Voting by text message

It seems Samsung is in the survey business nowadays. Their latest one regards the upcoming presidential race. The idea of voting via text message has been brought up more than once. Clearly, this would increase the voter turnout. However, given the nature of the best, there’s plenty of room for abuse. This country can ill afford a situation where an election is called into question because of someone or someones tampering with the results. But according to Samsung’s survey, the abuse issue isn’t at the forefront of most people’s minds.

Sixty-one percent of respondents said they’d be open to voting by text message. Yeah, I’m open to it, too. I just have some big issues with how it will be implemented.

Samsung also polled 300 teenagers. And guess what? Eighty percent of them said that they’d rather text message their presidential vote — if they were allowed to vote in the first place — than go to the polls. Not exactly an optimistic voicing from the future of our country.

It’s not that text message voting is bad. It’s that we shouldn’t care about the ease of voting. And really, it’s not that hard. Or it shouldn’t be. You walk into the polling place, you go to your district, you show your ID, you go into the booth, and you pick your candidates. I understand that the process might be convoluted in some places. But simplifying it with text messaging just isn’t the answer.

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