Recent talk about closing some of Butler County’s 89 polling places stirs up memories of the days when there was only one telephone company. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., the largest corporation in American history, was able to subsidize long distance service to remote areas using profits from more populated regions, making the price of service somewhat uniform for everyone.

That’s fundamentally how the county’s electoral system works today. The May 20 primary’s price tag, $222,367, averages out to a little over $10 per vote cast across all 89 precincts. But the cost per individual polling place ranged from a low of $5 per vote in Adams Township Precinct 1, where state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe was staving of a write-in challenge from Gordon Marburger, to nearly $190 per vote cast in Cherry Valley, where a mere dozen voters showed up for a lackluster local ballot.

When only 12 of the 38 registered voters show up, it makes sense to consider closing the Cherry Valley polling place and requiring voters to travel to an adjoining precinct to cast their ballots. But Shari Brewer, director of the county elections bureau, says state law requires at least one polling place in each municipality. Brewer contends that law should be amended to save counties money.

However, the trade-off is the travel. How far should voters be required to go, and at what point will too much travel negatively affect voter turnout? Pushing it to the extreme, why couldn’t we require everyone to vote in one central location, such as the courthouse, and save even more tax dollars? The answer is simple: It’s not fair to voters.

So, what is fair? Perhaps there’s a hint of a remedy found in AT&T’s example.

When a federal antitrust lawsuit splintered AT&T in 1982, many phone customers worried that some long distance rates would skyrocket or that service to remote areas would discontinue. But neither happened. Technological advances, driven by competition, have done just the opposite — today mobile phone users can place low-cost calls to any location with cell service; plus, we now have an array of data and information services available at our fingertips, thanks to smart phone technology. Next month, motorists in Butler can even feed the parking meter with a smart phone app.

These days, we do a lot more than talk on the phone. We’re banking, shopping, campaigning, doing business and paying bills on our phones — all with a reasonable level of reliability, security and thrift.

So why aren’t we voting on our phones? Why are we still conducting elections like we did 30 or 40 years ago — or, worse yet, diminishing the reliability of our electoral process — and potentially discouraging voters — by cutting back on the number of polling places?

Granted, some older voters won’t ever use a smart phone to vote — and they should never be forced to do so. Conventional voting methods, including the absentee voter program, should remain in place for several more years — at least a decade. Absentee voting requirements could be relaxed allowing any registered voter to vote by mail, or to vote early in the elections office.

But while retaining the traditional voting procedure, the time is right for Butler and other counties in Pennsylvania to introduce a smart phone/online electoral system. It’s a good time to develop anti-fraud security protocols and poll worker oversights, to build transparency into it.

A system of randomly generated, two-way pass codes can assure one vote per voter, along with a reliable, but anonymous, tracking device. This system allows secure online banking and shopping; it should be reliable for voting as well.

As a society progressively more driven by mobility and technology, we should be able to effect these changes. Legislative changes at the state level are part of the process.