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35,765 Internet Votes Cast by Arizona Democrats
tgw writes, "According to the stats page of Election.com, 35,765 people cast votes remotely in what the Arizona Democrats believe to be the first legally binding public election in the world conducted via the Internet.
This number is almost triple the 12,800 people which voted in Arizona's 1996 Democratic Primary. For those unable to view the stats page a screenshot of it is available here. 'Remote Voting' in the Arizona Democratic Primary was allowed via any Internet-connected computer from Tuesday (3/7) through midnight on Friday (3/10). The election concludes on Saturday (3/11) when people can cast votes only from the 124 designated polling places - using either a computer or paper ballot to cast their vote."
Please, don't tell me I needed to run Linux. (I do, but my Linux box was down this week.) My point is simply that if I had problems under Win98 with the voting page's JAVA applet, (Using 2 different browsers) than there are probably more people who did, too. That makes it a poor implementation in my book.
Why aren't people discussing the how?
I was going to put this in but since somebody already did, let me add my two bits.
I often manage polls, and we have very specific rules to make sure that we get an uncoerced vote. That polling booth with the curtain by itself is not enough to guarantee that the voter is not being pressured to vote a certain way. It's the polling booth, with the curtain, surrounded by a supervised open space in a polling place open to the public where all can see, the voter is in there alone, and there is absolutely no way to tell what was marked on that particular ballot. Ballots are serialized, and voters sign in after verification of identity, but there is absolutely no way to connect a particular ballot with a particular voter.
Voters who require assistance may choose an assistant to go with them, but a poll manager goes also to ensure that the voter is not being coerced. And if you are a candidate or organization interested in the way the election is being run, you can come or send a representative to observe the polling places, to make sure everything is fair.
There are methods for dealing with irregularities in public challenge hearings. There are rules about campaigning in and around the polling places. Candidates may greet folks waiting in the line, but they can't pass out campaign literature there. Law officers are allowed in only to vote, otherwise they cannot enter unless a poll manager calls them in.
On the whole, I suspect that much of the enthusiasm about internet voting would evaporate if those who favor it could experience the joys of machine politics, which these rules, workable only in "meatspace", are designed to prevent.
That doesn't sound like a very smart thing to do. Not to mention that it's not something the average Win98 user will think to do.
My friend and I have actually had several debates about the impact of these types of changes to the election process. Despite what many Americans believe the type of government that we have is not a Democracy it is a Representative Democracy. And given that fewer than 25% of potential voters vote in any given election or referendum then we really have a Representative Democracy controlled by a small minority of the population. Of the people that vote some vote because they enjoy participating in the process. Others, perhaps the majority tend to be people who has a specific interest is how a vote turns out. The level of participation is directly influenced by how a given vote will directly impact their lives, beliefs or livelihood.
The recent Presidential Primaries are a prime example. The level of turnout has been extraordinary. For the left there is the fear of a House, Senate and President all being controlled by Republicans. From the right there is the fear both of electing a candidate incapable of defeating Gore and of another four years of immoral Presidential antics
It all really started with the Motor Voter push. A process where someone can register to vote by simply filling in a little extra on the Driver's license renewal to be registered to vote. Before this the task or registering to vote was inconvenient. Often requiring the person to take time off from work to go register.
Republicans were afraid of the Motor Voter because it threatened to dramatically change the demographic of voters. Republicans tend to be Middle to upper income people with two ore more years of college. Democrats ten to be hourly workers with lower income and less education. The fear was that making the process more convenient would push the demographic further to the left. Fortunately for Republicans the actual act of voting was still inconvenient.
Online voting is the next obvious improvement to increasing voter participation. People could either go to the local library of log on from home to vote. The implications are obvious. Thus making the process even more convenient, will the demographic be pushed to the left as predicted? Even more importantly, do we want something more akin to a true Democracy where a majority of the population can conveniently participate?
