Republicans to Pioneer Internet Presidential Voting Next Week

[Commentary] On March 22, GOP voters in Utah will go to the polls to make their choice of presidential candidate. But whether they pick Donald Trump, Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) or Gov John Kasich (R-OH) to be their standard-bearer is going to be historically less important than the process itself in that state. For the first time in America, Internet voting is being deployed as an option in a presidential contest.

In 2015, I wrote a column talking about places where Internet voting works, as it does in Estonia. I interviewed engineers from Smartmatic who deployed that technology there and in a few other countries. But even they thought it would be many years before the United States began to embrace the concept of voting over the Internet. How the process will work in Utah is that registered Republican voters can visit a portal and validate themselves using personal information like their name, address and date of birth. A unique PIN is then sent directly to their cellphone or e-mail address, which can be used later to cast their ballot. Voters can use their computers or their cellphone to access the site where the voting takes place. This can be done from anywhere. Voters can log in using their name and the unique PIN they received during the registration process. Once verified, they are presented with their choices in a user interface designed for simplicity. Voters can also choose to navigate the voting process in English or Spanish. Smartmatic expects to process between 20,000 and 30,000 Internet votes in the Utah pilot program, but says that its system is designed to scale up as large as needed. Summers said he hopes to deploy Internet voting one day in a general election, so the pressure is on to ensure the Utah primary goes smoothly. He is confident it will based on its performance in other locations outside the US.

[John Breeden II is currently the CEO of the Tech Writers Bureau]