“Brian D. Namey is invested in the American democratic process, but he is well aware that most of his peers aren’t. Mr. Namey, the student-body president at Carnegie Mellon University, had seen too many elections in which only a tiny fraction of the student population voted. He felt that he should either get more students out to the polls, or get the polls out to the students.
Last year, he helped set up an online-voting system for student-government elections at the university, with the hope that it would help more students cast votes. Starting with its trial run last spring, voter turnout went up. Before online elections, anywhere from 2 to 7 percent of the student body typically voted; last spring, 25 percent of the students cast ballots — or, rather, clicked buttons.”