The first question is really interesting. Though the results from Arizona won't be known for a few more days I'll go ahead and make some predictions. Despite the increased convenience, computers are still a relative luxury. Computers require a certain amount of education to understand and use. Despite the number of computers in use the number of users computer savvy enough to make it through the voting process is much smaller. Many users simply use their net connection to send and receive e-mail. AOL users will have to jump through several hoops and know what too look for to find the browser. It seems to boil down that any vote conducted on the web may actually skew to the right. Polls during the Clinton Impeachment seem to back this up. MSNBC polls often skewed so far to the right you would have thought Clinton would be standing on the corner with a little tin cup asking for donations. A further prediction is that Republican States will be the first to implement Online voting. Its a win-win scenario. They get a better Republican turnout and little fight from Democrats since they would look extremely hypocritical in light of how they beat Republicans over the head with Motor Voter.
The second question is a real head scratcher. On one hand you have the normal curve tendency. Online voters may have little impact on how votes turn out since simply scaling up the same general voting turnout may not change to actual vote results. On the other hand voting may tend to skew more and more to the right because the haves (wealthy, educated Republicans) will be more likely to vote than the have-nots. This imbalance in the power distribution will likely create interesting results.
Assuming the first scenario is true, and in the long run as computers become as inexpensive and accessible as toasters its is likely to become so, the next question is how votes change due to increased access to knowledge. This online format allows for more at-hand information about possible candidates as well as voting referendums. Since the wording of proposals will become more high profile, the mishmash of convoluted wording that passes for a proposal today will have to change. Having to vote yes to say no to a ballot will become an embarrassment for the people who write them. Voters will have access to actual voting statistics on candidates and much of the obfuscation and outright deceit in today's politics may not survive the bright light.
Last, what does this mean for the future of politics? It's not unforeseeable that sometime in the future the representative democracy may disappear. The hidden assumption is that we need this form of government because the sheer numbers of decisions involved and the amount of information needed to make these decisions are too time consuming for each individual voter. Representatives are elected to act as surrogates to make these decisions for us. In the future though this may not remain true. First, we all understand that many of the decisions currently made especially in the State and Federal government are made at the party level. Second, if even a steady 10% of voters can keep up with voting on these decisions online it may become feasible to get rid of most Representative functions. There will be the fear of knee-jerk politics, but that wouldn't really be much of a change anyhow.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Internet voting is great, but it will be a long, long time before every state institutes this, and even longer before you see it in a general election. Arizona is pretty much a conservative stronghold - this is the state of Goldwater, and now McCain, not to mention a Republican governor (Hull), and Republican majorities in both the State House and the State senate. Internet users tend to be white, affluent, and male. Republican voters tend to be white, affluent, and male. It doesn't take a genious to see what is going on here - Republicans in power in the Arizona state government saw this as a way to get more votes, and they went for it. People laud this as cutting edge and democratic, but I see it as the exact opposite: a byzantine regression back to the days of boss politics and smoke-filled rooms. Arizona is already the most gerrymandered state in the union, and I'm not suprised that they effectively went ahead and used the same tactics in cyberspace. Dare I say, 'egerrymandering'? :)
Republican stronghold states - most of the bible belt - will probably follow suit within a matter of years, but in states without a pronounced Republican majority this innovation is going to take a lot longer, at least until there is parity between minority and white Internet usage, not to mention between genders. This, also, will takes decades, perhaps.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
I've been voting absentee ballot for years. This is no different.
Boss tells all employees to vote by absentee ballot. Boss tells all employees to vote from work. No diff.
The magic ballot number and the address can be tied together when the absentee ballots are mailed out. The PIN number and votes can be tied together. Net voting would be somewhat easier, but both are possible. I dare say the net voting tie would be easier to discover since it all happens in one place. Absentee ballot tieing could be easily limited to just a few, which would be harder to discover.
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Infuriate left and right
Just curious --
Was this via the web or using a proprietary telnet/tn3270/etc connection?
