Dems eye digital absentee ballots as way to boost turnout for their candidates

Tim Skubick: Dems eye digital absentee ballots as way to boost turnout for their candidates | MLive.com:
If you don’t scrutinize this carefully, you are likely to overlook the political importance of a new scheme to get young voters to vote.

It was announced last week that the Democrats are promoting a “digital absentee voting application” process aimed at those who vote the least, i.e. those between 18-35.

The smartphone and the Internet are the vehicles in this strategy because this age group lives and dies by them. It is one thing to make it easier to access an absentee voter ballot but the trick is to get them to use it.

Here’s the context of the Democratic move. Party chair Lon Johnson is on a crusade to drive up his voter turnout in the fall. He has 900,000 Democrats who failed to vote in the governor’ race four years ago. If he can motivate them to vote this year, Mark Schauer might be your next governor, or so Mr. Johnson hopes and prays.

Driving up the absentee vote is a means toward that end and making it easier to secure a ballot from your local clerk is the pitch to the young voters. Right now you need to show-up in person and get an application by fax or phone. In other words it is labor intensive. With this digital absentee voting application process, the voter is just one touch screen or one click away from securing a ballot.

Mr. Johnson figures if he gets only a small percentage of those AWOL 900,000, it is worth a try and he’s geeked about this working.