Online voting comes of age (but don't expect to use it anytime soon)

Soldiers stationed overseas have been able to cast absentee votes in 13 Florida counties since December using a Web portal developed by Democracy Live using Microsoft's Azure platform. Similar programs will be used for primaries in Virginia and California as a result of funding the three states received under the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act.

Which begs the question: How long before all of us can vote from the comfort of our laptop or smartphone?

I don't buy the argument that online elections are less secure. As a former city hall and government reporter, I covered enough elections where dead people voted and the old "vote early and vote often" rules were still enforced by ward chairmen. Even now, when I show up at my polling place, I'm rarely asked for i.d. before I'm directed to the voting booth.

Darin Gibby is a patent attorney and partner at Kilpatrick, Townsend and Stockton and author of Why Has America Stopped Inventing?, said the technology used in online voting is similar to that used to process credit card transactions. Voters may receive a temporary password or be asked information by a web portal that only they would know the answer to.

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