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
This may sound like a shameless plug but at least it's on topic ;-)
I am one of the programmers for The College of William and Mary's student community, The Student Information Network. We've been providing essential student services for over two years (log in as 'guest' and check it out), and we're entirely student run.
Which means, of course, when the time came to run the student elections online, everyone was worried that apathy and ballot stuffing would come to the fore. On February 29, 2000, the entire student body had the chance to vote from any web browser. Needless to say, we had a lot of sleepless nights ;-) but we managed to pull off a fair election.
The results were spectacular!
It may be noted humorously that, as befits most college elections, a lot of people ran for positions unopposed -- why fear ballot stuffing then
In conclusion, not only am I showing that online elections are doable, but that they are a pleasure to do. If I'm not mistaken, that makes us the first university to have full, binding student body elections entirely online in the nation. Can someone show a date of such an election earlier than Feb 29, 2000 in case we are wrong? I'm curious.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled grits.
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
I've got my handy copy of Applied Crypto around here, and looked up the section on voting. I would like a bit more information about the actual mechanics of the AZ vote before I would say it's a step in the right direction.
Requirements for Electronic (Internet) Voting, such that the vote would meet normal US voting standards:
According to Applied Crypto, these are very hard to accomplish. Alot of the problems are centered around where you place trust in the voting system. In ther AZ election, I saw misplaced trust (ie, potential violations of the above principles) in three places:
While interesting as a first step, I think that this was a good example of exactly how far we have to go before Internet voting can become real.
Nice Try, but Not Quite.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Unfortunately, in the US, the number of citizen that are eligible to vote which actually do is very low. Last I looked, for a nationwide campaign like the Presidency, about 15% of all eligible voters would vote come Nov 2000. Now, that's about 40% of all registered voters (since not everyone who is eligible actually registers). I've read that there is a similar situation in many other "western" democracies that don't have mandatory voting laws (yes, some countries are much better, but not many). Complacency in the system is a nasty disease that hurts a country.
A big argument (which you will see in previous posts) is that people who cannot be bothered to participate in their own future by voting should not be accomodates, and indeed, would be harmful if they were accomodated by a universal voting law. A similar argument is that if we force uneducated (about the candidates/issues, that is) voters to vote, then the system will be skewed towards unhealthy trends (ie, those with a high profile/large PR campaign/demogogues), since those uneducated voters will be unable to make meaningful decisions on complex issues.
I'd like to put out my views on this, and as how Internet/Electronic Voting might help solve some of our voter turnout problem...
Also, the relative education (voting-wise) of a person has alot to do with the ease of access to solid information. If large amounts of both summary and detailed position information is available in an easy-to-access format (see, the Web!), then voter education is much higher. Granted, there will be a considerable number of people who do not read this information, and are swayed by PR, but if managed properly, this percentage should not be a majority (or even a large minority).
Oops, this is getting long. Conter-arguments, anyone?
;-)
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Where I used to live, they used paper ballots with serial numbers. The serial number was written in your voter registration records. The part of the ballot with the serial number was detached before the ballot was put in the ballot box.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
That's not a bug, it's a feature.
If 60% of the population is weakly in favor of X and 30% of the population is strongly opposed to X, does the passage of X serve the public interest? The current system increases the influence of those who are motivated enough about an issue to get up off their ass and vote.
The NRA is a good example of this. Even though gun control may be popular is some opinion polls, depending on how the questions are worded, the NRA has millions of members who feel very strongly about the issue. There are more than a few ex-Senators and ex-Representatives who lost their seats due to their support for gun control. The gun control advocacy groups are much smaller, raise less money and are heavily dependent on a small group of wealthy supporters. Supporters of gun control are much less likely than gun control opponents to base their decision on whether or not to vote for a candidate on the candidate's position on gun control. This is natural. If there was a ballot referendum to exterminate all cats, there would be a lot of upset cat owners showing up at the polling places, ready to lynch any candidate who endorsed cat control.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If I had my way, nobody would be eligible to vote until they had passed a literacy and civics test, similar to the requirements for becoming a naturalized citizen. I am opposed to idiots of any race/gender having the right to vote.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Yabut... How many of them were actually alive and breathing? I don't know about Arizona, but in Illinois -- Chicago specifically -- dead people routinely cast election votes.
