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Elections on the Internet -- Not Any Time Soon
jACL writes "From the Technology Review article: "After several years debating minimum requirements for voting equipment, the computer science and public policy communities appear to agree that the Internet--as it exists today--can't sufficiently safeguard the privacy, security and reliability of the voting process. Pitfalls range from the obvious, such as malicious hackers, to the obscure. For example: Every state requires that votes be cast in secret, but how can officials verify that a party hack isn't standing beside a remote voter?""
Unfortunately, this is probably all to true.
Are also arguments against absentee ballots. Perhaps we should get rid of those too- wonder who the president would be today.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
The city council has moved to mail-in ballots for municipal elections in my jurisdiction. This too was a schmozzle of the hugest proportions, and think of how trivial that is compared to electronic voting...
you know where people live, they don't change their address every time they go home, you know from tax returns how many people live at an address. Who can verify anything electronically. Remember that old saw "on the internet no one knows your a dog"?
--everytime you learn something a piece of your brain is replaced by something that someone else said
You can never verify the privacy of the voters, because they may choose to tell their vote. If they choose to let others watch their vote on their machine - fine. As for 'hacks' regarding viewing people's votes on their machines, this may be solved by vote-boxes or so that connect directly through your physical media, and run some firmware.
:)
If its all digitally signed and cryptographed, vote boxes sound nice to me.
Ofcourse it should always be allowed for people to vote as they do today, if for some reason they cannot guarantee their privacy, or an internet connection.
If people do vote as they do today, give voters a day off to vote, as sane Democracies do
Having to actually get off your arse and go to a polling place to cast your vote is A Good Thing. It makes sure only the truly motivated actually vote.
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
The notion that voting on the Internet would constitute an advancement is disgusting. How many people without access to the Internet would have to work /harder/ than those who already are wealthy enough (presumably) to cast their vote via computers.
More wealth stroking. Internet voting would be all about making life easier for those who's lives are always considerably easier than those who couldn't vote online. How on earth can the article not point out how internet voting would undoubedly contribute to less political representation by those already on the wrong side of the digital divide (even if simply by increasing the participation of those on the right side of the digital divide.)
I'm not against using it for over-seas voting, etc, but to hope that one day we'll all be using the Internet to vote is a scary thought - the poor already have enough of a hard time being heard.
"Old man yells at systemd"
... Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf is elected President.
Note that the above assumed by 'voting on the Internet', we mean voting from home. I'm not neccessarily against using computers at poll stations, as this doesn't discriminate against those without access to the Internet at home, or disproportionately empower those that do.
"Old man yells at systemd"
What a great pity... I'm sure I'm not the only one who was looking forward to voting for CowboyNeal. :)
These sigs are more interesting tha
You mean we can't use the Slashdot polling engine? I thought that was accurate to within .001%...
Didn't someone used to have a sig like 'the supreme court ruled it legal to screw voters, and demonstrated how to do it'?
Just proof that throughout the whole election mess people's opinions - from ordinary citizens right up to the members of the US Supreme Court - were dictated by who they wanted to be in office.
Voting by mobile phone text message is going to be trialled in the UK at the next election. See this BBC News story. This has a lot of the same issues as internet voting - have they really been thought throught yet?
A report on the reliability of various voting systems (including Internet) from MIT/Caltech.
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I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
First of all, to institute a federal mandate to require all votes to be cast over the internet would require an amendment to our Constitution, which currently gives the States the right to decide how they want people to vote (within limits). Assuming this is done (a herculean feat), securing the internet for voting shouldn't be that hard a thing to do really.
Imagine this, each county in every state runs their own VPN between the voting offices. Each VPN would feature a different encryption screen, and each vote would be encypted as well. This means that not only would every vote feature 128-bit encryption, the entire VPN would as well, making it impossible to know who placed what vote. Also, ballot stuffing could be eliminated because not only would you have to crack the VPN, you'd also have to submit a properly encoded vote in order for it to count. One misplaced 0 or 1 scratches the entire ordeal. Since the VPN's would only be up for one day, hackers would have little time to break the encryption.
Just a few thoughts.
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
Geez. Nobody ever said life was fair. Maybe we should all just give up our computers since the poor and uneducated don't have access to them? Wait! I'm College educated, I should get a lobotomy so I don't trample the rights of the uneducated?
Plus the local non-computer owners can go to the library to cast their vote. I saw this as a chance to avoid having to go to the elementary school (especially since it's several miles out of my way and has exactly enough parking for the teacher, and nowhere near enough for voters) to cast my vote. Also, it involves standing in line for over an hour if try to go before work. Voting is already pretty darn inconvienent for everyone involved, and I'm not going to complain if someone figures out a way to make it much more convienent.
I read the internet for the articles.
Well....half of americans, %54 are on the internet.
The study has just been published. Noone said that would be the ONLY way to cast a vote either.
Now THAT in ITSELF is a larger percentage than voted in the last election. Demographics say more than HALF of that HALF is middle to lower income and minority.
Lemme guess, your either
Poor,
aCommunist
or a Democrat ?
If youre poor and have no car you already have to work harder to get to the polling place. So we make it easier and more accurate where we can. So that argument flies like a brick pig with wings.
How can more people voting cause "less political representation" ???? Just because the wealthy will vote for somethign YOU dont like dosent mean less representaiton, it means more people voting, more representation. Like I said Im guessing this was either a troll or...one of the above 3
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
This reminds me of the problems we had at the Universty of Michigan a number of years back with the student government elections, which allowed students to vote online. The problem arose because candidates would walk through the dorms pumping their platform, knock on people's doors, log them into the voting website and show them how easy it was to vote for them. Obviously, quite an uproar came about because of this and I'm sure a similar situation would occur on the bigger scale elections.
Couldn't you just imagine the candidates to sending out their lackies to people's homes showing them how to vote online and how to click on their candidate's name and then click the submit button? I wouldn't put it by any political party to try this type of underhanded scheme, and I hope we never ever see that.
We won't get online voting for another 10-20 years and especially not until we can safeguard against "attacks" like these.
On a sidenote, I'd be interested to hear from any current Michigan folks to know if the student elections are still happening online.
Peace out.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Except for the tens of thousands of mostly black, mostly Democrat voters who were disenfranchised prior to the election simply because they had the misfortune of sharing a last name with a convicted felon. That's how the election was really stolen and the only decent coverage of it that I ever saw was by the BBC.
