Editor’s note: The following is a guest post from Dave Jimenez, VP of strategy for Dialexa.
I was asked today while discussing the Iowa Caucus debacle unfolding this week, whether or not technology innovation with respect to our American political system is a topic worth exploring. My answer is pretty straightforward and goes something like this… right now it’s about the results in Iowa, later it’ll be about lack of voter turnout or about the fact that getting to the polls is difficult for many people due to their own physical limitations or simply a lack of time to do so. That last point is pretty easily solved with a pretty common sense move; make election day a national holiday like it is in many countries around the world. I digress.
This “app disaster,” as it’s being called, in Iowa has nothing to do with right or left or red or blue or any of that “team” stuff. What’s happening in Iowa is a representation of a larger issue and comes down to the fact that we as a country have not committed to making the advancements necessary to enable safe and secure voting using the technology we have available today.
We somehow have a military “Space Force,” but we can’t log a few hundred thousand caucus voters in a library on a snowy Tuesday night in Iowa correctly? 20 years after the Florida hanging chad ballots, one would think we would’ve worked this out.
Are there likely gaps in what is available today from a technology perspective and what we need to ensure that voting this way is safe and secure? Absolutely. With that said, it’s hard for me to accept that on this day-and-age, we cannot innovate our way past those gaps to solve this once and for all.
As someone that has spent 25 years in the technology industry, I understand these challenges are not nearly as easy as they seem and that the massive number of stakeholders makes it all the more complex, but I know it can be done. Blockchain alone won’t solve this. The cloud alone won’t solve this. None of those buzzwords you hear are the single silver bullet. But with good old fashioned hard work and innovation by a group of people willing to collaborate, we are 100% capable of designing a voting system with supporting technology that serves our American democracy.
The application that was used in Iowa was flawed, despite what I am sure were the best of intentions by talented people. This is exactly why collaboration and what we at Dallas-based Dialexa have coined, collaborative quality, are essential to all technology solutions - big or small. Collaboration and a keen focus on quality throughout the creation of any product (not just at the end as a “one-time” thing) ensures the right solution, ultimately preventing global embarrassments and the loss of public trust like we are seeing this week.
I want us to commit to solving this. I want us to innovate our way past the bullshit and deliver a secure voting solution available to every legal voter in the U.S. and around the world. This means easy access for our troops wherever they are stationed. It means easy access to the single parents with two jobs who legitimately do not have the time to find their polling place, go there, and wait in
line to cast their ballot. It means disabled Americans won’t have to struggle to get themselves to the polling place. The walls built around voting would be broken down. Voting would be safe, voting would be secure, and most of all, voting would be inclusive. Technology, if we let it, can save our democracy.
