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Conventional Voting Is All Wrong
by David Waters

And a spectacle is all it was. The eventual winning candidates for each party were as certain as the scripted outcomes to an aforementioned WWF bout. The premise that either nominating convention was a true reflection of democracy in action is laughable, and so is the process itself. True democracy, the idea that every legal citizen of age can make their own choice for the top political office in our country, has never been a reality, and mostly because less people vote today than ever before in our history.

And somewhere along the way, the idea of the political party nominating convention developed, where somehow local communities are supposed to choose a delegate based on their wishes, who goes to the convention, gets drunk, wears a goofy hat, flirts with another middle-aged delegate from Des Moines, and at some point votes for a candidate. But does anyone else really understand how this system works? I recently learned that, get this, even if you actually go to the polls and register your party candidate preference, your delegate has NO obligation to actually nominate the person you locally selected. You just have to trust they will. I should note, nobody I know has ever once met a delegate in person to ask how they came to be one…which in itself is suspicious.

You’ve heard it said before, most likely, that the party nomination system is flawed. The electoral college system is flawed as well. Both systems evolved to be that way at least in part because there needed to be a way to streamline the process of selecting candidates. This is because ’direct democracy’, where each citizen casts their vote directly, wasn’t technologically feasible once you got past a few hundred thousand citizens. Today, of course, there exists an elegant and supremely modern solution to the systems flaws, and which permits democracy to exist in its purest form. America should use the Internet to allow people to decide their party candidate, and eventually their president, directly.

While taking such a new approach to voting should be closely thought out, the system could be most immediately implemented in the primary system, which could use the communications capability of the Internet to stir debate and help us make solid politician choices in the process. The Net can act as the ultimate voter information resource at the very time of voting, in a way that goes far beyond the necessarily brief and cryptic write-ups in the voter information publications you find at the polls.

Of course, vehement arguments and some very angry people against this whole idea would instantly leap forward. "How could you secure the voting from electronic tampering?" "What about people without Internet access?" "What about the convention duties of hammering out party platforms and inspiring the party faithful?" And from those lucky few who actually get to attend as delegates, the inevitable "What about the parties? And the booze? And the hookers?"

Well don’t fret, delegates. There is no way, politically or otherwise, that the actual conventions could be replaced. But America is pathetic in its ability to get people under the age of 65 to participate in the political process, and this is most apparent in the primary season. Americans are most likely still many, many years away from allowing actual voting over the Internet, but nominating a candidate is a different matter. All of the nuts-and-bolts details such as voter verification, protecting vote submission, counting and presenting results, when and how to do it, et al, are all fairly easily solved and electronically secured. The real problem would be convincing the powers that be that it could work, and why it would be good.

And why would it be good? For starters, it would increase actual participation in the process. With computers now rapidly becoming a fixture in the average household, Americans will increasingly be able to participate (vote) directly from home. If not, local schools can serve the same role they do for general elections and let people come in to log their vote online, and save a lot of hassle and expense to boot. With a system in place that let every voter directly choose a candidate, not just delegates, the outcome of nominating conventions could be, like a general election, in question until the end. How much more interest in the process and voter participation might this spur? How many people who otherwise wouldn’t give a damn about the process might actually make their voice heard by taking the few minutes to fire up their PC and log in to choose a candidate for their party? At the very least, this added excitement would help justify the enormous expense and hours of boring speeches given television air time that we’ve seen these last few weeks.

It’s not a perfect idea, by any means, and the myriad political, technological, and public acceptance issues I’ve not addressed here could fill a book. But the idea itself is sound, and the proposal to test it out first in the primary system would be the first logical step toward the underlying principle. The principle of direct democracy. The Internet provides a never-before-available political tool that Americans clearly need to break the depressing apathy that the world’s shining beacon of democracy currently displays toward voting. If nothing else, it would be convenient, so that Joe and Jill American would be able to munch on salty snack chips at home and vote without ever again going to a polling booth or filling out and mailing a form. Americans demand convenience. I also still believe they really do want to be a part of the political process and state their preferences for their leader. They just don’t want to have to go out of their way to do it. For the first time in history, we have a solution. The Internet, which is making our lives quicker and easier in so many other ways, could serve the same function in the American political process, and once again make the U.S. a leader in showing the world how democracy should be done.