Honolulu Votes Online

Voters in Honolulu are picking their new neighborhood boards today. But they’re not heading to the polls. Most aren’t heading anywhere—they’re voting from home, or from the office, or from the library.That’s because the City and County of Honolulu—a mouthful of a name for the combined city-county jurisdiction that stretches over the entire island of Oahu—is currently holding the nation’s first all-digital election, which began May 6 and continues through May 22. Using secure pass-codes and their social security numbers, the island’s 115,000 voters are casting their ballots online or by telephone. Those lacking technology can also vote at three digital polling places.”It’s pretty exciting,” said Lori Steele, CEO of Everyone Counts, the San Diego-based company providing the election technology. “We’re doing two things: increasing access for voters while decreasing costs for the government.”The county is saving about $100,000 by cutting the cost of postage and ballot-counting from the previous mail-based system. Digital voting also increases access for those overseas—whose ballots often go uncounted—as well as the disabled and those with language barriers.”We started this company with the goal of making democracy and secure and transparent as possible,” Steele said. Everyone Counts’ voting system uses military-grade encryption technology to ensure that votes are private. The system can also provide a paper trail, though Steele finds that unnecessary. “Paper is often thought as the Holy Grail,” she said. “But if we go back to 2000—think of hanging chad. That was paper. It’s more about making people feel better than security.”Steele emphasizes that theirs is a transparent voting system, with its code open to audit by both the government and the voters: “Our code is short enough that you can’t hide anything in it.”Everyone Counts has been running elections overseas and within the private sector for over a decade. But Steele says legislative bodies across the country are considering laws that would help specific populations of voters by allowing digital systems, often as a companion to traditional polling places. The system can be scaled for larger municipalities and more complex ballots and could be implemented nationwide.That would increase both security and access, Steele said, an important step as voters worry about fraud, and at the same time save much-needed municipal money.”Each of these is a crisis itself,” Steele said. “If you can solve all three, now is the perfect time to do it.”