Okay, that part was off-topic but this part isn't.
The real problem is two-fold. Making sure every voter is permitted to vote and making sure the ballot is understandable.
If you don't accomplish these things first, it doesn't matter how/where/when you hold the vote. Fix what's broken first!
You might argue that the Florida 'butterfly' ballot was understandable but the mere fact that people are arguing about it (to my mind) proves it wasn't clear enough. It should be undisputably easy.
Given the current state of the web, I don't see how they could hold an election over it. I can see the complaints now - "I pressed the VOTE button and...".
Oh, come on, we have a couple of hundred thousand people in the US who can't figure out how to vote using a punch card with printed directions, for crying out loud. And now people are suggesting standardizing voting using a computer and an internet connection to make things easier? *chuckle*
Now, touch-screen computers at the polling station to simplify voting... that'd be a much better idea.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
You can never verify the privacy of the voters, because they may choose to tell their vote
Two points on this
1) You can lie "Sure I voted for you Mr Big Gun"
and the second is that this isn't the issue the issue is Mr Big Gun standing next to you as you put the X on the sheet making _sure_ that you vote for him.
Not sure which countries allow people the day off to vote either.
Imagine managing the digital signature for everyone, BUT STILL ENSURING ITS ANONYMOUS.
The problems are huge, and they are right to reject it, especially in light of the problems of access to the internet.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
OK, let's not categorize this as "elections on the internet." A more accurate subject would be "voting via web pages." What most people want, and I have asked, as well as observed, is an electronic voting booth. These devices will hopefully reduce human error, they will produce a physical paper ballot for each voter, and they will send the totals instantly over a VPN over the internet to a central collection point. That is technically voting over the internet, even though individual citizens still have to go out and hit the voting booths. Our elections will greatly benefit from such devices using the internet, and it is in the works. I posted a story not too long ago about Rhode Island's plans to work on such a system (rejected of course.) Slashdot admins, please watch what you say. I thought JonKatz was the only one who went off the handle with wild claims and broad misconceptions...
~ now you know
Yeah, so what if it was illegal for the Florida Supreme Court to make the decision for a recount in the first place... why should we care about laws?
Besides, they didn't "decide the election themselves". The people voted for Bush, the original count showed Bush received more votes in Florida, and the after-the-fact review of votes by the media also showed Bush received more votes.
Where there is a will, there is a way. If we wanted to setup online voting, we could, but the powers that be don't want it, so it isn't going to happen. The technology is there, the problem, as always is with people. When people are at home, how do you know thier abusive spouse isn't watching them, thier boss, or Union chairmen. The only way to provide any reasonable privacy is to provide a place to do it.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power - Benito Mussoli
Except that the "Civil Rights Commission" and their cronies have yet to produce one person who was legally registered to vote and was turned away in Florida on November 7th, 2000. But hey, it's only 2002. I'm sure they'll find someone soon.
grep -ri 'should work'
Voting on the Internet would allow more people to vote creating a more accurate representation of the countries ideas. Politicians don't want voters from all over the country voting, they just want the voters that support them to vote.
As for people saying that voting on the Internet would create a bias because only rich people could vote is just plain untrue. You will still have the plain old voting booths, and if not, just replace those voting booths in the town hall with terminals to log on the Internet. You don't have to own a computer to vote.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Cmd Taco needs a basic grammer course...
Grammar?
An untraceable, universally verifiable voting scheme
Recent electronic voting schemes have shown the ability to protect the privacy of voters and prevent the possibility of a voter from being coerced to reveal his vote. These schemes protect the voter's identity from the vote, but do not do so unconditionally. In this paper we apply a technique called blinded signatures to a voter's ballot so that it is impossible for anyone to trace the ballot back to the voter. We achieve the desired properties of privacy, universal verifiability, convenience and untraceability at the expense of receipt-freeness.
Acts@core.mailboks.com Acrux@core.mailboks.com Adam@core.mailboks.com Adar@core.mailboks.com Ada@core.mailboks.com
The secret ballot is not an obscure issue. It is one of the most important aspects of the US voting system. Perhaps it would not be so important without our history of every manner of vote fraud imaginable. The secret ballot prevents coercion of voters by threat of force, losing their job, or any other means by which one person can inappropriately influence another. This must never be compromised, and would be a serious issue if it were. We need developments that decrease the chance for vote fraud, not increase the chance.
This is an idiotic statement. When the security issues get resolved, who the hell wouldn't vote over the internet instead of having to go out to the voting booth?
And it seems to me that the security issues could be easily resolved by the government issuing us public/private key pairs. We would all go in somewhere at our leisure, verify our identity and get a doohickey that plugs into the PC via USB, serial port, or whatever. The doohickey would have a public & private key in it, and wouldn't provide a way of getting the private key out. But it would provide an interface for signing any data sent to it and returning it to you. They could just note who got what doohickey (and correlate the public key with your social security # in a central repository), and now you have easy electronic identification, signatures, and the ability to send private info. Of course, I wouldn't trust anything like that for my own encryption (FBI backdoor, anyone?) but it should be fine for voting. It just signs your vote with your private key, encrypts it with the government's public key, and sends it on its way. I should be able to log into a specific site on the internet and see my vote (encrypted with my public key, so others can't see it) so I can go contest it if it was somehow falsified.
Now that wasn't so hard, was it?
Hello. I have to say that I can't even favour use of the internet for elections (and I mean elections in voting for your government sense). I have to admit here I'm actually someone who would resist the technology.
People are saying voting over the internet, but I would say this was insecure. I believe voting for the government is so important that you really have to minimise the security risks. There are problems with manual voting as it is. But i'm still happier with it than internet voting. When I think voting, I'm now assuming all the computer are ones owned by the government kept in central locations for public voting. I can't see voting from home being too good.
I'm going to throw some ideas out here - if you can find a reason against them, i would love to here (this isn't a challenge, but I'd love to see if someone could put my mind at ease over voting).
(1) I would think that the internet was insecure that you had to use a VPN to allow proper voting. Even then I would still like a closed system where all the power is in government hands.
(2) The system has to have power backups just in case someone starts to tamper with the election. This would be essential in "unstable" areas which are about to vote.
(3) Who controls the system? I would say it would have to be open and free (yeaahhh! - obligatory slashdot herd cheer) with anyone, and I mean anyone, being able to get to the source code. That leaves the fact that the binary produced from the code has to be verified. You'll need qualified people to do this, which costs even more cash.
