Anchorage experimenting with smartphone voting

The largest city in Alaska is about to undertake an experiment that feels both inevitable and impossibly futuristic in an era of pervasive mistrust toward elections: allowing all voters to cast ballots from their smartphones.

Anchorage, home to about 240,000 registered voters, is starting small. Mail and in-person voting will still exist, but voters will also be able to open a link on their phones to cast a ballot in municipal races in April, when six city assembly seats and two school board seats are up for election. The change will not apply to higher-profile races later in the year for state legislature, governor and federal offices.

But even at the local level, the trial run of phone voting — one of the first of its scale in the nation — could offer a blueprint for expanded use in future elections beyond Alaska…(Read full story)