`The future of voting'?

Byline: The Register-Guard

Eighteen-year-old Tallyn Gray, a high school senior in northern England, became something of a global pioneer last week when he cast his first vote ever - through the Internet. Is online voting, or voting by telephone, the wave of the future? Maybe, but a mountain of questions must be answered first.

Gray was voting in a city council election in Sheffield as Britain experimented with new (and one old) forms of casting ballots. Under the system known as of "E-Democracy," Sheffield and several other cities allowed citizens to vote either online, via telephone or at touch-screen kiosks set up in various public places. Voters also could resort to the oldest of voting devices: marking an "X" on a ballot at a polling place.

If nothing else, voting by telephone - and particularly via cellular phone - should prove enormously popular in a country of 59 million people who send an astounding 43 million cell call messages every day. One English truck driver was quoted by The Washington Post as saying that he voted "from the front seat of my lorry. It would have taken me an hour to get to the polling station and wait in the queue. But with my mobile, it took 20 seconds. I got a message right back that said, 'Thanx 4 Ur vote.' '

The president of Election.com, a New York firm that helped Sheffield set up its various E-democracy voting methods, calls the British experiment "the future of voting." That may be, and if such voting technologies can be made fraud-proof, the extension of voting devices would be welcome - democracy is best served when as many people as possible participate.

Oregon's system of all-mail elections is unique in the United States, producing an increased turnout with no major technical problems or fraud. Two states, as yet unselected, will experiment this fall with online voting for military personnel stationed overseas. Normally, those voters cast absentee ballots, which are sent by mail. Adding an online voting method for overseas service personnel could be expected to add to the overall turnout.

But several questions arise with this new technology. How can voter eligibility be guaranteed? How will elections officials verify the identity of the voter casting a ballot by telephone or Internet? Without a statewide centralized registration system - which the 2001 Legislature declined to fund - how will multiple online or telephone votes by one or more individuals be prevented?

The promise of a convenient, widespread and instantaneous system of voting, however, is to be encouraged. Voters should hope that the English experiment proves to be a success and that the technology used there can be rolled into the much-larger U.S. elections system. E-democracy has a nice ring to it. But first, those nagging questions need answers.