Michigan's Vote: An Online Test

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This Saturday's democratic contest in Michigan will be more than just another dogfight — and a place where Howard Dean plans to make a stand. The face-off will be the biggest test yet of what could be the wave of the future for U.S. elections: Internet voting. Michiganites will be able to cast their ballots the traditional way at 600 polling places, but they can also, for the first time, choose to vote on the Internet. Any registered voter can fill out an online application, which is checked against registration rolls. A ballot is then mailed, and the voter can either return it by mail or vote online by using a secret access code to log onto a secured website. Since Jan. 1, 85,000 people have applied for ballots, and 7,500 have already cast votes. Michigan Democrats expect that online voting will produce a record turnout, as it did in Arizona when it used online voting in a 2000 primary.

A group of scientists recently criticized the military's system of online voting, for its personnel seeking absentee ballots, as vulnerable to hackers. But Michigan Democrats point out that their system is different, with added safeguards that include multiple firewalls. Still, seven of the nine Democrats initially in the primary race filed objections to Michigan's system, saying it could skew the voting. Charges the Rev. Edgar Vann, a Detroit Baptist leader: "The system discriminates against older African-American voters [with] no access to the Internet." It could affect the outcome in another way, since many voters will have cast their ballots early — before Dean's ebullient speech in Iowa and John Kerry's recent surge. That could benefit Dean-who was, along with Wesley Clark, one of the two Democrats to have endorsed the plan.