I also thought about electoral lists, but either way (computer or manual voting) they can still be tampered, although it might be easier on a computer. I just think that allowing people to see the process prevents as much tampering as could be done if people managed to attack the "box" which controls the lists. When i say a "box" I don't mean the central lists, but the one PC which contains the list at the local school where voting could take place.
I do want to believe, but something keeps on telling me that we should keeps things as they are for the now, and restrict this kind of voting to places where it doesn't make too much of a difference. If they could test it in school polls and then corporate polls, and it was shown to be foolproof I wouldn't mind, but I'm very skeptical (the theme of this whole post). I wouldn't mind if they tested this in government opinion polls, where they realise that error could occur, and that it might not make too much of an impression on the governing of the country (i.e. discard the poll if the results are within 5% of each other or something).
Anyway, that's my rant over for the day. Later
The ability of the internet to handle large-scale voting in a fair and secure fashion is here today.
I Heart Sorting Networks
In Canada, national elections are handled by a nonpartisan Federal agency, Elections Canada. Everyone across the country gets the same kind of ballot, a simple card with circles beside the names where you make your "X". No punch cards, machines, or other fancy things that can go wrong or confuse people into voting for Pat Buchanan. It's only a coincidence that the same party keeps winning elections. I swear!
If you want electronic voting, the best idea is probably the system used by the City of Toronto in last fall's mayoral elections -- the ballots were paper, but the counting was electronic. To vote, you filled in a region beside a candidate's name, much like those computerized multiple choice tests. All the counting was done 1 hour after polls closed, and they still had paper records to verify the results.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
i think that is the best way to balot folks, that way, you can get sections presented to you one at a time, allowing larger buttons, and less confusion, not tomention you could standardise on all interfaces, and even keep a running tally so you can just release the results as soon a the polling station is closed.
to make it safe from crackers, just make them so that they have no connection to the internet, the polsers can just hit the results button on their master station at the end of the night, and get a print out of the numbers, then call whom even with their results.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Otherwise, you'd get a +1. Everyone has been pointing to that, but noone has acknowledged the fact that absentee ballots are not monitored at all, and any number of coercive tactics could take place with them. Maybe internet voting and campaign reform laws will have to come about at the same time. If candidate X doesn't have the money available from large corporate sponsors, then they can't afford to send their chronies out to force people to vote for them.
Following my train of thought I came up with another idea. Let's say 20 years from now the election process is changed radically. Candidates are not allowed to advertise on TV, only by registering with the www.vote.gov webpage and having their personal info site, with links to all sorts of information about them. Online town hall meetings and debates will be their only time to speak to people live. Each citizen will be mailed a one time use USB dongle and if they plug it into their computer, then browse to their candidate's page and click on "vote for me" then BAM, that's it, they've voted. Seems easy enough to me. It would open the door to some interesting candidates.
~ now you know
>Lemme guess, your either Poor, a Communist, or a Democrat?
/am/ the wealthy. However, giving people the ability to vote from home is like going door to door to those who make above X$$ and saying, "Well, things are good enough, right? You have your house and car .. here, sign here, and you're vote is cast.", while those who already believe that the system is stacked against them (and rightly so) now see themselves lose even more ground in terms of access to representation and technology; the psycological devestation is recognized by psychology, and dismissed by the wealthy with the 'life isn't fair' argument. It's nothing but more self-affirming perspectives by those with the 'I'm here because I earned it' dillusion.
Let me guess. You want to pigeonhole my theology so you can feel yummy warm at night in concluding that I'm a raving idiot.
None of the above. I make lots of money, I dont believe in communism, and while I probably align myself with Democrat values, I dont know enough about either American party.
In a land of supposed 'equality', why are people so glib to dismiss a technological class gap.
Look, when it comes to getting your ice cream, or filing your taxes, or whatever, I could give a flying fuck if you do it in your Lexus, or you have to walk cause you have no money.
But when it comes to voting, don't you think that the means by which we vote should be independant of our social position? Otherwise you defeat the purpose of a democracy - by 'tipping' the accessability of representation in favour of a particular class.
Let's get one thing straight. I
Yes, your point about car ownership contributing to the problem is duly noted, but if you aknowledge that it exists, why are you so glib to furthur that gap in availability to the resources of exersising one's democratic rights? I can envision a world in which the wealthy are completely ignorant of the numbers of poor simply because its so much easier for them to vote that representation is tipped heavily in their favour. And then the wealthy wonder why the poor arn't voting - it's a lack of confidence in the system, much in part due to attitudes exactly like yours. Why should they try if the fundamental improvements to a democratic system is only available to those who are already prospering under it?
"Old man yells at systemd"
This is not an all-or-nothing issue. Even if trusting the vote of an almost anonynmous user somewhere on the Internet is ludicrous, this doesn't mean that we should ignore the Internet's rightful place in the electoral process: distributing public information
Because we have strong crypto, and we have the political institutions to handle certification authority, and there *are* ways to do authentic but anonymous signatures, I feel we should use a vote recording system that takes advantage of these features to avoid the vote recording problems of the 2000 US presidential election.
Imagine authenticating ONCE PER YEAR with the County Clerk's office, where they register you in their LDAP directory and give you a card with an x509 certificate. The judges at the polling places can hand you an anonymous x509 certificate -w- private key from a pile once they authenticate you via LDAP (with your picture). You can use the anonymous x509 to record your votes to another LDAP directory from a machine in a voting booth. You put your card in, the machine asks you to verify the fingerprint on the certificate matches what the card says, and then presents you with a slate of choices. When you're done, it shows you a raw XML format completed ballot. You sign it with the anonymous key. The voting machine accepts the signed ballot only when it has a certificate revocation for the signing key to go with it. The election judge sees a green light over your booth, presses a button, and the directory of votes and CRL of valid anonymous certificates are updated. You go home, and at the prescribed closing of the polls, each polling place opens its directory of recorded votes up for the big LDAP replication. Votes are tallied in batch time, and recounts can be done at will after the tally directory is populated.
The real problem is the federated system of feifdoms down in all the County Clerk's offices of your hometowns. Putting this kind of minimum standard to their practices amounts to cutting their crooked balls off. The bigger the Clerk's office, the bigger the fight they put up.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
The problem of assuring that someone's vote is uncoerced is one that means Internet voting should never be implemented. Oregon's approach of doing all mail-in ballots is a terrible idea for exactly the same reaon. This is a fundamental problem and not one that can be fixed by technology.