This kinda gives a new meaning to the word "killfile"...
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- But the head of a Virginia-based voters' rights group said the larger the turnout, the more discriminatory the election will be for minorities and others.
They go on to call it a modern day poll-tax. I think it's kind of silly myself, but it's an interesting point to counter everyone's "rah rah internet" attitude."It just dilutes the votes of minority voters because they don't have as much access to the Internet," said Deborah Phillips, Voting Integrity Project president. "The more popular this is, the worse it is from our perspective."
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RumorsDaily
Oh, sorry. My vote bot got out of hand.
On the plus side, Mudge is the new representative form Arizona.
This is true today. However it may not be true in a few years time. Today, fairly poor people (though not the very poorest) are more likely to have newer televisions and video players - because TV is a comparatively cheap form of entertainment. This may be true of Internet access tomorrow.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Sure, it's not foolproof. But it's probably a lot more secure than the complicated paper systems that are in general use.
MSK
By your logic that people's votes should only count if they have to go out of their way to cast them, should we award multiple votes to people who live further away from voting centers and offer people who live close to a voting center a fraction of a vote? Should there be a bonus for people who don't have cars? Extra votes for people who are sick that day?
No, of course not. Everyone gets one vote becuase everyone is one citizen, period, end of sentence. It's the responsibility of the government to make our lives better, if they can make our lives easier (which they can with internet voting), then they have the responsibility to do so.
An often forgotten point, from what I can tell...
When the constitution was written, "the militia" was considered to be all the people in the United States. The reason being is that it was the people's responsiblity to defend the country -- there wasn't really a standing army, at least not one that could be compared to what we call the army now.
"well regulated", in the language of the time, doesn't refer to organization (or control by the government). Rather, from the research I did, meant more along the means of "up to date" or "modernly equipped."
What does this mean? Well, I think that it means that every person in this country has a right to own a "modern" firearm. This provision does NOT prevent the government from restricting access to certain firearms, it just prevents it from restricting access to all modern firearms.
You must also consider that for a long period of time, there was a law in this country requiring that every able bodied man keep a rifle and a box of ammunition in their home.
(for what it's worth, I don't own a firearm, and never plan on owning one)
Perhaps if the system was up 24/7 for long periods of time around the election.
:).
However, with a time period of 10 hours, cracking a system with decent security measures in place will be difficult. And you've got that 10 hour window once per year. Oh, and I bet the system changes a bit each time
I'd be more worried about DOS attacks than someone hacking the system. Hell, if they wrote it right you can probably tell if the results have been tainted in some fashion....
Can't get much worse than having voters vote 100 years after they die...
Actually, said person will probably start surfing the net and actually RESEARCH the candidates before casting a vote, as you actually know who's running before the trip to the ballot box.
How many people do you know that actually know what they're voting on before they get there? Other than the highly publicized "races" on the evening *cough* news *cough*.
The key here is "Armed". Should Joe Public be allowed to keep a SAW around? An RPG? Canisters of nerve gas? Perhaps some tanks? How about a few Atom Bombs? Back in the 1770's, the definition of "Armed" was much simplier. Should a group want to overthrow the current US government, it's not going to happen with a bunch of rifles and handguns.
The "Armed" of the 2nd Amendment doesn't just mean rifles and pistols. The founding fathers had personal cannon and warships, as well - the absolute latest high-tek superweapons of the day. And the general population's small arms ran to higher-accuracy longer-range rifles while the world's armies were still toting smoothbores.
