Online Voting: The John Grisham Novel of Civic Responsibility

EKOS Research has a new poll out looking at the opinions of Canadians towards online voting in federal elections that outlines strong support for the idea,

Canadians strongly favour the introduction of voting over the internet according to a major poll of Canadians conducted by EKOS Research Associates for the CBC.

Nearly half of Canadians say they would “very likely” vote online if that option were available to them. Another 15% say they would be “somewhat likely” to do so.

Not surprisingly, young people, who have had lower rates of voting than their elders in recent years, are the most enthusiastic about internet voting.

“Canada’s already anaemic voter turnout hit a historic low in 2008,” said EKOS President Frank Graves. “This lack of participation was particularly pronounced among Canadians under the age of 45. This was in sharp contrast to the significant spike up in voting rates amongst young Americans in the last Presidential election, driven in part by Barack Obama’s candidacy.”

“The clear message in this survey is that Canadians want a secure internet channel to vote online, and that this could increase participation rates most dramatically among young people, where the problem of low turnout is now most severe.”

The report goes on to demonstrate that secure online voting is seen both as popular in its own right,

As well as the best method of addressing the problem of voter participation, to which EKOS President Frank Graves refers in the report and discusses in greater depth in a follow-up piece,

Proponents of online voting most often sing its praises under the rubric of increased accessibility, claiming that, as seemingly agreed upon by a majority of the poll’s respondents, increasing people’s ability to vote by allowing them to do so in comfort of their own homes, at a local library, or wherever one might find an internet connection ultimately addresses the issue of voter apathy and bolsters the vitality of our democracy.

As the title of this posts suggests, I disagree.

What online voting does more than anything is to make it easier to vote, which, contra the conventional wisdom discussed above, stands primarily to increase apathy. I say this because I think there is a difference between increasing the accessibility of voting and making voting easier, which bears some scrutiny. As the report itself notes, “[n]ot surprisingly, young people, who have had lower rates of voting than their elders in recent years, are the most enthusiastic about internet voting.” Graves himself goes on to say, “Canadians increasingly pay their bills, file their taxes, order their entertainment, shop and bank online,” and then, “[e]ven on a conservative estimate, we could well double the rate of voting among younger voters in the next election by adopting online voting.”

Were that the issue of civic responsibility so cut and dried.

What Graves rightly notes is that younger people are increasingly accustomed to doing things online because doing so is easier and incredibly convenient. Why go to the bank to wait in line when I can complete all my financial transactions on a website? Why brave a mall when I can find all of my Christmas gifts online, pay for them via credit card — or an online debit or cheque systems if I really want — and have them delivered to me? Why go to Blockbuster when I can order movies from Netflix and, again, have it delivered directly to me? We lead busy lives and so we are constantly looking for ways to make things more convenient and easier. And in the above examples, all of that makes sense.

The catch is that democracy and civic engagement aren’t easy; they are, in fact, designed to be difficult. Politics and determining the public course of action is a messy and sometimes bloody — at least in a figurative sense — affair. And so low voter turnout, while it is certainly a problem, is endemic of a much larger problem, and that is a general sense of apathy and disinterest towards civic life and its attendant responsibilities. Allowing people to turn on a computer, log on to a website, enter some personal information, click their votes in, log off, and forget all about the process doesn’t combat that apathy. Instead, it enables apathy by making the whole process less involved, less intrusive, and — ultimately — less thoughtful.

I say that as someone who falls into the demographic cited as being most supportive of the idea of online voting, as well as somone who spend an inordinate amount of time each day online. Don’t me wrong, I’m a big fan of the Internet, which has provided me with a means of voicing my thoughts to a much wider audience than I would have ever dreamed possible only years prior. But the Internet itself, as a tool, hasn’t made me more civic-minded.Spending time reading about issues, considering those issues and how I feel about them, speaking with other people, cultivating a greater sense of my community, and considering the relationship between my sense of self and those identities that extend into the local, regional, national, and global spheres have made me passionate about politics and my civic life.

And that whole process, though often assisted by the Internet, has been anything but easy.

At the end of the day, it is likely that  online voting at various levels  of electoral politics will eventually become a reality and I’m not curmudgeonly enough to conclude that I need to stand athwart things yelling, “Stop!” But neither am I naive enough to see it as a silver bullet when it comes to revitalizing our democracies and our roles within those democracies. As the oft quoted Dr. King once said, “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

(h/t: CBC)

Tagged as: apathy, civic life