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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?
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
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.
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
- 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."
--
RumorsDaily
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.
- 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.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)
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.