This could be California s first general election in which less than 50 percent of registered voters actually vote, as Josh Richman and Julia Prodis Sulek reported in the Mercury News.
Could technology be the key to engaging more voters and getting people to the polls?
Maybe. Nearly 30 percent of registered voters nationwide have used their cellphones to track news about the 2014 election, up from 13 percent in 2010, according to a new report from the Pew Internet Research Project.
That s particularly true for the 30-to-49-year-old set, with some 40 percent using cellphones for election-related news compared to 15 percent in 2010.
Tech companies like Google and Facebook are also doing their part to get out the vote.
Today s Google Doodle, which shows a spinning ballot box, takes users to a page for finding polling places.
Facebook has a I m a voter button, which a user can post to friends. Clicking on the embedded link leads to the Voting Info Project s site with a search bar for finding the nearest polling place.
A similar Facebook button in the 2010 election reportedly resulted in 340,000 more voters nationwide, the New York Times reported, citing a joint study by Facebook and UC San Diego.
We should be concerned that these sorts of buttons could sway elections, The Atlantic says. (The Atlantic puts the 2010 election day boost from Facebook at more than 600,000 voters).
But Facebook spokesman, Michael Buckley, told the Times that the company doesn t try to sway elections or nudge people to vote one way or another. It believes voter participation is key:
We have learned over the past few years that people are more likely to vote when they are reminded on Facebook and they see that their friends have voted. Our effort is neutral — while we encourage any and all candidates, groups, and voters to use our platform to engage on the elections, we as a company have not used our products in a way that attempts to influence how people vote.
Of course, the killer app for voter participation will be voting online or over one s smartphone.
Overseas and military voters have been able to do this and Alaska is allowing all of its residents to do so today.
But this is still not a safe or secure method. There are serious issues about ensuring the veracity of a person s vote and making sure a person s ballot remains secret, writes Barbara Simons, chair of the Board of Directors of Verified Voting, in USA Today. And, as she writes, it doesn t look like the solution is around the corner:
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, at the direction of Congress, has conducted extensive research into Internet voting in the last decade and published several reports that outline all the ways votes sent over the Internet can be manipulated without detection. After warning that there are many possible attacks that could have an undiscovered large-scale impact, the institute concluded that secure Internet voting is not yet achievable.
Above: Darin Smith carries daughter Clementine, 2, on his shoulders as he picks up his ballot at a polling location on Alcatraz Ave. in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group)
