Yep, it is here: Oregon lets citizens vote for U.S. House by iPad
In tomorrow's election, disabled voters in five counties across Oregon will now be able to vote from an iPad. Election officials will be equipped with an iPad to visit disabled voters in nursing homes, parks …
Context & Ripple Effects
On Election Day 2011, Oregon becomes an early test case for consumer hardware in ballot casting: election officials in five counties carry iPads to disabled voters in nursing homes and parks so they can vote in U.S. House races without traveling to a polling place. The choice of device tracks the market — by October 2011 the iPad accounted for 97% of tablet web traffic and out-drew the iPhone, making it the de facto tablet any public agency would standardize on.
There is no prior arc in the record — this appears to be a first deployment rather than an expansion — which is what makes it worth watching: accessibility is the narrow door through which tablets enter election administration.
First-order effects
- Disabled voters in five Oregon counties gain a way to cast U.S. House ballots where they live, with county election officials — not voters — carrying and controlling the iPads.
- Apple's iPad picks up a civic-government use case in the 2011 midterms, extending the device beyond the consumer and enterprise roles it already dominated.
Second-order effects
- Other state and county election offices get a working template for accessible remote voting, lowering the barrier for similar disability-focused pilots elsewhere.
- Traditional election-equipment vendors face a new reference point: a $500-ish consumer tablet doing work previously reserved for certified, specialized voting machines.
Third-order effects
- If the accessibility carve-out proves workable, expect pressure to widen who qualifies for device-based voting — and with it, the security-versus-access debate over remote electronic balloting that has kept most U.S. voting on paper.
- Consumer hardware plus a thin software layer could erode the specialized-voting-machine industry's hold on election procurement, as agencies discover off-the-shelf devices meet needs the incumbents priced around.
The trend: Government services are beginning to adopt dominant consumer devices, with disability access serving as the politically easy entry point before broader rollout is even debated.