SMS voting the easy election choice

With all the public interest shown in a national SMS emergency alert service in Australia following the devastating bush fires earlier this year; it is perhaps time for the Australian Electoral Commission to extend the electronic voting trial from the 2007 elections to a SMS mobile voting platform and roll it out countrywide for the 2011 elections. Successful pilot projects were rolled out in 2007 to enable deaf and hearing impaired citizens to vote as well as offering electronic voting options for Australian soldiers based overseas at the time of the election.

SMS text messaging and voting by SMS for TV show contestants has been a reality for years now and SMS could be a solution to many of the obstacles that have impaired e-voting in the past. With Australian Federal Elections less than two years away; now is the time to start preparing both the electorate and fine tuning the systems and processes to use SMS text messaging as an effective mobile voting tool.

The advantages of using text messaging as a mobile voting tool are immense for both the electorate and government. The potential cost saving for government has been estimated at a whopping AU$110 million. If roughly 16 million eligible Australian voters send their vote via SMS at 25c per message; the cost would amount to around AU$4 million. Mobile phone penetration is estimated at 98% in Australia, making SMS the ideal voting tool. Alleviating the need for citizens to stand in polling stations for hours on end, it also enables rural voters and those based far from polling stations to easily cast their ballot.

The concerns around mobile voting revolve around security issues but the various mobile messaging API’s (application programming interfaces) available today allow for secure transmission of sensitive information, the sending of one-time pins which could be issued on registration and two-way SMS which would allow confirmation messages to be sent to the voter that their vote has been received. This would drastically reduce incidences of identity theft as voters could immediately report discrepancies if they, for example, received multiple confirmation messages. SSL encryption ensures that the information cannot be seen or intercepted by third parties and SMS Gateways can make available API features that include message tracking and delivery status reports that could be used for real-time reports for viewing by the electoral officers. This electronic audit trail further reduces the opportunity for fraud.

Reliable and proven SMS gateway providers can easily handle the message load over the election period and ensure that elections are fast, secure and cheaper than ever before.

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Tags: API, application programming interface, Clickatell, mobile voting, mobile voting tool, national SMS, SMS, SMS API, SMS emergency alert service, SMS gateway provider, SMS mobile voting platform, SMS vote, SMS voting, text message