It's actually a difficult thing to make sure that people's votes are both secret and uncoerced even in public polling places. The rules about who can stand in or near polling places, how they have to be arranged, what the booths look like, etc., are complex and detailed because over the years people have come up with all sorts of ways to control the results.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It amazes me how old our voting system is. I live in teh sitcks, but somehow we've managed to use fairly recently technology - like the tactile button/LED machines with scrolling paper a few years ago to the new touchscreen machines in the last election (modelled just like the tactile button machines) to reduce confusion
Just because we CAN do something doesn't mean we should. I'm not sure Internet voting would improve the integrity of the voting and in teh end that's what relaly counts. If you don't care enough to get off your fat butt and vote in your local fire station, etc, then you don't need to be voting!
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Double (or more) punched, underpunched (none for that race) is what was thrown out. How can you garantee a vote is for a paticular candidate if more than one was punched or none at all?
I never implied that it would only be available via the net. I was simply pointing out that this kind of system would improve accessibility and participation primarily to those who are already prosperous under the current political and economic conditions.
I was illustrating that these types of improvements tend to benifit those who are more-or-less happy with the way things are, and thus, it would do little to improve represention of those who seek or need the most radical changes in the political and economic climate.
All of this tends to lead to 'boiling points' where those in poor conditions completely lose faith in the system, as it tends to only focus on improving the lives or representation of those who are already well off, and simply garauntees that more pressure is allowed to build in the social 'fault line' until something dramatic happens.
"Old man yells at systemd"
We must remember that there are people who cannot make it to the polls. I was in a wheelchair during last year's election due to a car accident, and it was too late to get an absentee ballot. I found it exceedingly hard to get to my place of polling because I live in a hilly mountain town and the bus didn't go close enough.
The Internet would be an ideal place for the mobility challenged to cast their vote. It is better to require everyone to cast their vote on the same day rather than send in early absentee votes because opinions may change over the lag time. I think that, rather than having traditional absentee paper ballots, we should be able to give the local board of elections our public keys and submit our enciphered ballots electronically. If we can't trust the Internet for election purposes, how can we for our financial transactions (ATMs) and taxes (e-file)?
But when it comes to voting, don't you think that the means by which we vote should be independant of our social position? Otherwise you defeat the purpose of a democracy - by 'tipping' the accessability of representation in favour of a particular class.
Yeah, so let's make a law that you have to walk to your polling station, in order not to put those at a disadvantage who can't afford a car...
Say no to software patents.
I can just see it now: the voting software wouldn't be user-friendly enough, my mom wouldn't be able to figure out how to use it, and just power off the voting station computer. :-)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
For all the groaning in November, it's still critical that a recount was even possible. It was eventually done, the results published, and history knows exactly what happened. Had ballots been stolen or tampered, that would have become part of history too, even if the results then couldn't be.
The moment it's exclusively electronic, it can get cracked *undetectably*. The detection is the key.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Except for the tens of thousands of mostly black, mostly Democrat voters who were disenfranchised prior to the election simply because they had the misfortune of sharing a last name with a convicted felon.
Oh, please. Name one. The election was November 7th, 2000. Fifteen months ago yesterday. In that time, not a single person has come forward to say that they, personally, were turned away from the polls. Two people have said that they saw police cars near the polling area and felt "intimidated" so they kept driving. Yet not a single person has claimed they showed up to vote and was refused. Surely, out of "tens of thousands of black voters" you could find a single one who was turned away?
Ah, you show your laziness and girth by equating the right to vote with the luxury of transportation methods.
...
...
This isn't about poor people having to walk to the polling station. This is about wealth people not having to walk 5 feet to ensure that the status quo that keeps them relatively wealthy stays in place at the cost of those who require changes to the political and economic agenda. It's funny, by the time the shit hits the wall, those nailed against it are always wondering what was going on all that time where they felt everything was hunkey dory and that those in need were just lazy bums. At least when you go to the polling station, you see who else lives in your community. Otherwise, I promise you, you can go years convicing yourself that those who desire change that would require sacrifice on your part just dont get it or are lazy or some equally self-affirming reductionist perspective.
> Life is always easier for some people than for others. That's just the way it is.
You know that kind of attitude doesn't go very far for those on the flip side of unfairness, and it certainly wont prevent anyone from taking action if they believe you only accept that attitude when things are going your way
Not that I think it matters. Every system reaps what those with opportunity and wealth sow
"Old man yells at systemd"
Okay, maybe youd didn't mean, but it was implied. You didn't mentioned people would have the option to not vote over the internet.
If I made a mistake, I am sorry, it's the way I read your comment that made me assume what I said. If I am wrong, again, sorry.
But now I have to agree with envelope's comment. If you believe that different types of access to vote will create barriers for a better development of the democratic system, and a better choice of governament, then you should extend your argument to convince me why, why other facilities are different than the one possible using the internet.
I have to say, that if you want to break the status quo, it's not about HOW we choose our representants, but instead, like it has always been, about WHO you chooe.
Instead, if this situation must be changed, first convince everyone (from the bottom of the social pyramid) that voting is important (since in USA is optional), that they must vote, and, inform who are the candidates, why they must vote for whetever they choose, give them the ability to think and make they know that there are ways, peaceful ways, to change the system.
It reminds me of 'Don't give them food, teach them how to fish'.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
In different words: it's just like the voting system we have now.
Thanks for the correction. Ideology is certainly the word I should be using.
"Old man yells at systemd"
If they want to try to maximize security, then just dont send the data over the internet. Just create a national voting intranet.
I will bend your mind with my spoon
From the article: "But voting poses a unique problem: elections require that the voter's identity, once verified, be stripped away to ensure anonymity."
This is probably the toughest nut to crack. Not only must identity be stripped away, but it must be stripped away in a way that's transparent to the voter.
When I vote in my local precinct here in Virginia, I go to one set of poll workers to identify myself. When they're satisified that I'm who I say I am, and that I'm a registered voter, they hand me a little index card that acts as a chit which allows me to vote.
I then hand the chit to the voting booth attendant. The voting booth attendant knows I'm permitted to vote, but doesn't know anything else about me. Consequently there's no way to tie my identity to my ballot. Furthermore, it's plain to me as I go throught the process that there's no way to tie my identity to my ballot.
Online systems could use a similar chit system to insure voter anonymity, but this would not be in plain view of the voter. The voter would have no way of knowing that his identifying information is not being stored along with his ballot.
