As to the substance, I agree with your essay's main point, which I read to be that online voting could both increase voter turnout and also create new security and privacy concerns. I also agree that, generally speaking, wealthier individuals are going to have better access to online ballots; even if some folks' jobs provided computers, many other employers probably don't have many computers in the building to let employees use to vote (maybe I'm wrong, maybe McDonald's do have a McDell in the back somewhere). So I share Stephanie's concern that we would end up with even more of a skewed result as the wealthy suddenly can vote on their iPhone ("There's an app for that.") and everyone else still faces the burdens you described at the start of the essay.

As to the technical, you might think about revising the code in the fourth paragraph where you are hyperlinking to information about voting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. Right now, the italicized command (the _content_ dashes) are appearing because they are inside a set of hyperlink brackets. If you just changed the hyperlink text from the see and but see portions to the "Irag and Afghanistan" and "Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates" portions, it would look like this:

As a constitutional democracy, we now advocate for universal suffrage around the world (See Iraq and Afghanistan; but see Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates).

Finally, I think the source of confusion on your zero sum discussion is the sentence that says "Making it much easier for wealthy people to vote with online balloting still makes it somewhat easier for everyone else to vote." Perhaps you could revise it instead to: "Even if online balloting disproportionately aided the wealthy, it would still help everyone vote more easily."

A good topic. I wonder if you could expand a bit in the final paragraph about what you would do given all these issues, about what you think is the best solution.

Stephanie- I think I should do a better job of clarifying my zero sum game point. Making it easier for wealthier people to vote, doesn't make it harder for poor people to vote. In this way, the "ability to vote" is not a zero sum game. As you saw, and as I tried to point out unsuccessfully, elections are zero sum games (in this country). So making it easier for wealthy people to vote could skew election results.

However, your idea about requiring employers to provide internet access and time to vote for their employees could fix that problem. Although, this presents a new problem. Similar to how unions would stuff ballot boxes by watching members vote, simple computer software would make it very easy for employers to spy on their employees voting habits. Even if employers didn't, fear of being watched could create subtle pressure.

Finally, I just realized that perhaps making it easy not to vote without being noticed is also probably a right. But I guess that really starts reaching the outlying issues of a very short paper anyway.

-- JulianBaez - 15 Mar 2010

Julian,

I added a comment box in response to Stephanie's note that you don't have one. I didn't comment on your essay previously because I wasn't sure if you wanted feedback - if you want it, keep the comment box but if you do not, delete the comment box. To remove the comment box, go into "Edit" and delete the line that says %COMMENT% at the bottom of the page. I would also suggest you add a note at the top of the page (like Nikolaos has done on his paper) indicating whether it is ready for review or not and whether you would like feedback from others in the class.

-- BrianS - 13 Mar 2010

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-Stephanie