Word: processing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...American politics has been partially attributed to fairly high levels of overall satisfaction with the government a relevant concern this year in particular, given the current economic boom and high Congressional approval rates). The other major reason that so few Americans turn out at the polls is the complicated process by which one must register to vote: the system constructs so many obstacles between the voter and the voting booth that many citizens just don't bother to expend the time and energy necessary to make themselves eligible...
...well as the psychological ones; no longer will people be able to rationalize not voting by claiming they "didn't have time." Online elections would also help to target members of the crucial 18 to 34 age group, who--as studies have repeatedly shown--do not consider the political process something within their day-to-day sphere of consciousness. The Web is the hottest, hippest medium for young adults; why not capitalize upon the Internet's appeal to increase voter turnout...
...before we embrace Internet voting as the ultimate panacea for our political system, it is important to consider the possible problems that might accompany the implementation of such a process. The first--and trendiest--objection is that online voting is an inherently discriminatory practice; Arizona in particular is a sitting duck for such criticism because of its history of Voting Rights Act violations, most of which occurred in the 1970s. The Voting Integrity Project (a non-profit, nonpartisan civic group) has already filed a lawsuit against the state in the hopes of blocking the primary on the grounds that minorities...
...that recent cyberattacks that all but crippled major websites; a similar assault on an official election website could easily bring the gears of reelection grinding to a chaotic halt. Do the benefits of increased enfranchisement really outweigh potential computer glitches that could call the validity of the entire process to question? Are we willing to turn voting over to a medium whose security is so infamously simple to circumvent that we would have to worry about hackers tampering with vote counts or releasing that information to the media prematurely...
...allowing citizens to vote from any given computer and with only the click of a mouse to connect one to his or her choice, we remove the physical connection (traveling to the voting booth, pulling the lever) between the voter and the vote cast, and perhaps, in the process, also lose some of the gravity that ought to be associated with the choices that we make when we go to the polls...