Nowadays, nearly everyone carries a smartphone in their pocket or bag. It isn’t just a phone anymore – to millions of Americans, a smartphone is a map, an encyclopedia, a day planner, television, food delivery system, newspaper, exercise class and much, much more.
It stands to reason, therefore, that it can also be a means to vote in elections. But unforeseen circumstances and fresh concerns have turned the idea into a battleground for debate recently.
With a looming election on everyone’s mind, political pundits, tech leaders, and netizens question whether smartphone voting is the future of elections. Or if it’s an impossible prospect.
In this article, let’s discuss an example of when online voting worked. From there, let’s discuss the challenges of creating a smartphone voting infrastructure and the potential benefits of online voting.
Should the US voting process stick to its imperfect physical ballot system, or embrace 21st Century technology? The vote is yours to cast.
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It Has Worked in the Past
If you bring up smartphone voting and the Iowa caucus these days, most people will recall the 2020 snafu that caused the Iowa Democratic Party to revert to their paper backup ballots. But four years prior, the same caucus had a voting app that worked without a hitch.
Developed by InterKnowlogy – an enterprise software development company with over two decades of experience – the 2016 Iowa Caucus voting app was a user-friendly, stable platform. It worked well. The same company also created solutions for the Democratic National Convention, allowing delegates from each state to vote in real-time, securely recording the results and instantly displaying them in the DNC command center.
The disparity between 2016 and 2020 makes one thing abundantly clear: to create a fast, secure and user-friendly voting platform, you need a company that leverages the latest technology to display your data, report votes and validate results.
The Challenges and Benefits of Smartphone Voting
To digitize a decades-old process, you need to overcome some challenges. The principal challenge is security. The news is awash with headlines about data hacking and election meddling, and if smartphone voting is to become the new norm, developers need to assure the public that security is a priority.
The other hurdle to cross is technological inexperience. The vast majority of Americans are fluent in smartphone use, but some aren’t familiar. Voting is a constitutional right, and whatever platform is used for it needs to be democratized. While the world waits for everyone to be comfortable with smartphone voting, there will need to be a hybrid system – the option to vote digitally is available, as are paper ballots.
Why even try to push smartphone voting, though, when a system – albeit imperfect – already exists? There are two main benefits of smartphone voting: access and cost reduction. When you remove the barrier to entry for voting (which is, in this case, requiring people to physically travel to a voting station), you can increase engagement and turnout. People won’t need to take the day off work or have access to a car. Smartphone voting also reduces the administration costs of the election process, which, according to the Election Lab at MIT, is about $1 billion, or roughly $10 a voter.
In conclusion, smartphone voting appears to be the future of elections. It has worked well before in the 2016 Iowa Caucus, and, while there are challenges to overcome, there are also undeniable benefits to smartphone voting.
