The future of political volunteerism launched on April 3, 2010.
I’ve held off jumping into the iPad fray for the most part, waiting until I can actually buy the 3G version outright before making my own conclusions. But there was always one thing I knew the iPad could truly revolutionize- and it’s already in development.
According to via -
Project Vote, which describes itself as a nonpartisan organization that promotes higher voter registration rates in low-income and minority communities, announced last week that they are working on a mobile-device-friendly voter registration application, according to a press release, that will work on anything from the BlackBerry to the magical iPad.
But a magic wand it ain’t: In the release, Project Vote admits that there are only four states (Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) that allow electronic voter registration. …
Using a mobile voter registration application, a volunteer canvassing a neighborhood […] is supposed to be able to collect the information of a prospective voter right there on his iPad, then electronically transmit that information along to that state’s board of elections, or secretary of state, or whichever group is responsible for administering elections and voter registration.
Pretty impressive, no? This could truly revolutionize the way we think of political volunteerism. This has already been used in small part in several races recently- from the McDonnell to the Scott Brown race- I even was able to use a blackberry in a local special election.
However, while the Project Vote organization calls itself “a nonpartisan organization”, when you do more digging you find
Working with our field partner, the community organization ACORN, Project Vote in 2007-2008 conducted the largest and most comprehensive voter registration drive in the history of our two organizations, a 21-state community-based operation that succeeded in collecting over 1.3 million voter registration applications.
That’s right- the same Acorn that was recently involved in the prostitution scandals, and more importantly, embroiled in the over the last few elections. Project Vote for the surge in support for Obama campaign in the last election, and was , bringing in more than 150,000 new African American voters. While Politifact says that Project Vote is in 1992, their relationship since then has been rather murky, with Project Vote defending accusations against ACORN as - even as the FBI launched a probe into the allegations of fraud.
The simple truth is that it’s just a matter of time before we have an entirely paperless campaign experience. Volunteers might be able to download an application onto their own devices and head out to targeted areas near them via their GPS-enabled Google Maps service. From there, they can go door-to-door, armed with an entire visual interactive experience for constituents. Or perhaps they’ll collect names and signatures for ballot initiatives or primary ballots, showing a compelling video that leads directly into a signup form. All of this will come directly from a single paperless device that broadcasts the signature to the database instantaneously.
But what happens when this tool is first used by the same people who infamously in Nevada? The potential for abuse is tremendous. This will be something Republicans need to watch carefully, as oversight on matters like this will be hard to scale. As a developer of iPhone applications, the potential excites me- I would love to have a client that would recognize the potential of such a service, but I am also concerned about the potential impact on elections when people attempt to use this for more nefarious purposes. We need to move political volunteerism into the future, but not at the cost of election fraud and manipulation.
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Brad — I’m with a company called Verafirma. We launched out first election product in California a couple months ago — signing ballot initiatives with your iphone — and are launching our second next week — registering to vote via an iphone, ipod touch, driod, or ipad.
We see the registration experience as something that can be done with devices that are becoming commonplace to consumers – all with digitizers (touchscreens) capable of capturing an original handwritten signature. We believe that this type of registration — as opposed to the type that Project Vote is doing — is allowable in 18 states.
An all electronic process can be made much safer and more secure than the paper process — which as I’m sure you know – has almost no process, security, or privacy controls. Everyone instinctively fears fraud on a mass scale whenever this technology is discussed. We worry as well, and have taken great pains to design tamper-evident systems. Though I will remind you of the digital security mantra . . the bigger the fraud attempt, the easier it is to catch the culprits in an electronic system.
We will be testing it first in California — most likely through the courts. I invite you to check out our site, and if you are interested, would be happy to walk you through our security and privacy provisions. In the meantime, I hope you will keep us on your radar — there are only a few groups out there working to solve this.
A quick update: California logs a first:
Still happy to walk you through the security, anti-fraud, and privacy controls we have put in place. We are increasingly confident that voters in all of California — and perhaps a handful of other states — will be able to register his way in time for the 2010 elections.