End Sloth Voting
In a world where people work, find their life partner, and communicate with friends and family with the little screen in the palm of their hand, why are we still mostly voting in person? Should we not be using the digital tools we have created to make voting easier?
More than 80% of the global population has a cellphone. Compare that to 18% who have a car and hundreds of millions who have limited or no access to public transportation. Traveling to election booths requires time off of work, arranging care for children or sick loved ones, and travel logistics. The democratic process suffers by not enabling citizens to vote with their cell phone.
“Sloth voting,” defined as in-person voting, not only restricts the number of people voting, but it also raises the risk of intimidation of voters at polling stations which is rampant in nation-states with untrustworthy elections. These unfortunate circumstances could be eliminated with remote voting.
Additionally, many voters have to wait several hours at polling locations, which serves as a deterrent for many.
Finally, the manual tallying of votes by human hand is ludicrous when one steps back and contemplates the other forms of human data collection that are handled digitally.
Security concerns are valid but extremely exaggerated due to the politicization of voting. Facilitating secure electronic voting should be a priority of governments and is already in practice by many private firms. Yet, due to political tribal warfare and the inability of the nation-state governments to execute on the most simple enhancement initiatives, this innovation will not likely occur until we rid ourselves of the nation-state regime.
Sources:
Global Smartphone Penetration | https://www.statista.com/statistics/203734/global-smartphone-penetration-per-capita-since-2005/
How many Cars are there in the World | https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-advice/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world-70629
Long Voting Lines | https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/Long_Voting_Lines_Explained.pdf
What Determines Participation in Corporate Voting | https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/06/16/what-determines-participation-in-corporate-voting/