How Many Elections Away Are We from Casting Presidential Ballots on the Internet?

The presidential election is the most important event of the year, but I think we're all getting tired of the campaigning, especially if, like me, you live in the Greater Cincinnati media market (I'm actually a Hoosier with an office in Northern Kentucky). Ohio is apparently no longer the Buckeye State, but rather the Battleground State. This is pleasing to media outlets, but not so much to anyone watching TV or listening to the radio (unless you enjoy watching the Obama campaign trot out 91-year-old John Glenn for an endorsement).

We'll go to the polls in two weeks, which makes me wonder when the polling places are going to become electronic. Such an idea seemed outrageous 12 years ago, but has built up momentum in subsequent presidential elections. It seems possible that by the 2020 election, when Americans go to the polls to select between Paul Ryan and Rahm Emmanuel for president, our nation's technology leaders will have at last found a way to offer a secure Internet.

Security, of course, is the reason why paper ballots and election machines remain the preferred way to count the votes.  In an article for Fox Business, Jennifer Booton writes:

“The fear that a hacker could infiltrate and interrupt a U.S. election is very real, especially when major multinational corporations still have trouble fending off cyber attacks despite millions of dollars invested in security.”

“Our elections are run locally by county-level offices,” said Pamela Smith, President of Verified Voting. “The idea they could do this securely when a company the size of Google can't—with all the millions they have at their disposal—it's just not very securable.”

Booton also reports that two years ago, the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics invited hackers to try and mess with their Internet based voting system. The test failed, but give them props for trying.

Of course, two years ago in the world of technology is almost like prehistoric times. Companies continue to make advancements to detect weaknesses within their systems. At the same time, hackers are dreaming up new ways to create chaos. It's the eternal struggle of good vs. evil played out with bits and bytes.

 The catch, though, is that a newer generation of voters have placed their entire lives in the digital world with unrestrained commitment and as we add new presidential voters every four years, they are going to be more confident in security efforts and will fight to end the quaint way we currently select our leaders.

That's when it will get interesting—and where the insurance angle to this blog comes in—because as our civics classes taught us the nation as a whole doesn't elect the president, the 50 states do and as the insurance industry has learned—and suffered through—local regulators are, shall we say, difficult to deal with.

Maybe I should take back my original prediction and say the 2040 election between Malia Obama and one of those cute Romney grandkids will be the first electronic election.