Hall on Electronic Voting & Direct Democracy

Dr. Joseph Lorenzo Hall of the UC Berkeley School of Information and the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy has posted Electronic Voting and Direct Democracy, on the VoxPopuLII Blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

In his post, Dr. Hall describes the shortcomings of current electronic voting and Internet voting (e-voting) technology, and how those shortcomings are magnified when that technology is applied to citizen lawmaking processes, such as ballot initiatives. Dr. Hall then offers recommendations for improving e-voting systems generally, and in the context of direct democracy.

Dr. Hall’s post — which is particularly timely given calls to experiment with Internet voting during the fall 2010 U.S. elections — should be of interest to the egovernment community, as well as to those interested in citizen participation in lawmaking.