No kidding. One of the many projects I have worked on over the years is some of the infrastructure for Continuously Linked Settlement, which automates a huge chunk of foreign currency exchange. Not too long after the "Go-Live" date, I needed to exchange a sizable chunk of money between Euros and dollars that required me to go in-person to my bank.

I was really looking forward to participating in the modern 21st century economy, and seeing the high-tech whiz-bang front end the bank had wrapped around our back-end... and I was very disappointed when the whole transaction boiled down to the bank guy filling out a form and putting it in stack of other forms.

I don't think this is about punishment; this is about being "tough on crime", which is always good for getting votes.

I think you're over-estimating the attention span of most voters. When re-election time comes around, the message won't be "I supported a measure that only 10% of you were in favor of and my opponent was against it", it will be "I'm tough on internet crime and my opponent supports open access to child pornography". Most people will probably not remember the issues in detail, but will definitely hear the election-time rhetoric.