Mailbag: Vote for technology

There were some interesting reactions to last week's newsletter about the state of the election polling process here in the heart of the Silicon Valley (Mountain View, Santa Clara County). Quite a few readers were aghast that no identification had to be presented in order to vote. As one person put it, " ...you cannot even buy a beer without picture ID. Why should voting be of lesser importance? "

Other readers thought that without a " paper trail " (the punched or marked ballots) that could be recounted, many errors could creep in. But, in fact, for many of us who first voted in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, our first voting experience were with those massive refrigerator sized voting booths that were actually big tabulating machines. You pushed a lever next to the name of the person you were voting for, then when you were done pulled a large lever, which recorded your vote and cleared the small levers. The only record of your vote was on the accumulators inside the machine - exactly the same as it would be on a computer-based voting device. In fact, some voters here in Santa Clara County tried out new " touch screen " technology voting devices that were exactly like those old tabulators except they were electronic rather than mechanical.

Still others talked about potential fraud and abuse by everyone from political hacks to potential hackers, but especially from the software developers (oddly, or maybe not, the name " Microsoft " came up frequently). But software and hardware validation has been a standard practice since almost the day after the first program ran on the first computer. Requiring extensive validation checks - even requiring the software source code be placed in escrow - would not seem to be an onerous obligation.

Finally, objections were raised based on the insecure nature of the Internet. I didn't actually advocate going directly to Internet voting. Online doesn't necessarily mean public Internet. Private networks have been around for many years. Business transactions involving billions of dollars and/or trade secrets have been placed over private networks for more than 20 years. That's a good model to start with as we strive, eventually, to allow polling to occur over the public Internet.

I'm still waiting for the directory vendors to step forward on this - but I have heard from some directory-related vendors, all positively. Perhaps it's something the Liberty Alliance should undertake. Or maybe OASIS should institute a Voter Ballot Markup Language technical committee. Directory-enabled voting is in our future and there will be glory for those who bring it to fruition.

Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. His most recent book is "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks" published by SAMS. Dave's company, Virtual Quill, provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more at Virtual Quill or by e-mail at info@vquill.com

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