Until that problem is solved, I personally have no interest in casting my ballot online.
I was looking forward to Slashdotting the vote!
However, I was *not* looking forward to Bill Gates running for president and all of MSFT's employees each voting hundreds of thousands of times.
do not read this line twice.
> teach them how to fish
.. etc).
Except for that the prevailing attitude is, "Don't give them food, and, okay, well, sure, teach them how to fish. But don't tax me for it. And I don't want to be the one to teach them. And make sure they have to buy their own fishing rod. And I don't want to be forced to fish less because now we have more fishermen." The wealthy want their cake, and then they want to eat it. It's a harsh reality of life that improving one's material wealth above those around them is an individual choice, and that if said activity causes the disempowerment of the lower social classes, you'll have to pay for it in things other than money (such as convenience, time, self-discipline
The car argument has been brought up as an example of why this gap already exists. Duly noted. It does, and look whats happening to the world. And this will only make it worse. That whole "Well, things are already unequal, so what's wrong with making it a little bit more unequal" argument is self-affirming redderick, and I have no doubt that it only contributes to the social 'fault line' that has exploded many times in history before.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Actually, doesn't that make you the fucking idiot? Why are you working two jobs? Why not just sit back and enjoy the fruits of welfare? Oh wait, I forgot .. because you're a hard working honest individual, unlike those welfare slobs.
.. because I'd be giving up some of my time, effort, or material wealth for you. And yet, you reject it because it'll help a small minority of freeloaders. And the suits just keep laughing and lining their pockets ...
If being on welfare is such a wonderful party, like hard working people (working too hard or not enjoying their work, I might add, or else they wouldn't be so upset at the slackers that do exist), why don't you just go on welfare?
Man, you're only looking for reasons to justify why you have to work your sorry little ass off to provide. You shouldn't in the first place, and that's what needs fixing, not these euphoric freeloaders, who are a minority of those receiving welfare. Shit, I've had bosses who are lazier than welfare recipient friends of mine, who make crud loads of money. We just need to keep feeling the way you do in order to avoid the reality that material wealth does not reflect the amount of effort you put into providing for yourself and your loved ones. It's funny, because it's the managers and companies who want to convince you that the only reason you have to work so hard is because of people freeloading on the system. You buy it, hook, line and sinker, believe we're all headed in the right direction, and then take on a 3rd job. Meanwhile, I sit in my cushy little 9 to 5 job, waste my time, and laugh at you. I want to help those people, which would help you not have to work your ass off
"Old man yells at systemd"
Well, I won't name her (because she's not here to speak for herself) but ONE of these people was my ex-girlfriend who called me in tears because they wouldn't let her vote. It kind of broke my heart because when we met she was totally uninterested in politics. I'm the one who convinced her to register to vote. They wouldn't even let her cast a provisional ballot. Together, we called and wrote the local newspapers in the weeks following and got zero response.
= 1 .
The US Civil Rights Commission acknowledges the issue on their website where it says "Non-felons were removed from voter registration rolls based upon unreliable information collected in connection with sweeping, state sponsored felony purge policies;". I know this is quoted out of context but feel free to check it out for yourself.
The BBC report estimates between 80,000 and 100,000 voters were wrongly prevented from casting ballots in Florida. The link to that report is here - http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=29&row
I'm not suggesting we re-do the election but let's do admit there was a problem and work to fix it.
All of the commercial vendors of election software are using closed source, running on top of closed source OS. This allows wholesale rigging at either end.
Just insert a script into next version of Windows: If Date is 11/4/04....
Here's Industry Standard's coverage of a panel on Internet Voting sponsored by the Freedom Forum during the last Democratic National Convention. My Q&A with election.com CEO Joe Mohen is at the end, tho they missed the closed source issue.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Besides the easy ability for fraud, etc, that others have mentioned, I think it's a bad idea simply because it would attenuate one more of the instances where you get to see and speak to the other people in your neighborhood.
Everyone there at your polling place lives somewhere nearby, as you do. Isn't it nice in our personalized, lonely world, to once in a while be in a situation where you get a good look at who the neighbors are, maybe even get to say hi? Maybe you can meet that old lady who's always going on her evening walk past your house at about 7pm. You might be able to say hi to the guy down the street who's always working on his car. I think it's a wonderful exercise, not only in civil rights but in community, of which there are damn too few these days, and it'd be a shame to run the risk of losing it in the future.
Remember California kiddies, primary vote is on March 5!
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Except for that the prevailing attitude is, "Don't give them food, and, okay, well, sure, teach them how to fish. But don't tax me for it. And I don't want to be the one to teach them. And make sure they have to buy their own fishing rod. And I don't want to be forced to fish less because now we have more fishermen."
;-)
Yes, maybe it is. But it doesn't have to be yours, and surely it's not mine (and I am not saying that it is yours either, just that I don't know you enought to confirm this or that). What I meant is that attacking ways to facilitate the wealth to choose the governament it's not the best way to help those on the pyramid's bottom to achieve a better life. It doesn't matter, IMHO, how you choose, but whom do you choose and why. Give people information and release them free.
The wealthy want their cake, and then they want to eat it.
No, everybody wants the cake. It's not only the wealth, this is a classic falacy of A = B, B = C, so A = C (whic is not true). It's not because the wealth have more cake, and they want more, and they have better ways to have it, that the poor won't get any piece, or that they are forbidden to try to get it.
But, I must note, I DO THINK that this happens, poor are forbidden to touch the cake (at least the sweet part of it). I just don't agree with the way you put it, since everyone wants the cake.
That whole "Well, things are already unequal, so what's wrong with making it a little bit more unequal" argument is self-affirming redderick, and I have no doubt that it only contributes to the social 'fault line' that has exploded many times in history before.
Me too. I am against what is preached. But the car argument IS NOT the reason why the world is fucked up. If so, we should not be allowed to vote. If we were to forbid every way to make people vote easier, we would have simply to have only one voter. If you present the argument that distance from the voting point is harmful to those far away from it, you will get to the point where the only possible solution is to have only one person casting their vote.
It's a bit strange, because practically, that's what happen. You have the 'one' media in favour of a candidate, the 'one' society sector in favor of a condidate, etc... Our socials desire to have interactions with other humans and the concessions that we allow to make these situations possible, generates an attrition to the final objective of a democracy.
