“In the year 2004, the next presidential campaign after this one, you will find, in my opinion, the vast majority of states will already have Internet voting.”
– John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, Inc. (January 20, 2000)

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
– Thomas Jefferson

I don’t mean to disparage Mr. Chambers. Though, in retrospect, it’s pretty funny to think that he may have actually believed we’d soon be voting online, less than 10 months before what happened in Florida in 2000. The point I want to make is that predicting the future is no simple task! Please note also that he made this prediction at a Brookings Institution symposium several weeks before the dot-com bubble burst.

Speaking of bygone eras, our recent November 4th election marked the end of another era. In Washington state, it signaled the end of polling places. All future elections, until further notice, will be mail by vote only, using paper ballots to be counted by optical scan machines. I talked to a number of voters outside the Madrona School in Seattle on Election Day, and many of them expressed profound sadness that the public experience of voting was coming to an end. They had taken their children with them to show them something they might never see again.

Farewell to Polls 2008: I voted!

It’s also soon to be the end of the Bush era and finally time, as many frustrated Americans have expressed, for the 21st century to begin. We’ve already seen President-elect Obama take an incredibly proactive approach in preparing his transition team to hit the ground running in January. We all know he’s got a whole lot on his plate, but after a decisive victory on Election Night, with no major systemic disasters occurring, few people are probably thinking much about the problems with our voting systems.

However, the system itself is still far from perfect and still susceptible to breakdowns and failures. Will voting machines and standards for approving and testing them be a top priority for government in the coming months? Will Election Day administration improve so voters don’t stand in line for hours? What other parts of the larger voting experience will be addressed now that there is time and attention to devote to it? Is there even the political will to do so?

What can we expect to be different by the 2010 midterms? And what will the 21st century voting experience be like in 20 years?

We believe that in 2028, paper ballots will still be in use (in some places, for some voters, and for some situations). But, that doesn’t mean things won’t be a whole lot different too…

Why would we still be using paper you may be asking incredulously? For the time being, the vast majority of voting system, computer science, and security experts agree that paper ballots with precinct count optical scanning is the best option we have. Such a system balances the needs for security, speed, accuracy, cost, and voter confidence since the ballot becomes a verifiable paper trail, a physical “backup.”

Professor Andrew Appel of Princeton University has said, “the ‘best’ voting system, whether it’s computerized or something else entirely, is the one that balances three key features: security, accountability, and public trust.”

The ideal voting system must balance these three features.

One of our big problems is that we Americans love speed and convenience so much. It’s practically a cultural obsession. Some experts — like Appel and cryptography and security expert Bruce Schneier, for example — would argue that our rush to increase the speed of elections (in order to scale to 130 million voters or more) has come at the expense of security and accuracy, which of course ultimately undermines public trust.

Even our so-called “news” organizations (the most notable exception, perhaps, being The New York Times) appeared to be in a ratings race on Election Night to call the contest first (remember the news organizations calling the election prematurely multiple times in 2000?). Nobody actually wants to wait for the counting to finish… we must be the first to call it! And with a holographic anchorwoman!

Taking Professor Appel’s three system features and the system diagram from the last post, the key is to think of the voting experience as a large, complex process involving many entities interacting over a protracted period of time starting long before Election Day — not just a brief transaction between a voter, a ballot, and a machine.

In this larger process, the most serious problem is widely regarded to be voter registration, and we’ll see that it will be one of the first major areas to be reformed. So, on that note, let’s move on to our predictions for the future…

The next five years:

1. The private vendors producing voting systems will continue to focus on marketing their optical scanning machines to election officials. Don’t expect a lot of new DRE systems to be developed and sold by this current crop of vendors. They will not be investing heavily in R&D, and while standards remain voluntary it is doubtful they will be doing a whole lot of testing and improving of current DRE equipment lines. It just ain’t worth it to them. Like one analyst said when Diebold changed the name of its election systems subsidiary to Premier Election Solutions, it was responsible for “5 percent of revenue and 100 percent of bad public relations.” And from state and local election officials’ point of view, there’s a pretty strong cost argument against touch screen DRE machines, which require more machines per voter than paper ballot and optical scan systems, with the additionally “expensive” risk of looking bad if something goes wrong.

