Making the Information Society: Experience, Consequences, and Possibilities

Chapter 9. A Digital Democracy

	America is turning into an electronic republic, a democratic system that is vastly increasing the people’s day-to-day influence on the decisions of state.
	--LAWRENCE K. GROSSMAN

American citizens are, once again, facing a fundamental decision about how to exercise their civil responsibility to vote in a representative democracy. The way voting is done has long been the subject of debate; however, the arrival of the Internet has already reenergized interest in this issue. And the events following the national election in the U.S. in 2000 made it a white hot topic of concern to millions of Americans. Technological innovations in security, user identification, convenience, and so forth are the most recent long-term ...