Digital voting is America’s future.
It’s 2020. Americans still have to register and stand in line to vote. Or sign up for mail-in voting, then worry if it will arrive (or be stolen). And Election Day is on a Tuesday, when most of America works.
The voting system in the United States is broken, and requires radical change. If any year has demonstrated the need for an overhaul to our national voting system, it is 2020. When the President of the United States repeats nonsense about mail-in ballot fraud; when Republican legislators in key Electoral College states can declare the Republican candidate the winner of all the states’ Electoral College votes; when those same Republican legislators try to create ‘voting integrity committees,’ to permit them to subpoena mail carriers, then we know it is time to change the way Americans vote.
In today’s digital world, we are quite capable of securing our data online. We do secure banking from our couch; we order endlessly from online stores right from our living rooms. The secure cryptology exists today to permit every American to vote in a fast, convenient, and secure method. If we can pay our taxes online, we should be able to vote online.
If we can pay our taxes online, we should be able to vote online.
In Canada, voters are automatically registered to vote when they turn 18. In the U.S., numerous roadblocks have been used over the centuries to prevent people from voting. Just ask Stacey Abrams. From poll taxes to ‘naked ballots,’ the rules designed to prevent voting have worked: not only are Americans sick of the nonsense, they are sick of politicians, sick of lies, and sick of the whole voting process. So they stay away: exactly the result Republicans have worked so hard to achieve. This can — and must — change.
Americans should be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18 as in other modern nations. Instead of improving our voting system, one party has worked for centuries to keep voters at bay: when will voting reform-including gerrymandering-be a thing of the past?
I think this needs to happen now: as soon as Joe and Kamala take office, voting reform needs to begin the process to change. Voting is a right in this nation, but like so many rights we have been promised in our Constitution, it has always been kept at a great distance, even out of reach. It is time we rid ourselves of the Electoral College, and create a new, efficient, secure voting system for every American.
In the last week of October, 2020, NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins voted securely from the International Space Station. And today, The Recount posted a story advocating using our phones to vote.
It is clearly time to change the way America votes.
UPDATE: I originally wrote this article in 2020, before Election Day. With voting rights being attacked by Republican legislatures across the nation, securing the right to vote for all Americans is more important than ever.
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©Timothy J. Sabo