2. The voter registration system will be overhauled to fit the needs of a modern and mobile society, early voting will be expanded, and more states considering new equipment will move to optical scan systems. Some of these states will become mail-in only. In terms of the voter registration issue, it could be a challenging and lengthy ordeal in the Congress since there’s the thorny issue of stepping on states’ toes, but in the end universal voter registration will become law, and eligible voters will be automatically registered, even when they move. Lawsuits and frustrations in dealing with third-party organizations submitting voter registration applications will be greatly reduced. Early voting will become available in all 50 states, not only providing voters with more convenience, but also distributing the load on the system and providing more opportunities to test the system and iron out potential complications as they occur.

3. Starting with the Obama administration (hopefully), we will see the beginning of a shift in culture toward listening to all sides of an issue; greater openness to the public, academic, and private spheres participating in and being heard by government; more cooperation and collaboration between all of these parties; and increased transparency of this process and its inner workings. This will lead to a better, multidisciplinary approach to standards development. But, government is slow. “The problem is that the pace of innovation is outstripping the pace of regulation,” says Doug Chapin, director of the Web site set up by Pew Center on the States, electionline.org. Expect the seeds to be planted, but the plant to take more time to flourish and bloom.

4. Along with greater transparency in government, we will see continued grassroots and community-based “policing,” documenting, and reporting of the election process on blogs, wikis, video sites, and other Internet destinations. This form of public oversight of the process will complement and even become a resource for state and election officials, who will be held accountable for overseeing the process, adhering to standards, protecting voters’ rights, and administering elections efficiently.

5. Congress will eventually create better and mandatory standards and guidelines for the development, testing, certification, design, and usability of voting systems and ballots. There will be actual oversight, enforcement, and accountability. Public watchdog groups will also participate in making sure that local and state election officials, voting system manufacturers, and others involved in either implementing or undermining the system are monitored by the public. Whoever ends up design and developing software for voting systems will have to open up their code to public scrutiny. As Bruce Schneier writes, “computerised systems with these characteristics won’t be perfect — no piece of software is — but they’ll be much better than what we have now. We need to treat voting software like we treat any other high-reliability system. The auditing that is conducted on slot machine software in the US is significantly more meticulous than that applied to voting software. The development process for mission-critical airplane software makes voting software look like a slapdash affair. If we care about the integrity of our elections, this has to change.”

6. Voters will organically build communities, social networks, and devise new forms of civic engagement in the election process, particularly as the voting system itself becomes more “offsite,” rather than in polling places. Voluntary public gatherings, celebrations, and public multimedia installations will document, capture, and visualize the democratic process unfolding in real time, from the moment the candidates declare their candidacies through to the moment the votes are counted.

Within a decade:

7. Over the next decade, expect there to be major efforts to improve and expand eGovernment, including better integration of the hundreds of services provided by government. Databases and voter rolls will be cleaner, more accurate, and better synchronized. With a national chief technology officer, active citizen involvement, and the philosophies of openness and transparency, government websites and services will improve. Government will be more connected and integrated, and as a result will be more responsive and more effective. Tim O’Reilly believes that “there will be significant investment in applying the lessons learned from internet campaigning into the tools of internet governance. There are efforts already underway to build better tools for two-way communication, for government transparency, and for harnessing innovations from outside the public sector to improve the work of the public sector.”

8. Government will harness the collective intelligence of citizens in other ways as well. Crowdsourcing and open innovation methods, like government-sponsored contests (think the Ansari X Prize for voting machines), will lead to healthy competition among private companies, individuals, academic institutions, government agencies, and non-profits. This will help lead the way to Internet-based voting systems that are cryptographically secure, visually-intuitive, beautifully and effectively designed, and adaptive to different voter needs. Natural user interfaces will allow individuals to vote through a combination of physical gestures with their hands, eye-tracking, or voice commands. For the physically challenged, other input methods will also be supported. Don’t be surprised either if innovations in voting systems come from the outside, possibly even from unexpected sources or places (like India, which is the largest democracy in the world and already uses more than 1 million electronic voting machines in its elections). The advances in security, technology, and design made by these diverse sources will result in some initial large scale deployments of Internet voting. At first, Internet voting will be administered only at specific, smaller locations where it can be carefully monitored. With time, improvements will be made and problems will be addressed. Authentication of voters and determining their eligibility will have challenges that will have to be ironed out. Biometrics may be used for “signing in,” but the public will need time to grow comfortable with the idea. Voting from mobile or remote Internet devices will not happen in this timeframe, but with enough success could become available within twenty years. Be assured, however, that along with expanded early voting, more options will be available to voters on how they vote in order to meet the diverse needs of a populace in an increasingly complex world.

