* * Adam Ernest wants better voting

Blacksburg’s Adam Ernest isn’t happy about the way we vote: not who we vote for but how. If it were up to him, Voting Day would become a thing of the past, as would electronic voting machines and their attendants. He’s developing a better solution.

“The first election I voted in was Bush against Gore in 2000. We know what a fiasco that was! I thought at the time it was ridiculous. It made a real impression on me. Here we are 16 years later and we still haven’t fixed it.”

He founded a new company called Follow My Vote, which is developing an open-source verifiable online voting system.

Adam was a military brat. His dad was in the Air Force and they moved all over the place, eventually to Germany where he finished high school on the base. He was always the kind of guy who wondered how things worked. He applied to Tech’s Engineering program, but was later accepted into Pamplin College of Business, where he graduated with a degree in Marketing Management. “I have always been fascinated with people. Psychology. Sociology. Understanding the way people think. I am an empathic person. I can put myself in people’s shoes.”

His instantaneous love for Virginia Tech will bring tears to the eyes of every Hokie. He said, “The moment I stepped on the Drill Field, I turned myself completely around, and as I did a wave of emotion came over me. I said to myself, ‘you are right where you are supposed to be. You are home.’ It was really cool. I felt something big would happen here.”

He graduated in 2004 and moved to Miami for the better part of a decade, where he built a name for himself within the field of Internet Marketing. He became successful at a company called MediaWhiz. But his heart was back in Blacksburg. He quit his day job and moved back in January 2014.

I asked him what is wrong with the way we vote. “We have reached a point in the evolution of technology where developing a verifiable voting system is now possible.”

The goal of a Democracy is to have a government that represents the will of the people.

“Not a lot of people vote,” he continued. “Only 36% of registered voters typically show up at a mid-term election. The Millennial generation that I’m at the upper end of only vote at around 10%. These are young people that grew up with technology. They are comfortable leveraging technology to make their lives easier and more efficient. They are savvy, but distracted and busy. They aren’t motivated to spend hours waiting in line to vote, as people have done in past, when more quick and easy systems could be developed. In any event, those combinations don’t lend themselves to how we vote today.

“Lots of Millennials think the system is rigged. When voters think their vote doesn’t count, it reinforces their decision not to vote. I believe it is my duty to vote. Many people do. But others haven’t grown up with that ethic.”

Adam envisions a system whereby people can vote over the course of several days, even weeks, from the comfort of their home or wherever they access the Internet. More people will participate. “I have my (political) beliefs, but we are a nonpartisan company. We’re simply looking to provide a better system. It will be the first truly honest, end-to-end verifiable voting system in the history of the world.”

The cynic in me, honed by recent experiences, says there are far more reasons why people aren’t voting than the time and inconvenience of the process. There are heavily gerrymandered districts, where legislators are picking their voters rather than the other way around. Massive amounts of money are being poured into campaigns. Voters are being suppressed. The list goes on and on. From my perspective, one of the reasons we don’t have better voting systems is that the people we’d call on to make the changes are the people who benefit from the status quo.

Adam recognizes this, but is committed to at least providing a better voting system. He has found that getting approval in governmental elections will be difficult and time-consuming, but has had interest from corporations doing proxy voting and from other nations, including – get this: Bulgaria.

“I envision a day when every election is done on-line. If online voting were to become a reality, it could fundamentally affect the way people vote and whom they vote for, and doing so could hurt the re-election chances of the people who got elected by the current systems. I understand that there are many people in power now who won’t want this to happen. The problem my company has is bigger than building a system and proving it will work.

“We honor the will of the people. For our system to be adopted, it will be because the people insist upon it. It is of the people, by the people, and for the people. That’s what this is all about, true and honest representation.”