There is no sign they intended that to change as technology improved - and plenty of sign that they intended the trend to continue. They knew about progress, especially in weaponry, and wrote about it incessantly. (Machine-guns, for instance, had already been prototyped at the time.) They stated clearly that they intended the population to always be BETTER armed than the government - both to stand off invasions from other governments and to their own government in its place - or destroy and replace it - if it ever got out of hand.
So if the minions of governments have SAWs, RPG, nerve gas, or nukes, what makes anyone think the founders would not have wanted the citizens to have them, too? The logic of the "balance of terror" is as valid between a population and its government as it is between two governments.
And what makes anyone think they're safer from a nuke in the hand of the likes of Hussein, or flammable-gas-projecting tanks in the hands of the likes of Horriuchi and Reno, than they are with them in the hands of a private citizen with the means to purchase them? (For myself, I'd trust any private citizen who could afford a nuke farther than most of the presidents since the start of the nuclear age.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Just think: Once internet voting becomes standard the Chinese Army won't have to buy any more presidential elections. They can just put their new information warfare department to work and elect whomever they want.
Ok, congresscritters. You can stop doing the campaign-finance-laws dance.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Here in Belgium, voting is mandatory. There's a fine for not voting, and every election there's a few thousand people (population ~10 million) that do get fined (although there's probably a lot more that escape).
One of the main arguments pro voting duty is that 'less privileged' parts of the population get to have their democratic say.
OTOH, some people think it encourages people to use their vote irresponsibly (voting for extreme right-wing parties out of dissatisfaction with more centrist ones, for example).
Personally, I like it. It gives me a warm feeling to know everybody's had his or her say in the government of the country. Oh, and it's nice to have a choice of parties, as well. As in more than two parties.
Great games
Note: I saw a news story on CNN (TV not web) on this so of course it was dumbed down, and reader-freindly but from what I could gather this is what it was trying to say:
Apparently what they do is something like current absentee ballots where you put your name on the envelop then seal the ballot in a seperate envelop and put that in the first. When the government gets that ballot it takes down your name and tosses the sealed ballot to the side to count on election day. The result for the absentee is that they get that you voted but no one know who you voted for.
For "e-ballots" what I heard was that they split the vote up, meaning when you click send (or whatever it is) the vote is broken up and sent to two diffrent locations. That means that they send the fact that you voted and all your information to one server, while the vote itself is sent to another.
How this works I couldn't exactly explain because the article was so vague, but I think that since you have to fill this out by multiple pages (the ballot is not on the same page as the personal info) I'm assuming that they automatically transition servers after you submit the personal info, and of course if the company doing this is even remotely legit, they do this via SSL/SQL (I don't do web security correct me if this is wrong) so you can't hit back and vote a gazillion times.
Also, the location of the servers for this election were kept secret and out of state to prevent tampering. They story also said something of encryption 4000 times more powerful than the current web standard (128-bit?), but of course they didn't explain how it was implemented and I have know idea how you'd implement it if the client side is still only 128-bit, 56-bit or whatever.
Well that's my explaination hope you like!
OakLEE
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
But authentication for voting should be better than just having to enter a single PIN. What happens if somebody intercepts a bunch of physical this-is-your-PIN letters on their way to the voters, or -- better yet -- snoops on their PINs when they're being sent online? (According to another poster, the site doesn't even use SSL!)
The correct approach would be using public key encryption, which would eliminate the need to send out PINs (just grab the voting office's public key from the net) and, with a decent level of encryption like that offered by PGP, would make cracking the voting message nearly impossible. Unfortunately, I somehow doubt that the Powers That Be want to see PGP installed in every household, and the voting office still needs to get the public keys of all voters somehow. But there have been plenty of schemes for government-run public key authorities, and it's probably only a matter of time until the infrastructure for digital signatures is created.
In all, online voting is a nifty idea, but there are a lot of security issues that need to be considered very carefully when implementing it. As a trivial example, can you imagine the impact of a well-timed DoS attack?
Cheers,
-j.
