Is It Going to Get Messy?

"It's going to get messy" are the closing words of a possibly prophetic blog post. Writing about the success of a Facebook initiated campaign, to prevent another predictable Christmas No 1 from the X Factor factory, John Walker makes an interesting point when he wonders what might happen if the power of the internet was directed at something more meaningful and vaguely important. An election - say.

Online voting seems the perfect antidote to voter apathy. You don't have to leave your house, or remember to register for a postal vote if you're going to be away. Martini voting - anytime, anyplace, anywhere. But I find this whole concept really worrying. If getting to a polling station (for able bodied people of course) is really an effective barrier, then should we be removing it? Shouldn't you care enough and be interested enough to expend a little effort? And doesn't the momentum and pace of the internet exacerbate the whole bandwagon effect? There's something very sobering about standing in a polling booth with your pencil and paper, in near silence, in a neutral environment with your thoughts, detached for a moment from the hubbub. And of course there's the whole coercion thing too; if the pervasive internet messages didn't persuade me one way or another, someone hostile in my living room most certainly would.

So I don't share John Walker's worry. Because I just can't see that governments will allow it. Maybe the technology will change and pencil and paper and counters will be replaced by a keyboard, PC, internet and databases but I don't think the social element will be allowed in. We'll be directed to an electronic booth in a controlled environment and we'll still have to make the physical and mental effort to get there. The internet will most certainly make loads of things messy but I don't think that voting for political parties will be one of them.