Takoma Park Voters Could Be Able to Cast Ballots Online for 2011 City Election

If you hate standing in lines at the polls every election day then Takoma Park has a solution.

City voters will have the option of casting their ballots over the Internet for the November 2011 election, and a test of the system is going to be conducted June 9 at the Takoma Park Community Center.

Poorvi Vora, an associate professor at George Washington University made a presentation of the online voting system to Takoma Park’s Board of Elections (BOE) at the board’s meeting May 18.

The opportunity for voters to cast their ballots over the Internet begins with absentee ballots that will be mailed to voters, Vora said. The absentee ballots will arrive at voters’ homes in a 9.5 x 6.5 envelope.

Once opened, voters will immediately see that the big envelope contains two smaller envelopes, Vora said. 

 One will be a sealed envelope containing the ballot. It will not be reused after the voter has opened it. The second will be an unsealed outer envelope meant for returning the ballot to the city. It will contain a third unsealed inner envelope.

The third inner envelope also contains scratch-off codes that the voter uses to cast her vote online if she wishes to do so, according to Takoma Park City Clerk Jessie Carpenter.

 The voter who wishes to return the ballot by mail may do so by putting her marked ballot in the inner envelope, which she will put in the outer envelope and mail to the city, Carpenter said. This is exactly the absentee voting process used in the past.

The voter has the choice to use the internet this year, but may use postal mail if he or she wishes.

That envelope with say “For Internet Voting” or something like that, Vora said. The reason the numbers and passwords are placed under silver scratch off material “is if the envelope arrives at the Board of Elections and it is not scratched off, that person did not try to vote over the Internet,” she said. If the silver scratch off material is missing, “that person could have voted over the Internet, and tried to cast a second ballot.” So as long as the silver sections are not scratched off, that ballot can be treated as a regular absentee ballot, she said.

Any ballots that arrive with the silver scratched off can be held to the side for review, at which point the BOE can decide to let a paper ballot overrule all electronic votes cast, Vora said. That way, if a voter submits a paper ballot, but there has been a ballot cast over the Internet, the online vote can be declared null by the BOE, and the paper ballot can take the place of that voter’s ballot.

The BOE has scheduled the test of the voting system from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Lilac Room of the Community Center, and Takoma Park senior citizens are being asked to test the system to identify its “strengths and weaknesses,” the BOE said.

During the test, the electronic voter interface and the absentee voting system will be available for testing. The test will have two races, voters will be asked to cast a ballot for their favorite Beatle, and their favorite poet. Refreshments will be available, and once participants have voted they will be asked to share their opinions of the system, the BOE said.

Correction: The original headline stated voters would be able to cast ballots online in 2011 citywide elections. Voters might be able to, but a decision has not been made yet. We regret the error.