#7 - The Case for Internet Voting in Thurston County

The history of voting has seen hands raised high to express a preference, paper ballots, electronic voting machines, and the casting of electronic ballots from web browsers across the internet to an electonic ballot box. Although Thurston County election officials allowed voters to cast their ballots via the internet in 2000, and considered the pilot a success, they have not offered internet voting as an option for casting ballots since then. Lack of confidence in security features of internet voting systems at that time accounts for much of the hesitance to proceed further. Computer scientists, voting system vendors, and election officials have done much work since then to address those concerns. In the spirit of the California Internet Voting Task Force's recommendation to work toward internet voting in phases, we suggest moving to a new phase with the help of a technology evaluation project that would answer this question - is internet voting ready to raise confidence in the state's voting process.