Toward a Voter's Utopia, by Antonio Duval

MIRAMAR, Fla. - Jan. 3, 2014 - PRLog -- The recent failings of American democracy are well documented.  Voter dissatisfaction with our political systems is near all time highs.  Americans are deeply frustrated with the undemocratic influence of money and lobbyists on our elected officials, partisan gridlock, and the loss of voters’ power to force real change in government.

         Cynicism has taken root in some voters who fear that the flaws in our system are too deeply ingrained to be corrected.  Helplessness and cynicism in the electorate often give birth to apathy, which can spread like a cancer--destroying the body politic.

         One company has a plan to reverse the debilitating malaise resulting from low voter knowledgeability, low voter participation, and voter alienation.

         iVoteUS.com has designed a voter information platform that is simple, user-friendly, holds the promise of increased voter familiarity with issues and candidates, yields higher voter participation rates, and greater voter impact on politics.  iVoteUS.com's strategy is to automatically compile just the information most relevant to each voter and deliver it to her mobile device in an easily digestible form, and through an attractive interface.

         The result is a phone app that uses a voter's address to aggregate a complete list of the 12 to 20 elections in which that voter is eligible to vote.  The app displays pertinent info such as dates, times and locations of elections and polling stations, and sends programmable email and text alerts of upcoming elections.  Choose an election and the app reveals a continuously updated "voter information matrix" for that contest.

         The voter information matrices are designed to make the useful data in each election so easily consumable that even the most apathetic  voter will absorb some amount.  Each presents candidates on one axis, and relevant issues on the other, allowing for easy comparison of politicians' issue positions side by side.  Each issue position is summarized, with the option to read more, and is enhanced in two ways:  the voter may opt to watch a short video clip of the candidate stating his views;  and each issue position is rated from 1 to 9, representing the left to right ideological spectrum.

         These last two features will engage indifferent voters who would normally not ingest any information at all.  Voters disinclined to read can watch the video clips, and get a snapshot of each politician's ideological bent with a glance at the numerical ratings.

         iVoteUS.com is a neutral, non-partisan forum, and all candidate issue summaries and videos will adhere to strict guidelines banning negative or promotional content, evasiveness, and inaccuracies.  iVoteUS.com will be a central resource of unbiased, unvarnished statements of candidates' issue positions, allowing voters to ignore political ads to cast well informed votes based on politicians' views and other objective data.  The matrices will also offer non-partisan, written and video summaries of the salient issues in each election, as well as bios, resumes, and voting records of candidates.

         iVoteUS.com's matrices  may help eliminate the advantage that moneyed candidates enjoy over others, allowing grass roots campaigns to succeed based on merit.

         Yet even voters who use the app and are fully informed about, say, a city council election may still choose not to vote.  An average of only 5% to 20% bother to vote in such elections.  But what if voters could cast their ballots right from their smartphones?  Wouldn’t they vote then?

         Well there’s an app for that—or, there will be.  iVoteUS.com has a step by step plan to achieve online voting in the U.S. in just a few years.  Few Americans know that the U.S. developed an online voting system called “S.E.R.V.E.” in 2000, and fewer still know that Switzerland, Canada and Estonia have been voting online for nearly a decade or more without a single problem.  Several other countries are rapidly moving in that direction.

         There has been a conspiracy of silence by organized and determined opponents of online voting in the U.S. to keep the subject out of the public debate.   Where e-voting detractors have spoken on the subject, they have mostly issued North Korean style propaganda—creating an alternate reality to negatively define e-voting to an uninformed public as unsafe before the electorate can discover the truth.  Their efforts rely on unfounded fears concerning internet insecurity  to hold back a tsunami of support for the inevitable.  But iVoteUS.com  is slowly revealing the truth:  the military grade encryption, public key cryptography, and other security features of online voting are not only more secure than current voting methods, but resolve the issues of the secret ballot, voter coercion, verifiability of votes, recounts, fraud, and other matters.

         These security features are vastly superior to the three main safeguards employed in voting by mail:  faith, trust, and hope.  When one realizes that 20% of votes are cast by mail, and that such systems are the most low-tech and least secure methods imaginable, one wonders why those who oppose online voting as unsafe have not moved to ban voting by mail.

         iVoteUS.com will  empower voters by allowing them to propose referendum issues using the app, holding continuous online votes on them, and converting well supported referenda to signed petitions that can lead to legislation.

         iVoteUS.com will foster transparency in politics and create a more engaged and informed electorate.  Once the inevitable occurs and online voting is realized, ours will become a more perfect democracy.  Watch a demonstration of the app at iVoteUS.com, or on Vimeo or Youtube.