Bring On Nationwide Internet Primary Voting

Raise your hand if you find the way the two ruling parties choose their presidential nominees to be a byzantine, ridiculous, exhausting mess that stinks of the 19th century -- not even the 20th. Without a doubt, within a generation the voting for primaries will be done on the Internet, with all the states voting on the same day.

Unfortunately, it won't happen soon. There's still too much suspicion about Internet voting and concerns hackers could mess it up. But that will change. When the National Academy of Engineering recently released its Grand Challenges for engineers in the 21st century, one challenge was "Secure Cyberspace." A secure Internet would pave the way for Internet voting. At the same time, as the digital generation matures, it won't stand for the mess of a system that passes for primary voting today.

And if the Democratic and Republican parties won't change, they risk seeing a new, Internet-based party emerge. The Internet is such a fast and efficient organizing tool, a new party could gain momentum in a hurry. There's already been at least one call for a new kind of open source party.

Truly, it's not a matter of whether these things will come to pass, but when.

Credit: Eric Thayer/Getty Images

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