-Caveat Lector- http://www.nypostonline.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/16417.htm ON THE 'NET, THERE ARE NO CHADS Monday,November 20,2000 CHADS littering the floor of the vote-counting room. Pregnant chads. Dimpled chads. Ballots used as fans by hot inspectors so the chads fall out. Military ballots thrown out for lack of a postmark. Is this the electoral process of 1900 or of 2000? With Internet voting, there would be no chads or postmarks or month-long recounts while the candidates and the country grind their teeth in agony. An Internet ballot would be instant, electronic, convenient, accessible and user-friendly. That's why the politicians can't adopt it. They worry that it might boost turnout, simplify the process and limit their bountiful chances for chicanery. Of course hackers would try to screw things up for fun, and partisans might try to cast multiple ballots. But these problems can be solved. With the 'Net, we need not depend on the eyesight of the blue-haired ladies who serve as election inspectors to determine the identity of the next president. When recounts are necessary, they could be done in minutes, not in months. The answer to inaccurate media calls is to take the power to call an election away from the networks. Through Internet voting, results could be tabulated instantly, so the actual numbers are known at the click of a mouse. We won't have to rely on networks' declarations of victory. Arizona, alone among the states, experimented with Internet voting in its Democratic primary this year. The state's nominating contest drew 35,000 voters to the polls in 1992; in 1996, 35,000. In 2000, 35,000 voters again cast their ballots at their polling places, but another 45,000 voted online, swelling turnout to a record-breaking 80,000 - without fraud or great expense. What Arizona did, other states can do. The problem of identification of voters can be solved easily by sending them, through snail mail (the Internet's affectionate term for the post office), voter-identification numbers or passwords which must be entered for an online vote to be cast and counted. Once states have made the leap to postal mail votes, it is a short step to the far more accurate system of Internet voting. Some worry that Internet voting will increase the disparity between the rich and the poor in voter turnout. In the short term, the answer is simply that one does not deliberately make voting inconvenient in order to keep the turnout low enough so the votes of the poor are not drowned out. And in a few years, there will be no digital divide. As the 'Net is divorced from the PC and an increasing proportion of users access it through their TV sets, anyone who has a television will have Internet access. Just as telephones and TVs were perks of wealth but are now universal, so will Internet use become ubiquitous in the immediate future. When the Neolithic technology now used to tabulate votes keeps the country guessing who its next president will be, it's time to change. When that Stone Age system actual alters the results as vote counters intentionally or unintentionally punch out holes in ballots, the need for modernization becomes acute. Already, millions vote online in unofficial referenda on Web sites such as CNN, Fox News Channel and my own site, Vote.com. We can use this technology to stop vote-counting gridlock from crippling our political process once again. ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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