Coleman: Make It Easier To Vote Online (And Count That Kid's Vote For Me)
In a press conference outside the courtroom held just a short while ago, Norm Coleman announced that if he gets back into the Senate, he'll work on ways to make it easier for young people to vote online.
Coleman was saying this while advocating for Peter DeMuth, a young college student and Coleman-voter who filled out his absentee ballot application on his computer, using the mouse to "sign" his initials. He later filled out the physical absentee ballot that he received in the old-fashioned way, resulting in his ballot being disqualified because of a mismatch because of the appearance of his moused initials versus his physically signed out name.
"The world of these young people is a world of computers," Coleman said. "More and more folks are gonna be doing that, that's the next generation. And we have to look at the whole use of technology to accommodate people who are gonna vote that way."
Coleman said that if he's fortunate enough to win this thing, he'll be using his role as a policy-maker to better enfranchise young people like DeMuth, or his own 22-year old son, whose first instincts are to work with computers.
(Special thanks to The Uptake for carrying the presser.)
Josh
Matt
Eric
Brian
Why didn't he champion this cause in the years he was in the Senate?
Why is he campaigning/grandstanding in the media now?
January 30, 2009 2:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Because he's a principle-free, self-serving opportunist, of course. Or, shorter: because he's Norm Coleman.
January 30, 2009 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Has anyone asked him about his comment before the recount, when he was ahead: "If I were behind this close (I think it was 250 or so votes) I would drop out."
This guy is so oily he could be our nation's answer to energy independence!
January 30, 2009 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, he got asked about his previous statement.
Short answer: he "regrets" having said it.
January 30, 2009 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is pretty funny. I'm sure Coleman supported all efforts to prevent voter fraud (requiring IDs at the polls, all that) but now wants to let people vote online and to keep state officials from comparing signatures validating absentee votes. Which is it, Norm?
January 30, 2009 3:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
He's so ridiculous he could pass for a movie character -- The Distinguished Gentleman or something like this. He is just so self-serving. If a Franken voter asserted that he was disenfranchised because he initialed his ballot with his mouse, we know where Coleman would land.
January 30, 2009 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
No doubt Franken's Lawyers even now are combing through all of Franken's ballots that the Coleman campaign rejected. I have no doubt that they will find examples of votes for Franken that the Coleman campaign rejected for the very same reasons as he is now arguing should be counted for himself.
January 30, 2009 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd cast Christopher Walken as Coleman in the movie.
January 30, 2009 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's the irony for GOPers: If ACORN had registered that kid, he wouldn't have had any problems casting his ballot.
January 30, 2009 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
And if the woman who forged her boyfriend's name on the absentee ballot application worked for ACORN, Republicans would be demanding she go to prison for 20 years.
January 30, 2009 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
For the GOP to endorse on-line voting goes against their attacks against ACORN. Seems to be it would be really easy to corrupt on-line voting rules and harder to validate did the voter really cast the ballot or did a friend do it for them.
January 30, 2009 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, it's really easy to copy a signature and paste it on an electronic document.
January 30, 2009 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Online voting. Bad idea.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a report that addressed online voting last month:
http://vote.nist.gov/uocava-threatanalysis-final.pdf
Casting ballots via the web poses a large number of security challenges that are difficult to overcome. Using this transmission method, voters would log into a web site and submit their selections on a web page. A great deal of trust must be placed in the software on the election server to accurately record votes, as there would be no opportunity for voters to directly verify that their ballots have been recorded correctly.
Furthermore, like e-mail voting systems, a web-based system for casting ballots would rely on computer systems outside the control of election officials. Attacks on these systems, such as voters’ computers, could significantly threaten the integrity of elections or the ability of voters to cast ballots. Less sophisticated attacks, such as phishing and spoofing, could trick voters into giving up their voting credentials to an attacker. Such attacks are common in the banking industry, and difficult to defend against. There have been and continue to be significant problems in this industry. Technology that is widely deployed today is not able to mitigate many of the threats to casting ballots via the web.
The Computer Technologists' Statement on Internet Voting is also worth a read:
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5867
Election results must be verifiably accurate -- that is, auditable with a permanent, voter-verified record that is independent of hardware or software. Several serious, potentially insurmountable, technical challenges must be met if elections conducted by transmitting votes over the internet are to be verifiable. There are also many less technical questions about internet voting, including whether voters have equal access to internet technology and whether ballot secrecy can be adequately preserved.
January 30, 2009 7:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
What do you mean? We haven't had that in the last 3 elections, at least? If we had, Gore would have been president and we wouldn't all be so pissed off at this point (never mind all the people who would still be alive and whole)
January 30, 2009 8:14 PM | Reply | Permalink