Voting
Military personnel in hostile fire zones and overseas citizens in areas with unreliable mail service have difficulties voting through absentee ballots. To address that issue, the Lt. Gov's office (which is over elections) asked me to run HB 67, which would allow for electronic voting in those situations. With Lt. Gov. Herbert graciously helping me present it, the bill passed out of committee today and moves to the House floor.
An interesting and concerning trade-off in the bill is that the voter has to waive the right to a secret ballot (line 99) in order to use the procedure. The county clerk transcribes the electronic vote onto a normal ballot (lines 122 and 123) which, then, is counted. Though the vote is deemed a "private" document, afforded the protections currently available for such documents (lines 110-112), we had a bit of a discussion in committee about the "sacredness" of a secret ballot. No doubt, this procedure will appear very retrograde in the near future. For now, though, it is necessary to do something to allow these peoople the ability to vote, and this is the best we've come up with.
If anyone has better ideas, I'd be delighted to hear them.
An interesting and concerning trade-off in the bill is that the voter has to waive the right to a secret ballot (line 99) in order to use the procedure. The county clerk transcribes the electronic vote onto a normal ballot (lines 122 and 123) which, then, is counted. Though the vote is deemed a "private" document, afforded the protections currently available for such documents (lines 110-112), we had a bit of a discussion in committee about the "sacredness" of a secret ballot. No doubt, this procedure will appear very retrograde in the near future. For now, though, it is necessary to do something to allow these peoople the ability to vote, and this is the best we've come up with.
If anyone has better ideas, I'd be delighted to hear them.
posted by steve u. at 1/18/2006
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3 Comments:
How does this compare to the procedures used to handle regula absentee ballots?
I imagine that the county clerk still verifies the signature, but after that do absentee ballots remain as secret as a normal ballot?
What kind of signature will be on these electronic ballots - a scanned print signature?
Just a random thought on a great idea.
At Dixie State College we voted for student elections via the web. It was a secure site that you had type in your social security number and then vote. We loaded the program with all the socials of those who were registered students at the school; so if your social didn’t match, you couldn’t vote. When the vote was recorded, the system didn’t copy your social—just your vote. The social was only used for identification purposes.
People are still scared about the web, but this would be at least a cheap and easy way.
I imagine this would apply to missionaries serving in certain areas too. Elaborate on that part of it.
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