If you love your iPhone and use it every day for almost everything you do, there is no doubt you’ve asked yourself; Why can’t I just use my iPhone to vote? Good question and trust me you are not alone. In fact, our Think Tank has been discussing this for a long time, and although we do not yet have all the answers, we are convinced it will not be long before this type of voting will be ubiquitous and common. Indeed, in the future everyone will vote online or via their mobile device. Let’s talk.

Cody Hunt, a prolific Think Tank Thinker sees this technology evolving through the current apps for instant online and mobile phone surveys – Cody states:

“The first possible problem is that it would limit voting to only people with smart phones that would allow apps on it and that would indirectly push out some of the poor from voting, now you could say that we could have the app and also have regular polls set up so that those who wanted to use the app could and those who don’t have the app can still vote the regular way but who is to keep people from then voting twice, once on the app and then once again at the actual polls.”

Hmm? You know Mr. Cody Hunt has some great points here, and I suppose this question about the future of instant polling is very important. Even right now Big Data is constantly being scanned along with social networks to spot problems or trends and politicians, leaders, surveillance agencies use all this to their advantage. Actual voting or polling also could identify users, even get them on a “non-conformist” list somewhere for more surveillance, and maybe they are on a good list this time, but when new leaders get into power now they are on a bad list somewhere.

Currently, where does all this survey information go? Is it used for selling us stuff later? Does big data sell the data to marketers and advertisers? How do we know? Where does our machine voting information go? Think how valuable this information is to corporations and marketers? Think how important it is for those who are running political campaigns. Think how much trouble it could get you into if in the future there is some radical change in our political structure.

Suffice it to say, there are many problems going into the concept of online voting; security, identification, access (digital divide), etc., however these are not insurmountable. The question once it is instituted has more to do with the need for privacy and the fact that we need ID to verify who is voting, yet if we have both of those we also know how the person voted and things people vote for today might be considered unacceptable in the future, thus hurting someone’s career, status in society, or advancement in politics. Think on this.