In twenty years:

10. In the year 2028, voters will still have paper ballots as an option because: a) some states decide that paper works pretty well and gives the best bang for buck, b) some voters, especially older, less tech-savvy people, will be uncomfortable with electronic or other means of voting, or c) paper ballots will always be available in any election as part of good contingency planning. Nonetheless, as mentioned above, they will also have many other options available to them to make voting as easy as possible. Online voting will be available in some states, but not all. Some states will have expanded availability to any location, thus some voters will vote from home or remotely on mobile Internet devices. People will identify themselves and authenticate their eligibility to vote with a unique, randomly generated token which will be provided to them by the state. This token will not be linked in any way to other identifiers like name, address, or social security number. A voter will know immediately if his or her identity has been used already to vote. If it has been, a report can be filed instantly and directly to the government and other authorities. In addition, the voter would receive a new provisional token and be able to vote while the case is being resolved, which will have to occur rapidly. After submitting a ballot, whether online, on a DRE machine, or a paper ballot, not only will the election authorities have a paper ballot generated for audit purposes, but the voter will also have a unique, randomly generated tracking code provided which will be recorded with his/her vote and known only to that voter. It will not be retrievable if lost, but the voter will be able to use the code to later track his/her vote in the publicly available, online database which contains all precinct results being reported in real-time and transmitted up to the state level. Voters will finally be given the feedback they want and need: a way to actually track their votes, much like they can easily track a package moving through the FedEx or other delivery system. The system will be designed to protect the privacy and anonymity of the voter, since not other voter information will be attached to that record. This will provide voters confidence that their votes really did get counted and did not simply disappear into a dark, mysterious void.

Conclusion

So, that’s it. Though the future “voting booth” may not be that unrecognizable to a person from today, you can be sure that the truly cutting edge technologies will find their way into other aspects of the larger voter experience. At home, voters will have large walls or displays capable of displaying and visualizing large amounts of information about candidates and issues. They will interact with natural user interfaces to navigate through the complexity and enormity of the data in ways that will improve education and decision-making. There will be digital tools that will help guide them and prepare them for filling out ballots, by whichever method they choose to vote. And because government will be online, secure, and open, voters will also be able to mine the tabulated data in real-time, using visualization tools, so everyone can be their own John King. Of course, by then John King will have much cooler toys as well.

Outside of the home, augmented reality and powerful mobile Internet handhelds will also inform and enable voters with many of the same capabilities and resources, overlaying meaningful data, media, and realistic 3D models of people and other physical objects into voters’ field of vision. Public installations with interactive screens and surfaces, projected 3D holograms, and physical objects will also draw voters into the experience and educate, inform, and engage the populace in a dynamic, civic experience. Voters overall will be more active in the political process, leveraging the power of the Internet and social technologies to create communities and build intimate relationships between themselves and the candidates. These changes, in addition to the improvements in the registration system, expanded voting periods, and a diverse set of ballot-casting options, will also help to reduce voter apathy. Though voting from the privacy of one’s home will be preferable for some, most people will still seek out these communal experiences instead or in addition, particularly in states that no longer have physical polling places. They will choose to celebrate the democratic process and will find ways to connect with their close neighbors as well as distant communities through live, online feeds connecting small towns and urban centers across the country. Voter turnout will rise to above 70% in presidential elections because all of these changes will truly empower people and make them feel like they matter.

The media and news providers will still be trying to outdo one another with the latest applications of emergent technologies and digital tools. This will continue to provide amusing entertainment for the public, but expect people to find themselves less reliant on these sources and more deeply engaged in their own created and shared experiences — physical and virtual — where they make meaning of the unfolding political process.

As experts at the Brennan Center for Justice have pointed out, the system we have today for managing our elections and voting process is overly complicated and too vulnerable to error and manipulation. The goal of future reforms should be to utilize technology, design, policy, and other expertise to simplify the process, reduce variables which can lead to numerous and unexpected problems in the days and months before an election, and balance the needs for security, accountability, and public confidence without costing the taxpayers extraordinary amounts of money, time, or confusion. In the end, all these considerations will be factored with the requirements for election results to be determined accurately and efficiently, making the “voting booth” of the future so simple, flexible, and intuitive that voters won’t ever have to wonder if their voices will be heard. And in the event that they aren’t, we’ll all be alerted to it an instant.

So, what do all of you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts on the future voting experience…