Sadly, this has been said many times, since the governament wants to keep their power, and they have to get votes from people to do so, democracy is in fact a denial of the truth, the 'ultimate' truth. Because the power is always bending itself to allow the continuity of the status, and NOT pursuing a real, real close to, truth.
PS: I am enjoying having this conversation, and don't take anything personally
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
I find it funny that we can file our taxes over the internet to the IRS, but we can't get an anonymous voting system put together.
does that seem odd to anyone else?
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
is pictured here - is that undisputable enough? But seriously, in a razor close election the losers are always going to try to tip the balance by complaining about something, no matter what you do or use.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
you forgot the key issue of NEPOTISM. Why isn't it illegal, exactly? Seems strange that America (or at least SOME Americans) went to all the trouble of breaking free from the tyrannical British crown just so they might set up their own ruling families. Kennedys', Bushes, all the same really and it CANNOT be right. At least the British monarchy has absolutely no political power whatsoever - you Americans aren't so lucky...
That was classic intercourse!
"Every state requires that votes be cast in secret, but how can officials verify that a party hack isn't standing beside a remote voter?"
And how do they do the same for physical elections? They have vote "watchers" or some such. Even with vote watchers people can be influenced by others [1]. There is nothing stopping us from voting electronically (disregard over the net) in the same way we do physically, in central locations. What voting electronically DOES do, is allow us to have verified results as soon as votes are cast, without introducing human error and speculation (yes yes, subject to the usual haxoring of the process, but that is probably lower than the margin of error introduced by over-speculation and human error).
[1] Real event: the mother of somebody I know was told upon going to vote for the first time in a new county, that she had to reregister, but was strongly dissuaded from registering as a Democrat, because, as the pollster said, the county was largely Republican and she "could not vote if she was a Democrat" (a half-truth: she wouldn't be able to vote in *Republican primaries* (DUH!), but this wasn't made clear to her.), so she registered as Republican. Yes it might have been her fault for being persuaded, but AFAIK, it is a *Federal crime* to defraud the election process...it's even more horrible that the people supposedly watching over the polls to keep them neutral do it.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Having worked for several political campaigns, I can tell you that if you contact your party they will send someone to take you to vote and drop you back off at home. We do it all day long during election day -- And some campaigns even send lackees door to door trying to find people that haven't voted yet and offer them a ride (albeit in neighborhoods that heavily favor their party). "But I'm an Indepedant" or "I belong to . Not a good enough excuse, for ever party there are people that will come pick you up and take you to your polling place, and as well there are non-partisan groups that do the same thing for people with any party affiliation. You may not think your one vote counts, but the different political parties do, you wouldn't believe how much they scratch and claw for those single votes. "But I'm too lazy to pick up the phone to call someone for a ride." -- Put down the voter registration down and back away from the ballot!! ;-)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
- Are voting in a standardized fashion
- Are voting alone
- Only vote once
- Understand the voting instructions
Ironic that on the heels of the whole MS security discussion, and the rehash of the "computers will never be truly secure" conversation, that we somehow think that one of the fundamental tenets of our democracy can work not only on computers, but over the Internet. Doesn't anyone else see the lunacy of this proposition?Now, computer terminals safely ensconced at the polling places themselves might offer a few advantages...
Was that out loud?
It would be amusing, were internet voting (or, for that matter, any computerized system like a touch screen) to ever be implemented, to have the system also provide information on the candidates. For instance, a full listing of all the financial information that the FEC requires, plus their voting record or other history as is relevant and of public record.
;) )
("Vote for ---? This candidate has been funded by... and his party has been funded by... Please confirm."
Plus, allow the candidates to specify a short statement, and maybe the same for news services. *shrug*
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
...against Palm Beach voters. They've figured out where the cup holder is on their computers, but haven't figured out why you need a rodent to operate it.
Okay, then why didn't you come forward when there was an opportunity? The Civil Rights Commission held a completely open hearing on Jan 15, 2001, and requested people to testify. Three people came forward, all of whom were allowed to vote at the time. One person was in a situation exactly as you describe, she was removed from the rolls accidently. One call to the voting supervisor straightened it out and she voted. Sure, there were plenty of people removed mistakenly, but there are no reports that any of those people were unable to get their problem resolved satisfactorily.
You had your opportunity to come forward publically. You didn't do it, so apparently it wasn't all that important to you, though you claimed to spend weeks writing letters. Maybe you should have been reading those newspapers you were writing to so you would have noticed the hearings on the front page of every paper.
I like this "I dont know enough about either American party" Youre not a US citizen ????
GUESS WHAT your COMMENTARY on OUR politics is MOOT.
You have NO fundemental understanding of the Democratic proccess here in the United States. It has been like this and always will be, look up Jim Crow laws.
There is no glibness, everyone is equal, to a point, and can vote, even with a Internet voting system in place.
REDUCING everyone to equal IS COMMUNISM.
Actually the POOR DO VOTE, Sometimes more often than the rich, Apathy infests the rich, not so true with the poor. Clinton being elected twice in this country is proof, MOST educated, upper class people (with the exception of liberals, in our country a socalist). COULDNT STAND HIM, He won his fist election with LESS than the MAJORITY vote, only some 40% of people in the US.
So what you are saying is, you have NO understanding of either our system, or parties, and yet you offer a foriegn comment on OUR process..This is rich....
Go back to the pub...........The UK's Govt is in such perfect shape I know you have nothign better to do than critisize ours.......Let me remind you OUR govt saved Europes ass TWICE
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
> GUESS WHAT your COMMENTARY on OUR politics is MOOT.
.sig. I'd simply rather say that things are so wildly unequal right now that we need more equality. Not total equality.
Politically, sure. But if you think I'm incapable of affecting the way Americans (who's comments are not moot, according to your logic) think about their process, thats your own set of blinders.
> REDUCING everyone to equal IS COMMUNISM.
My dear scared friend, who said I wanted to reduce everything to equal? It's truely not my fault if you want to extropolate my 'moot comments' to an extreme that aligns with a political ideology I reject in my
> Let me remind you OUR govt saved Europes ass TWICE
Thanks for the help, even though I'm not in Europe, assumer. Now, if only America could help nations because they actually wanted peace and freedom, not the IOU you seem to implicitly believe America deserves in these cases.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Let me not address the technical issues of how people's identities will be validated if internet voting is tried -- that's an implementation problem, and I'm sort of a big picture kind of guy... :) Or just unqualified.
