Election Attitude: How Internet Voting Leads to a Stronger Democracy

The 2016 Presidential election showed once again how antiquated our registration and voting systems are. Thanks to dedicated election workers, the system was able to accurately count all the votes. In 2018, that may not be the case. The states have no funding to replace the 15-year old voting machines. Millions of military and other overseas voters continue to be dependent on the postal system to vote, the same as more than 100 years ago. Millions of voters were disenfranchised. The United States ranks #31 out of the leading 34 developed countries in voter participation. One of the reasons for the low turnout is our out of date system for registration and voting. Physically going to a polling place is an old-fashioned idea to millennials.

Election Attitude - How Internet Voting Leads to a Stronger Democracy, is an eye-opening and thought-provoking book which explores how we register and vote in America. Voting is mostly done with out of date machines running out of date software. After the voting debacle of 2000, thousands of voting jurisdictions across America replaced their voting machines with the latest technology available. Now that equipment is nearly 15 years old. Many Americans are asking why we can't vote on the Internet. To his surprise, Dr. John R. Patrick discovered anti-Internet voting activists have convinced political leaders and election officials the Internet is not good enough for voting. Election Attitude debunks this concern with an in depth but easy to read discussion about Internet security, authentication, privacy, verifiability, and other challenges to online voting. Election Attitude paints a positive vision for how solutions can be developed to bring voting into the modern era. As he has shown in his prior books, Net Attitude and Health Attitude, complex problems can be addressed if the right attitude is applied.

After serving on the board of a community hospital, Dr. Patrick was shocked to learn how slowly hospitals were adopting new information technology. He said, "I was appalled at how archaic hospital processes were-with paper, post-its, and clip boards everywhere. In early 2016, Patrick became interested in the American system for registration and voting. "In my research for Election Attitude, I found the situation in American voting even more archaic than in healthcare. I immediately thought there must be a way Internet technology can make voting more convenient, increase voter participation, and produce a stronger democracy." In his research, Patrick found there were many obstacles to Internet voting. Politicians prefer the status quo. "When more votes could mean fewer incumbents being re-elected", there is no political will to embrace Internet voting. Despite the incredible advances in Internet technology which have made it possible to trust the Internet with our money and our personal healthcare information, the elite group of anti-Internet voting activists actively lobby against Internet voting. Election Attitude challenges their rationale and urges state by state and county by county pilots of Internet voting using advanced technology such as blockchain and the mobile Internet with smartphones.

Election Attitude includes a vision focused on consumers who use the Internet for most aspects of their lives - except to vote. The vision intersects with the expectations of millennials and Generation Z Americans. Our country has one of the lowest rates of voter participation in the world. Our democracy is not working as well as it could. Patrick says, "Internet voting will make it much stronger."