Support for Online Voting in the United States
Ramona Sue McNeal, Caroline J. Tolbert · Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks · 2004
The timeline representing the policy area of e-voting (Internet voting) in the United States has not been a long one. A generous individual casting his/her ‘net’ far afield may argue that the roots of this policy area may have started back as far as 1992 when presidential candidate Ross Perot proposed the concept of electronic town-hall meetings — suggesting the potential of the Internet for increasing citizen participation in the electoral process. A more conservative and systematic approach might date to the Clinton/Gore presidential administration, which placed a strong emphasis on public policy to bring the nation into the information age. The Clinton/Gore administration spent much of the 1990s promoting the idea of ‘reinventing government’, using technology as well as other administrative reforms to improve government efficiency and citizen participation (see Osborne and Gaebler 1992). During this administration, programmes such as the Technology Opportunities Programme (TOP) under the Department of Commerce and the Community Technology Centre (CTC) initiative and the E-rate administered by the Department of Education were put into place to increase Internet access among American citizens, particularly disadvantaged groups. A purist, however, might start this timeline in January 2000. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.