Instead, my question is how internet (or any type of remote, instantaneous) voting will affect people's attitudes toward elections in general.
I can, on the one hand, see how internet voting would open up great possibilities -- people's votes are counted exactly, no room for error, people don't have to trudge through rain or snow to get to the ballot box, people living overseas or traveling at the time can vote just as easily as people in their home district, and people who may not have had access to voting before now get a chance. Internet voting might also give people a more direct feeling of influence in a vote's outcome. If the results could be released immediately, you would see how your one vote stacked up with the rest of them.
But on the other hand, and what worries me more, is that these very advantages might erode the significance and importance of elections. Or, change it into something that I might not like. Is it possible that voting, if made so easy as a click of the mouse, placed right next to the CNN poll, would become as meaningless to the average person? If every day, we encountered 10 polls asking for our opinion, how would voting for a person for office be made something with more weighty consequences? I know how little thought I put into an online vote, how would most other people feel?
The thing about voting, the way it is now, is that the physical effort, trouble, or fact that it is an extra-ordinary event, gives it significance and reminds people that this isn't just another mouse click after opening a web page. I worry that if we make it too easy to vote, or too commonplace, people may forget what voting actually means. They ought to travel to polling places, and see the other people who're voting, see who the members of their community are, and at least be mildly provoked to consider thoughtfully what their physical vote translates into. To that end, we should make the current process of voting as easy and as fair as possible. We can improve the system of registration to make it easier, create more sophisticated voting machines, help people get to the polls if they have difficulty, remove barriers to people who have been unfairly treated -- by all means do these things -- but in the end, voting should remain a special event, I think.
Well, the IOU system was failed when we started it, EVERYONE lent to has defaulted. They want and take, but wont repay,
I am personally of the school we should go after our bad debts in the form of land or resource, england, russia, japan, etc. We SACRIFICED OUR BLOOD, for your people. Im an Isolationist too, so actuallly helping anyone is out of the question.
Youre correct, I apologize, I could tell from the speech pattern you were a UK'er, Canada, pretty much the same thing.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
> In the U.S. the top 1% of earners pay something like 30% of income taxes.
.. dont just whine about how you're not getting enough, about how you could make more if just more people would be content to die of starvation or sleep in stairwells.
.. if freeloading is so wonderful, why not do it? Maybe cause you feel you're doing things you dont want to do in order to live the life you're living, so you think other people should be forced to do stuff they don't want to do too? Sounds like you've got bigger fish to fry than to worry about the minority who are 'living' (suriving, more like it) off your tax dollar. Maybe you should be asking why you're not content to do your thing for the sake of doing your thing, rather than for the pot at the end of the rainbow you wish to deny to those people who arnt working hard enough, according to your individual judgement.
So? If the top 1% make 5000 times what the bottom 50% of earners make, they should be taxed was more than they are now. They are only being greedy. I abjectly refuse to believe that the top 1% of earners in the US:
a) deserve it
b) are earning money as a biproduct of a desire to help the people around them
I think the top 1% of earners in the US are:
c) greedy fucks that should be taxed more and should stop trying to sell useless bullshit to people who have more important things to try and focus on, like getting access to education and access to career opportunities where they arn't working 14 hours a day to pay for food, bread, and a hole in the wall
d) should shut the fuck up before those people who are denied voting rights on the basis of property ownership are forced to do something no one wants
c) should ask why they are so unhappy that people are able to live off their dollar. so dont become rich
This all begs the question
By the way, you wouldn't earn as much if poor people were wealthier, so if they did help themselves, you might not have to give up taxes, but you would have to give up some of the inequality of your salary and opportunities, which, when you claim money is your primary motivator, is pretty much exactly the same thing.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Okay. Look at your economy, and how much it owes to exportation of goods and access to other markets. Look at how much the very life you live depends on the sacrifices of others. People die every day, all over the world, at the hands of American companies. We give our blood.
I'm sorry, but where is your IOU we should be able to cash for giving you access to our wallets and crushing our domestic industries?
"Old man yells at systemd"
What about elections by mobile phone? They are trying that in the UK -i d_1802000/1802956.stm
i d_1799000/1799883.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/news
Would that be any more viable than voting online? My thought is that the percentage of people with phones in the UK and Europe is so much greater than in the US that it might not be an option right now.
The BBC article also mentions voting by digital television. That's the first I've heard of that option. What percentage of people in the US, or for that matter the UK, have digital tv available to them??
Here is another BBC article that talks about the fraud that could occur with online voting -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/news
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Besides, you haven't even begun to address the problems of coercian, secrecy, access, reliability, security, scalability, etc... Surely, examples like passport and the disaster that is IIS should tell you just how difficult it is to make software really bullet-proof!
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Privacy, security, and reliability, all seem like problems that are easy to solve. Just give each person in the U.S. a CD with their public/private key when they register to vote. As an added bonus we'd eliminate spam.
For example: Every state requires that votes be cast in secret, but how can officials verify that a party hack isn't standing beside a remote voter?
Simple solution: let them change their vote. Even if someone watches them vote, that's no more than their word that they won't change it.
Arn't you an absolutes kind of person.
Learn history:
> And you're willing to use government, that monopoly on force
You deny history if you don't understand that the monopoly on force that government enjoys is responsible for the rise of capitalism. Look it up. Property rights are BACKED BY THE MONOPOLY ON FORCE. If the government wasn't there, who's to stop people from stealing your wealth when they perceive you have too much?
God, don't you understand that the monopoly on force is the only thing keeping thousands upon thousands of 'lazy' poor people from rushing into your house and beating the crud out of you? Do you really want to disband that monopoly on force? I dare you man, I dare you. There'd be alot more planes crashing into buildings, I can assure you, not that I'm condoning or supporting those actions. I'm only saying that the monopoly on force is what keeps poor people from taking what they don't believe is rightfully yours.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Noone said YOU HAD to buy.
America did quite well, BEFORE it stated participating in a global marketplace, better than it does now. We had our OWN SELF sufficient industry. Contained within, we needed imports of VERY few items, prior to th 70 oil wasnt needed as an import. Rubber, Sugar and a few hard raw materials were the only imports needed.
I would GLADLY see america's import/export closed, it would be a boon to our domestic industry hard at first but much better in the long run, CAN NAFTA, and make all who import pay tarriff, heavy ones, they make us why not us them ?
