Online voting: Bars offer Web-based ballot boxes
by Dan Rubin
Spurred to
action by such factors as rising mail costs and increasing Internet
use by law firms, bars are turning to the Web as a way of streamlining
elections. In several states across the nation, bars have placed
online the annual process of electing officers.
"The bottom line is that online voting makes things easier.
Postal costs [for mailing ballots] are exorbitant and sorting
through ballots is very labor-intensive," said Gayle Baker,
membership director at the State Bar of Georgia, which last year
instituted an online voting system that worked hand in hand with
the traditional mail-in ballot system.
Georgia worked with election.com, a company that also built similar
online projects for The Florida Bar and the Louisiana State Bar
Association. All the systems worked by including on the paper
ballot a special Web address and a unique security code for each
bar member. Once the member received the ballot, he or she could
log on to the Web page, enter the bar membership number and the
individual security code, and vote. The results were sent to the
election.com database.
"What we did in Florida was send out, via first-class mail,
the ballot along with a special password and PIN number for the
Web site and [leave] the decision on how to vote with the member,"
said Bill Taylor, senior vice president of marketing for election.com.
"The paper ballots are sent back to us, so we combined the
two [paper and online] and were able to get the election results
back to Florida."
How did it go?
In the first year of their programs, Florida reported that 14.3
percent of its members who voted took the online voting option,
and Georgia said less than 20 percent of its voting membership
chose the online option. Many more members' interest was piqued.
"We were extremely happy with the results," said Mindy
Boggs, assistant to the president at The Florida Bar. "In
our member surveys, over 74 percent of our members said they would
be interested in online voting, so this is the first step."
Officials at the Louisiana bar said they, too, were pleased with
their first-year results. "I think it is a fantastic way
to provide services and provide accountability to our members,"
said Mike Rubin, president of the Louisiana bar. "The average
age of our bar is getting younger, and I think it is imperative
that we provide services they can use."
Rubin, who himself voted online and found it took him "maybe
one and a half minutes," said online voting will probably
never replace traditional forms of balloting, but provides an
extremely easy way of voting.
Aimee Maxwell, who ran for the Georgia Board of Governors last
year, called the online voting system "a very good idea"
and had no problems using it. "I really believe it encourages
more people to vote," she said. "I did it and it was
a breeze."
Gradual transition
To help increase members' comfort level, officials involved in
the online voting programs in Georgia and Florida said, the transition
from paper will be a gradual one. And, they said, online voting
will not completely replace paper ballots.
"The process takes a period of time," said Taylor of
election.com. "What we tell people is that it is a three-year
process at the least. The first year, you introduce online voting
as an option and get people familiar with the option. The next
year, perhaps you provide some sort of incentive to do it online
and then you see how it is doing from there."
Georgia isn't waiting that long to see the benefits, Baker said.
To cut mailing costs, a mass e-mail is being sent out a week before
ballots are supposed to go in the mail, with information on how
to vote online. If a member votes during that week, a postal ballot
will not be sent.
"I've been doing this job for 20 years, and elections are
the most paper- and staff-intensive job we do," Baker said.
"We received very few negative responses last year, so we
are trying this setup this year."
Ramona Meyers, executive assistant to the executive director at
the Louisiana bar, said that in previous years, the election process
was a major drain on the bar's staff and that outsourcing the
election process will ultimately save the bar money. "What
we paid for the election to election.com was a bit more than we
budgeted for the election this year," she said. "However,
we are expecting the cost to go down over time as templated work
done for this election can be used again." In Florida, it
cost less than half as much to cast and count an electronic ballot
as a paper one.
There seems to be a gap between lawyers who use the Internet on
a regular basis and those who do not. "Young, urban lawyers
are really driving usage," Baker said.
Once lawyers are convinced that the process is convenient and
secure, online voting will pick up momentum, Taylor said. To help
ease concerns over security, he points to the fact that the entire
process is encrypted and the double password needed makes a breach
of security very difficult. In addition, Taylor said, personally
identifiable information is stripped off the ballot before the
count is made, making it impossible to identify how individual
members voted.
Another concern that bars have had about online voting relates
to what would happen in case of a recount demand. Baker said Georgia
went through one last year and had no problems having the votes
recounted by election.com and that there were no complaints lodged
against the recount numbers.
Boggs said any concerns she had about the program were eased when
the candidates responded to the new system. "The candidates
were thrilled about it," she said. "That was the main
comment I got back from anyone. They really liked the idea."
