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Increasing interest in Web-based politics
Read more about: Academia, Blogging, Democracy, Irish Election 
There is a growing realisation about the use and potential for weblogs and social networking tools such as Flickr or YouTube in the mainstream media. The article Web-based politics and democracy for the 21st century in today’s Irish Times by Karlin Lillington is just the beginning of what will be the most Internet-savvy general election to date. Whether it is going to be influenced by US-style e-campaigning, Ireland-centric political forums, political games, or doorstopping politicians and then YouTubing them is open to debate.
My two cent is that the Ryanair generation is up for grabs as the Celtic cubs aren’t loyal to the cult of Bertie but to the euros in their wallet. It might be less than 10% in any given constituency that will be swayed by these means, but thanks to PR-STV, it opens many marginal constituencies where the difference of a couple hundred or couple of thousand votes are all that are required to change the status quo.
So the Celtic Cubs will vote Fianna Fail/PDs then? Seems most likely that the seifening of the mighty Euro in the Cubs ‘coffers’ will happen during this watch
I jest ….
Now wouldn’t it make sense to be able to vote on-line? Unique polling card refernce number, PPS/RSI number and off you go ….saving employer’s/employee’s valuable time and money.
J.
PS: Lets not go on about the eVoting machines again, my skin begins to ache when I think about it.
Voting online would be really nice if Eircom ever manages to bridge the digital divide by actually completing the local loop unbundling. There are a few interesting approaches including work on `Voting in Online Deliberative Assemblies‘ or taking a more secure approach to paper ballots which could be also applied online (see ‘Voting Technologies and Trust‘) which could potentially offer solutions in the future but other systems such as SERVE and analysis of it by experts (see also analysis of Assemblee des Francais de letranger analysis) show that online voting is quite a tricky piece of software to get right.
I think I went on enough about eVoting machines already. They might make good doorstops….
Online voting is not just tricky to get right, it is in fact nothing less than impossible in a system which requires a secret ballot. As soon as you allow voting from remote sites you cannot confirm that the secrecy of the ballot has not been compromised.