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Students can’t be trusted with electronic democracy—at least not those
at Indiana University. This year’s student government elections at the
university allowed votes to be cast by e-mail. The experiment seemed to work,
with 5500 votes cast electronically and only 800 on paper. But then came the
revelation that representatives of many candidates had been collecting social
security numbers and birth dates of students so they could vote on their behalf
electronically. Disqualifying these candidates would mean that victory will go
to the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ticket—a group of students who only
entered the contest as a joke.