Wednesday, May 13, 2015

It's 2015, Right, Republicans?

The fact that you are reading this post online from your phone, tablet, or computer means you have access to the Internet. Not only are you reading the quality blog posts off this website, you likely do your shopping online, watch a movie online, pay your bills online, and connect with friends on social media. It's how we as a society have come to interact with businesses and one another. One thing that we cannot do online in Mississippi is register to vote or update our voter information.

20 states (including Louisiana, Georgia, Indiana, Utah, and Kansas) already have online voter registration systems established, many of which cost less than $300,000 to set up. In order to ensure the integrity of the voter registration application, states require information for online applications such as driver's license number, dates of birth, or last digits of a voter's Social Security number.

Delbert Hosemann (Visual Approximation)
Recently, person-who-got-elected-by-confusing-an-elderly-woman-on-a-park-bench and Republican Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann went on a radio program to talk about how his office is setting up an online portal for individuals to invest in businesses. That's right. A business can raise capital by having people invest in their operations from the comfort of his or her living room. For a state where 41 percent of its citizens cannot access the Internet from their homes, this is a big undertaking. If you want to update your voter registration online while reviewing a business plan, you are out of luck. Did Hosemann discuss online voter registration during his interview? Of course not.

Think of how convenient it would be for a voter to access a website or an app and change his or her address in case of a move or change a family name following a marriage or divorce. Unfortunately, Delbert Hosemann and the Phil Bryant-led Republicans have not made secure online voter registration or finding innovative ways to make voting easier a priority.

1 comment:

fastoy said...

I value my vote much ore than my investments.