Every two years or so you hear somebody whining about how antiquated America's voting system is. Well, here's our turn:

Voting sucks. No, we know, it's a privilege and we should thank our lucky stars we live in such a democratic society. We do. But in an age when you can order a pizza via a few clicks on your iPhone, get a home loan over your laptop and swipe a keycard for gas, should voting really be so complicated?

Voting is stuck n the age of the typewriter.

Voting brings back nightmares of high-school Scantron tests — you know the ones where you had to fill out the bubbles with a No. 2 pencil.

This describes our voting experience, and probably yours too since a majority of you opted to vote by mail this year: Pull out your Scantron card, look through your sample ballot booklet, and hope that you get theYes/No/candidate choice you want to match up with rows of numbered bubbles that otherwise make no sense.

Of course, we got one wrong and wanted to change the vote. What does the booklet say? Ask for a new ballot by mail, or bring it in on election day and do it over. Really?

In the age of the electronic signature and banking by frigging phone, this is ridiculous. We really should be able to vote — easily — online. In this initiative happy state, maybe that will be the next big thing to hit the ballot.

Of course, there are conspiracy theorists who say conservatives don't want to make voting too easy — it will benefit those who tend to vote less, Democrats. There are liberals who, likewise, would probably argue that a lot of poor people don't have laptops and iPhones.

Bullshit.

Let's make online voting an opt-in option in 2012. Those who still want to fill in confusing rows of bubbles can do so. The rest of us can vote online and shoulder the risks. If our founding fathers were around to see what we go through to vote when we have instant communication at our finger tips, they'd probably scratch their heads.

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