John Ayllon
Aaron Davis
Heather Thornton
Kate Villano

About: GVPT333

"This upper division multidisciplinary course utilizes a research model approach to focus on the influences of information and communication technologies on our society."

About: the E-Voting Topic

"The Arizona Democratic Party will hold its presidential primary in March, 2000 (incidentally, the Maryland presidential primary election is scheduled for March 7). But what makes the Arizona primary special is that it is scheduled to be the nation's first binding election for public office to be conducted over the Internet. Voting will be allowed by traditional paper ballot at one of 50 specified locations around the state or electronically from any remote site, as follows: All registered voters will receive information by mail that they can use to vote over the Internet from a remote location at any time from March 7, 2000, 12:01 AM, to March 10, 2000, 11:59 PM.  Voters with Internet access will have approximately 96 hours in which to vote. Voters who do not have access to the Internet will be offered the opportunity to vote on March 11, 2000, from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM, at a public polling place.  Such voters will have a window of 12 hours in which to vote.

On Friday, January 21, 2000, The Voting Integrity Project ("VIP"), a non-profit, non-partisan public interest organization, filed suit in US District Court seeking to prevent the Arizona Democratic Party from carrying through with its plans. VIP argues, among other things, that the system creates voting advantages for the resource rich and disadvantages for the resource poor and that Internet voting maximizes white electoral participation at the expense of African-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and other minority groups.

Although it is the first, it will certainly not be the last proposed binding election conducted electronically. Explore the legal questions involved with this procedure and predict which ones will be the most difficult for courts to decide."