- The first online election they did as a company this summer was for the IEEE. Believe me when I say that IEEE representatives went through the software with a fine-toothed comb, and made absolutely certain it was secure by their standards, which were extreemly strict. While I can't talk much about the software itself, suffice to say that just about any security problem you've thought of they thought of a long, long time ago, and fixed.
- As far as the anonymity of the elections, yes, this is difficult to preserve in a strict sense. However, as far as I know, the PINs and names are kept in completely separate databases and never cross-referenced at all. Valid PINs are generated independently of the voters. Election.com also obviously signs strict confidentiality agreements with the AZ democrats, etc, so the chances of vote tracking are remote (and illegal) at best. The PINs are also generated from a pool large enough to make the aforementioned "Birthday paradox" extreemly improbable. It would be infinitely easier to get a fake ID and walk into the physical polling place and stuff the ballot that way.
- As far as the disparity between different socio-economic classes, several of the press releases stated that an additional 29 polling places would be set up (above the traditional polling places) in under-privelidged neighborhoods to compensate.
Just on a personal note, regardless of my connections with the company, I think online voting is absolutely one of the best things that could happen to the democratic process in this nation. From the voter turnout in this election alone, we can see that many, many more voters have turned out to express their opinions in this election. Voting this way is not catering to the "lazy" voters out there, as was suggested. Rather, it is giving the opportunity for everyone to take part in their government without ever having to leave their desks. I think if this catches on in other states (and eventually nationally) the democratic process in this country will improve exponentially - more people will care more about what is going on in their government, and for once, more people will do something about it.Linus Torvalds nominated for President!
WASHINGTON-Today, 20,000,000,000 voters voted over the internet in a surprise nomination for president, the Linux creator Linus Torvalds.
"Well, I'm honored, really, to get so many votes, but I wasn't actually born here, so I can't do it," a happy but reluctant Torvalds says.
"This is the highest voter turnout we've ever seen!" Says Sen. H. R. Flappergaster. "The voter turnout for Mr. Torvalds was over 10000%. I have never seen anything like it."
Some of the other candidates attacked the results, saying that the votes were 'faked.' They sited the fact that '20 billion is over three times the population of the Earth.' The Committee to Elect Linus Torvalds did not respond, except to say "neener neener neener."
Then again, I could be wrong.
Back in a U.S. History class a few years ago, my teacher was discussing the topic of low voter turn out rates and registration rates. In his discussion, he mentioned a case in which a congressman proposed that all U.S. citizens be automatically registered in order to see a higher voting rate. However, that idea was shot down quite quickly by another congressman who indicated that we should not register people who are too lazy to put in the time and effort to obtain an application and register to vote. There were no rebuttals.
In some senses, voting via the internet seems to fall along similar lines. Such an action seems to be giving-in the people who are not motivated enough to drive to the polls to cast their votes. The above action should thus be avoided.
The Amendments to the Constitution, and the Constituion in general is for limiting the powers of the Federal government. Look at the 10th amendment for proof. The text of the Declaration of Independance (which most of the Constitutional delegates also signed) says, "...that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Because it is an amendment, does not make it so.
To the gun thing....in the next sentance or two after the unalienable thing is this: "...that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." So to the gun-control advocates I say this... If a goverment cannot trust is citizens to be armed, why must the citizen trust the goverment? The Framers knew that personal possession of firearms was *critical* to any people being able to keep their government in check. Hell, when Redcoats are facing you with muskets, all the name calling and rock throwing won't get them to listen to you.
(stepping off the soapbox)
This is the type of liberal drivel that really annoys me. To think Internet voting excludes poor people because they don't have computers is ludicrous. IF YOU DON'T HAVE A COMPUTER, GET UP AND GO TO THE POLLING STATION. For God's sake - people with money can afford to be lazy and vote by computer. So what are we gonna do, spend billions of dollars of tax money to give poor people computers so they can be lazy and vote on the Internet, too? Will that be "fair?"
