On the same April day that New York City saw more than 800 deaths in one day, Wisconsin voters had to go to the polls for the Democratic primary. Of course, thanks to the pandemic, Wisconsin's voter turnout rate for this election was far lower than the 2016 presidential primary, which saw a nearly 50% turnout rate. Yet, the worst problems weren't the lower turnout rate and the absentee voting rife with issues. The worst part of it was that Wisconsinites had to risk their health and safety to practice their rights as citizens.
Soon enough, every other state will have to go to the polls, and we have no real understanding of when the virus will ebb. It's time, then, that we incorporate remote electronic voting options into our electoral process.
After all, the one remote option we currently have, absentee voting, clearly isn't equipped to carry out an error-free election. This year's presidential primary left Wisconsin with an immense number of absentee votes, nearly 1.1 million, which accounted for nearly 80% of the total vote share—and the system floundered. There have been numerous reports about voters not receiving their ballots in time to vote, if at all. Moreover, there were issues regarding the postmarking of ballots such that they might not be counted. Investigations are already underway surrounding these issues.
Why are we doing this to ourselves? We should be striving for a system that allows easy access to voting so that an investigation into the integrity of an election isn't required in the first place.
Electronic remote voting, secured by blockchain technology, could very well be the key. A blockchain ledger is similar to a database that keeps track of various types of transactions. These transactions, however, are not controlled by a central computer or company, but are "dispersed across multiple computers, which can be located all over the world and run by anyone with an Internet connection." What's more, these are permanent data—once a transaction like a vote is recorded, it can't be removed or edited.
This tech has already been tested and has been proven to be secure.
This tech has already been tested and has been proven to be secure.
The trick would be to ensure each voter only votes once by way of attaching a unique voter ID into the ledger. Of course, this would require some sort of nationwide or state-by-state voter identification practice, but the upside is tremendous.
For starters, it would address standing issues of voter accessibility—anyone who is eligible with an internet connection could vote. And this type of secure, remote electronic voting would likely prevent various types of voter fraud, and is pandemic-proof.
Remote electronic voting using blockchain technology would completely disallow for cases of fraudulent voting that include identities found in obituaries, and would likely prevent ballot harvesting, as the vote depends on one's unique, individual voter ID number.
The use of a unique voter ID number, along with biometrics or other government-issued IDs ensures the votes are tied to active, eligible individuals. Moreover, voters would be able to audit their ballots to ensure the proper tallying of vote totals. In West Virginia (as well as Utah and Denver), officials launched a pilot mobile voting program that used QR codes for such self-checking.
COVID-19 will certainly affect life for quite a while, and remote electronic voting would allow us to prevent the need to wait in line with thousands of people (among a shortage of poll workers) for the upcoming primaries and general election. Too, voting would become a lot more convenient. No longer would your ability to vote depend or be upended by fewer and inaccessible polling locations, or the ability to get time off from work. Instead, it'd be a mere test of one's ability to access to the internet, which could be facilitated to local public libraries, coffee shops, or any local business with a WiFi service (which might not be a bad way to attract customers, as an aside).
We are living in a technological age. Let's start voting like it.