build a website "that would illustrate some alternate visions about both how US presidential primaries might work and about how technology might better support the election process more generally." He also wants the site to become a home for discussions and catalyst to action for new technology-based approaches to elections. As well as the onlineprimary.us domain, Edlin bought onlineconvention.us and onlineelection.us - indicating the broad plans he has.
What is OnlinePrimary?
At its core OnlinePrimary is a single, national, popular-vote primary - conducted using basic Web technology. Or at least it's an experiment in what such a system would look like, were it to become reality in the future. Edlin admits that there are "lots of questions to be worked out about these approaches", including security, auditability, ready accessability to all voters. Also he says it would take a lot of "political and legal gymnastics" to bring about changes like this to the US primaries system. But he says that OnlinePrimary is "a first crack" at building such a system.
In my tests, OnlinePrimary turned out to be a basic website form and still a little buggy (an SQL error popped up after I entered my selections). Here is what it looked like when I 'voted' for my Democratic choices:
There isn't a lot more to it at this time, although there are hints at the features to come. For example there is a "credibility rating", described as "based on a formula that takes into account how many ballots have been submitted from a particular internet address over various periods of time." Again, it's fairly basic. But I'm sure the technology will be enhanced as this project goes on.
The results section shows the promise of how real-time statistics could be used in an Internet primaries system:
Conclusion
Although the current site is relatively bare and there aren't many features, there's reason to think that OnlinePrimary could quickly ramp up. For one, Jim Edlin has been involved with technology mixed with politics before. In 1994 the company he co-founded, The HyperMedia Group (HMG), developed an interactive campaign video kiosk used by a candidate for California governor. And in 1996 HMG developed the California campaign website for Bill Clinton's re-election campaign. Edlin notes that "my personal involvement was small", but he is proud that his company HMG worked on those technology-enabled political projects.
Also Edlin notes that this is just the beginning of the experiment and that more features will be added.
OnlinePrimary is for now a part-time endeavor for Edlin, but it's an interesting experiment in how the Internet could be utilized to power the next generation of primaries and election systems. Tell us what you think below. How else could technology be used to improve the US political system? What other features would you suggest for the site?
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Richard, sorry, but this is a showcase of naivete. :-(
I'm wary of any system that doesn't require you to vote in person and has no paper trail -- they just seem far too susceptible to potential fraud.
For something as important as political elections I think we should stick with paper ballots.
The system my state uses in which you draw a line to connect the arrow for your candidate or ballot measure (-- -->) seems to me the best so far.
1. No "hanging chads" or hard to interpret marks
2. Cards can be optically scanned for a computer count
3. Full paper trail for recounts in tight races or ones where the exit polls are off by enough to warrant it
4. A lot harder to hack into and tamper with a pen than with a computer system ;)
5. With proper ballot design, who/what you're voting for can be made very clear (that part may still need some work)
Yeah, paper ballots and hand counts aren't as sexy as new technology, but elections are very, very important... I don't think we should futz them up with untested technology (or worse with technology that has been tested, and repeatedly fails -- like touch voting machines or easily manipulated web polls).
Just my 2 cents. :)
In response to Zoli: OnlinePrimary.us is indeed a “showcase” - but not of naivete, I hope. Rather it is intended as a showcase of possibilities that, with a lot of constructive criticism and input (like Zoli's), we might be able to achieve. More at http://blog.onlineprimary.us/2008/01/30/is-onlineprimaryus-a-showcase-of-naivete/
In response to Josh: The question of voting in person is a good one to raise. Only in a polling place with watchers representing competing interests is there a high assurance that a voter has had the opportunity to cast a secret ballot without undue influence from others. But that horse seems already out of the barn in many places. In the last dozen or so elections I've voted in, I've never entered a polling place, thanks to liberal availability of absentee ballots in my state. Regarding the paper ballots question, I'm willing to stipulate that elections shouldn't move away from a physical audit trail until an internet-based system can offer a comparable degree of auditability and confidence. OnlinePrimary.us is a way of asking the question, "how can we get there?"
Yes, strange that the original post hardly mentioned the elephant in the room: security. This is all that counts. All the cool Web 9.0 innovations in the world are irrelevant beside security, and how do you guarantee that without a paper trail?
Elections are too important, as Josh says. Certainly important enough to ask that people go and vote in person, if that's what it takes.
Personally I wish people would stop seeing democracy as another form of shopping, to be made easier at all costs. There are plenty of other things to be made easier first.