PS: Not attacking you, sreo, just the annoying liberal mindset that accompanies any new innovation in this country.
Did you even bother to read the article before spilling forth your uninformed garbage? Each Arizona registered voter is assigned a PIN which he or she must enter before his or her vote is counted, which brings about a host of other security and privacy concerns, but not the specific ones that you mentioned.
Possible problems include:
-Interception of PIN numbers before delivery
-"Birthday paradox" style attacks; one might accidentally run into a valid PIN, depending on how many combinations there are
-Many opportunities for your ISP/random host on the Internet to gather information, if the voting isn't done via an encrypted link
-Disparity in access between those of higher socioeconomic status and those for whom an Internet connection is less available (although people can still vote the traditional way)
-Authentifying votes as valid, while preserving the privacy of individual voters. A blinded signature scheme (c.f. Chaum digital coins) might help solve this problem.
hmmm, I wonder if they send them to the entire voting list or only people who have re-registered that year. Here in Cambridge, you only get voter info if you filled out the little "census and re-registration" card that they send you every year. But everytime I go and vote, the lists include housemates who moved out long ago and people who lived here before my landlord even bought the house. If they sent to everyone and had as bad a policy on inactive voters as we do around here, yeah, people who lived in say an appartment complex with a high turnover could cast 20 votes just by gathering up the envelopes in the return to sender stack in the mailroom. Or, better yet, recruit a couple of mail carriers to just keep all the notifications that they know don't live there anymore.
Not saying this would realisticly effect an election, just thinking about possible holes. Addmittedly a collection of people in different districts with good memories and the ability to read upside down can quarduple or more their votes around here if they want to put in the effort, so take it as you will.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
It's a great idea that you can now vote online. The process looks simple. You type in a pin number that they sent to you a few weeks earlier, cast your vote, and your all set.
I see one big problem with this.
Aren't elections suppose to be annoymous? Can't they simply track your voting record by cross-referencing it with your pin number?
Another thing that worries me about this is that the pages don't look SECURE. When IE is on a secure page the icon of a webpage turns golden. They have a bunch of screen-shots and the icon doesn't look golden. You can grab them here. Wouldn't this be a little problem? Hmmmm.
The first legally binding public election via the Internet is the first step toward innovation in our present form of government.
Remote voting is extremely efficient. The steep increase in turnout in Arizona demonstrates that technology has the potential to allow voting on a much broader level. In the future, we may no longer have to rely on candidates to speak fully for us. Perhaps, the people of a nation could individually vote on political issues.
On the local level, referendum-style voting occurs all the time, but what about on the national level?
I would like to make an assumption here. Suppose we can avoid the balloting process being influenced in an inappropriate/disproportionate manner by special interests and other groups. That is, suppose we could have a fully secure and accurate voting system via the Internet. Then I think a true people's government (an open government) could be a reality
Much like the telephone, computers will soon be in every home. The connection provided by the Internet could allow a national level voting populace to decide on the legislation of specific issues instead of a select few. What bills do you want to have passed? What bills do you oppose? Instead of writing a letter to your congress person, cast your own vote.
I wonder if everyone having such specific voting power would be a bad thing? Popular sentiment is easily influenced by the news media. Can that component be minimized acceptably?
So let's change topics for a second. The open-source ethic seems to have spontaneously come into existence at the present level (without giving specific credit where due). When open source works, open source propagates. A fundamental change to the nation's political system could yield the same result. An open government, that is one in which the people have full scrutiny and voting power, could work self- correctingly. When problems arise, the dissemination of current and plentiful information via the Internet and remote voting could work to fix things. You don't have to do it for us -- we'll do it ourselves!
Optimal efficiency and participation are high ideals. Is there enough faith in the people to be able to decide their fates? Will the corruption found in all political systems keep this theoretical notion of government from coming into existence? Could such a system even be created?
Anybody want to start the Open Party?
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Free.
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.