Slashdot reports that Canada (our friendly neighbor to the north) is considering the implementation of an online voting system in response to low voter turnout at the polls:
Slashdot readers generally agree that voting machines such as those from Diebold are a bad idea. Well, what about online voting? That is what the Vancouver Sun is reporting. Given that voter turnout in [Canada's] most recent election was the worst on record, Elections Canada is kicking around the idea of allowing voters to register online, update registration information online, and maybe even vote online.
And yet another one of my pet peeves surfaces: The assumption that higher voter turnout will ipso facto result in better elected officials.
Sadly, I think the reverse is true.
If it’s too much trouble for people to spend 3 minutes traveling the two blocks to their polling station, wait 5 minutes in line, and spend 10 minutes completing their ballots, then they are too disinterested to vote.
There are already mechanisms in place that allow the handicapped, the elderly and the infirm to vote remotely.
And even in voting districts where the process of voting is more cumbersome, people can vote early or by absentee ballot.
Voter registration drives, like the ones Acorn sponsors, are designed to increase the voter registration rolls but are wholly ambivalent to the problem of voter education.
This is derriere backwards.
Citizens who are interested enough to take the time and effort to learn about the issues will take the time and effort to vote.
People who lack that interest we don’t want voting.
Requiring people to exert a di minimis amount of effort in order to exercise their right to vote seems like a reasonable method of filtering out the ballots of imbeciles.
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