In the US and elsewhere, an effort is being made to capitalize on improvements in online security and assistive technologies to use online voting to make voting more accessible, increase overall voter participation, and specifically, turnout among younger voters. The question is whether public confidence will support any changes in voting procedures before technology can be seen as a means to improving voter turnout. In February 2002, the Council for Excellence in Government released a study by Hart-Teeter called "E-Government: To Connect, Protect, and Serve Us" The study was based on two telephone surveys, one of 961 American adults (including an oversample of 155 Internet users), the other of 400 government decision-makers (200 federal, 100 state, and 100 local level). Among other findings, one set of figures stands out: overall support for online voting for federal elections, including congressional and presidential races, managed to drop from 38% in August 2000 to 33% in November 2001. On the flip side, opposition to online voting in federal elections rose from 59% in August 2000 to 61% in November 2001-- with some 51% strongly opposed to the idea. What is the source of the drop in interest? Some likely culprits include concern over the integrity and security of potential online voting systems, individual voter privacy in the wake of some well-publicized security breaches involving inadvertent federal and state government disclosure of information online, and confusion that arose from the real-world voting process that bred confusion in the infamous November 2000 presidential elections. Even more interestingly, 60% of Internet users surveyed were opposed to online voting in federal races as well. Only 16% of both the public and all Internet users surveyed thought that allowing voters to learn about the records and positions of candidates for public office was the most important way "e-government" could help make government more accountable to the public. But, curiously, of users with Internet access at home or work (if not both), 44% said they would be likely to access online information about candidate voting records, versus 20% who said they were not likely to do so. All of this might suggest that online technology does not yet (if ever) stand a chance for being accepted as means of voting for elected office, but might enjoy a growing level of interest and trust for educating voters as to who's running and the policy issues involved in the races, right? Well, maybe... Consider that by February 2001, a number of online efforts to provide better access to information for voters had fizzled during the dot-com shakeout, most notably Voter.com. This site provided access to political news and issues from journalists and advocacy groups across the political spectrum, customized to individual user tastes, and also allowed users to compare their views to that of candidates for elected office, and receive updates on ballot results. As discussed in a February 29, 2000 NPTalk, Grassroots.com had acquired the Democracy Network (DNet), a joint effort of the League of Women Voters Education Fund (LWVEF) and the Center for Government Studies (CGS). LWV is a nonpartisan political organization that, since 1920, has worked to encourage active citizen participation in public policy through voter education activity. LWVEF, since its start in 1957, increases understanding of major public policy issues through voter guides, candidate forums, town meetings, and community and leader debates. CGS, a nonpartisan organization, designs and helps implement innovative approaches to improve the process of media and governance, and also works in substantive areas of campaign finance, ballot initiatives, digital divide, higher education, health care and state and local finance. DemocracyNet (DNet) was launched by CGS in 1996, using creative interactive web technology to spark online candidate debates and improve the quality and quantity of voter information-- in essence, allowing the user to become the online "moderator" of candidate debates by selecting the candidates and issues of interest. DNet also provided in-depth coverage of hundreds of campaigns including Presidential and congressional races, state-level elections, local office contests, and ballot initiatives via a searchable online database of text and multimedia content. It was, in short, a strong nonprofit effort aimed at increasing voter understanding of important public policy problems, allowing candidates to debate their positions in an" electronic town hall" before an online audience, and fostering greater civic participation and interaction between voters and candidates. Addressing concerns about the credibility and integrity of nonprofit involvement with a for-profit entity, Grassroots gave both LWVEF and CGS seats on its board, the founder and former president of CGS was made chairman of Grassroots.com, and Grassroots.com pledged to make unrestricted cash contributions to LWVEF and CGS to further their educational missions. In turn, Grassroots.com was to utilize the 1,100 local LWV chapters to collect candidate statements and information, to offer online candidate debates, voter-candidate interactions and electoral information accessible by zip code, in an attempt at the time to cover some 120,000 elections from the Presidential races down to local school-board contests. But, after only one year under its wings, Grassroots.com and the League of Women Voters reached a mutual agreement to release DNet back under the auspices of the League, albeit without the leadership of its founder and the corporate support it had previously enjoyed. Grassroots.com had expanded the capacity of the service to make it available in some 7,000 federal, state, and local elections for 17,000 candidates during the year 2000, while LWV provided much needed outreach to facilitate candidate participation in, and citizen access to, information and online debates. To be sure, it was not a venture that had an easy time attracting foundation support when it was a nonprofit effort originally, at the very least given the technical support logistics involved. Outside of corporate support for the overall operations, the significant funder base supports the effort through the individual state LWV chapters, and not the DNet service directly. So if the public isn't willing to accept online voting, per se, while interest in access to some form of data on candidates for public office is strong -- depending upon the source and means for accessing it-- but the commercial and foundation marketplace have not responded with a huge flow of money to support such efforts, what does that say? Two things come to mind. First, there will always be a potential nonprofit opportunity to provide access to this information-- no matter how local or specialized-- as long as the public is interested in voting-related information that commercial entities and government itself treat as a low priority (due either to low potential for revenue or limited resources). One good example of this comes from the California Voter Foundation, which has archived a database of all campaign promises offered up by candidates for California elected office races during the year 2000. The archive contains campaign statements, agendas, issue positions, and platforms from the major party candidates for the 15 congressional and 16 state legislative office in California's 2000 general election around issues devoted to affordable housing, clean air and water, jobs and the economy, neighborhoods, parks and open space, schools and education, and traffic and transportation. The value of such nonprofit knowledge bases is that the public has the means to hold candidates accountable in an environment where campaign websites are frequently updated and edited, and the potential for such information being "revised" or "lost" is high. Second, that sometimes there is just as much, if not more, effort needed to not so much educate the public, but remind it of what it claims it wants and expects in an increasingly online world. Investments in information access and more participatory civic frameworks online do not come cheap and without experimentation, but they don't succeed without actual public participation either. Links Cited Message voting to be trialled BBC News/U.K. Politics 2/5/02 Alaska OKs electronic ballot for blind Federal Computer Week, 4/3/02 Dibya Sarkar “E-Government: To Connect, Protect, and Serve Us” Hart-Teeter poll conducted for Council for Excellence in Government Grassroots.com Speakout.com DemocracyNet (DNet) 2/29/00 NPTalk Online Grassroots.com 2/12/01 Press Release Archive of Campaign Promises California Voter Foundation