Pencil and Paper Votes
Yesterday Victorians voted to decide who would form the state government for the next four years. The highlight for me was my 18 year old son, Josh, voting for the first time. He collected all the How-To-Vote fliers from the various parties, lined up with me to get our names crossed off the big book and went into the cardboard cubicle to cast his vote. While I was completing my vote, I couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be until voting goes digital.
I wrote about pencil and paper votes after the 2016 Federal Election, and I still don’t understand why we waste so much paper, money and time voting the same way we did 100 years ago. Some people will talk about the security and fraud risk of going digital, but I don’t accept that. We have been doing our banking and taxes online for years, surely our finance data is more secure than which political candidates we vote for.
After we completed the vote cards we stuffed them into a cardboard box and threw the fliers into the recycle bin. Surely in Josh’s lifetime, Australia will move to either voting online from home, or at very least at a digital booth at the local school.
Recycling bin for How-To-Vote cards at the election