Can you vote for the next president on your smartphone? Not just yet.

In an age where people can transfer money using their mobile device, it’s not hard to envision a future where citizens wake up on Election Day, pull out their phones and choose the next leader of the free world on the way to work. A federal election agency took a small step toward that futuristic vision. The Election Assistance Commission, a body created in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, approved a measure to update the guidelines against which manufacturers test electronic voting machines to make sure they are secure and accessible. “The guidelines we have now are so old that the iPhone hadn’t even come out when they were written,” said Election Assistance Commission Chairwoman Christy McCormick. The updated guidelines will allow manufacturers to test machines against modern security and disability standards and get them certified for use by states ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

A securely designed online system also needs to be easy to use, and so far that goal has eluded researchers, said Poorvi Vora, an associate professor of computer science at George Washington University who has researched Internet voting systems. Vora is part of a group of academics, computer scientists, election officials and activists working on a project led by the Overseas Vote Foundation, an Arlington-based nonprofit, to answer one question: Is it possible to design a system that lets people vote remotely in a secure, accessible, anonymous, convenient and verifiable manner? The answer so far is no, but the group says it is close to a possible solution and will present its design to the election research community and federal agencies this summer. As with health records or financial data, online security remains an obstacle. Ultimately, election officials and researchers agree that online voting is still a worthy goal, but there are many other ways technology can be used to enhance a fundamental democratic right.