My life depends little on others sacrifice, myself and my family HAVE sacrificed much, for 200 years every generation except my father's has fought in our military. We have sacrificed in industyr as well, NOW you tell me what good ANY of those sacrifices did for US no, in WWI and WWII ? Europe is free, but how does that help Me ? I live in the states.
It always kills me outsiders views on this country, I have travelled ALL over the world, and they have No clue what is going on here. I guss if they did , THEY would be the singularly most powerfull nation on earth, as we are. Militarily, Economically, Socially, etc. I guess the point is they dont get it, if they did they would be where we have been the last 100 years.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
> if they did they would be where we have been the last 100 years
... they are different people. Humans have cultures, and some cultures dont value the things that makes the American system function. Yes, they have no idea what goes on in America, but Americans (barring those who've done sufficient travelling) are in exactly the same quandry. I've been through 30 of the 50 states, have friends down there .. an 90% of our culture is exported from the states. In fact, as much as Canadians are maligned for being more politically and socially aligned with the UK, the fact that we primarily consume American culture says to me that if we arn't already converted to American economic and social ideologies, we will be, as a majority, within the next decade. So people /do/ have a clue what its like to be American; but people don't want to be like Americans arn't automatically identifying themselves as people who don't understand how it works or why it works for them. Essentially, American culture is all about flaunting and expanding and embracing, so you have to understand its quite difficult for people in other countries to be objective about it. Just because they don't want to be the singularly most powerful nation on earth doesn't mean they have no right to disagree with the current methods and ideologies of the singularly most powerful nation on earth.
Anthropologists point out that much of the success of western nations is due to the avaiability of steel (to make guns), the availability of farmable land, and the way germs and desiese is spead around our ecosystem by way of weather systems. So I wouldn't feel so smug about justifying the methods with the results. There's nothing to say America didn't just luck out with the land.
However, I agree with your views on import exports. Kill NAFTA, and lets get back to serving our own countries needs. I'm down with that, and frankly, its refreshing to hear you say that.
But note: by the same token that people do not understand the US
"Old man yells at systemd"
There are people who only leave their computers once every year or two to vote in elections. The exercise they get from voting is probably the only thing sustaining their little Internet lives. Why do you want to take that away from these people?!
Seriously folks, the Internet isn't for everything, and we're all fortunate that it's not.
>Property rights are actually endowed by your Creator.
Now now. Again with the absolutes. No one is saying you don't have from-birth property rights to yourself. Slavery should always be an issue, because it should be a fundamental human value that ownership of another human is wrong. Slavery was (is?) only enforcable by virtue, of, again, state enforced authority. Property rights to Bill Gate's car collection is another story. This sytem says he's entitled to it, the laws back it, but I contend that if a majority of people feel he is not deserving of them, then society and social behaviour is being forced to bend at the behest of laws, our economy, and authority. I content that laws, the economy, and authority were created and should be utilized to reflect and enforce the interest of the majority.
> the majority of humanity is not smart enough to realize that enlightened self-interest is the basis of a happy life
Poor conditioned you. I ignored other parts of your post because they rest on your conditonned axioms.
> I accept your argument that I'm responsible for my own defense. By dint of effort and smarts I have that capability
You might assume responsibility, but I highly doubt the capability part. Like I said, if it were you and only you, you'd have been looted by other sufficiently conditionned have-nots.
"Old man yells at systemd"
classic falacy of A = B, B = C, so A = C (whic is not true).
Ouch. Ouch. Painfull!
I'm not sure what "classic falacy" you are trying to point out, but what ever it is, please find some other way to describe it.
Saying that if A=B and B=C then A=C is false is just really, really twisted . Chuckle.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The problem with the Slashdot polling engine is that CowboyNeal would be a candidate in every election...
Problem or feature?
Wheeeee
Damn.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
>in your view there's a fixed amount of wealth in the world and it's unevenly distributed by a minority that shapes the laws to maintain the uneven distribution
So there is unlimited land, right? Unlimited water? Unlimited food? Mainstream ecologists and anthropologists point out that it would take 5 earths to supply humanity with the standard of living westerners enjoy. Do some reading.
> a minority that shapes the laws to maintain the uneven distribution
It isn't always this way, in every society, but yes, thats where we are now. IMF loans to developing nations feature interest rates 30 times that of what the Allies felt was sufficient punishement to Germany, post WWII.
I'm not a paranoid schizo in aknowledging that even the WTO admits in its annual report that its attempts to use free market tactics to encourage growth have failed in every but one country that they placed under IMF's free-market privatization tactics. I'm not paranoid in aknowledging that current economic data says that if you make 35,000$ canadian (roughly, what, 17,000$ american), you're richer than 98% of all other people on this planet. Or that the gap has rised over the past 20 years. Even the WTO, the biggest endorsers of your attitudes, admit that it hasn't worked, with, predictably, the caveat, "yet".
It is really not my fault that your small mind is incapable of understanding that if everyone worked as hard as you, there still wouldn't be enough to go around. So, yes, your government is working hard to delay the widespread realization of this reality; a reality is so frightening that I understand you reject it on the basis of its depressive nature alone.
"Old man yells at systemd"
> The welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants. - Albert Camus
Gorgeous. Your post is absolutely amazing. Its nice to know there are people out there who are not brain washed into stroking the egos and 'problems' of the rich.
"Old man yells at systemd"
That'd solve the pesky "key escrow" problem, as yet another added bonus.
Only a fool would use their government-issued public/private key for anything other than signing purposes.
Yes, I know we're off topic, but if you can't follow where we came from and why I went to the WTO, perhaps you are misunderstanding things.
.. well shit, now who's going to clean your sewers and map your floors?
We both agree that vote-by-internet is bad.
However, our reasoning is different. I brought up the WTO, because you're reasoning amounts to "I dont want the government to be able to do more vote-buying, they are too powerful already, I want to vote for whoever lets me keep as much of what I make as possible (probably all?)", and I got to the WTO because I wanted to point out that government is the might behind your desire to retain more. The government is what prevents people from tearing down your desire to earn more, and the fact that you will take any opportunity, fair or not, in the eyes of your society, to do as much. The government backs the social value of greed as pushed by big business (wrapped and sold in the form of advertising), and ignores the individual's perception of what consistuates a fair gain for your efforts.
There isn't even unlimited human potential. The laws of thermodynamics pretty much dictate that the more powerful you get, the closer you get to having to accept the bottom line of a fixed amount of energy and resources. So, the real question should be, how do we live happily, with minimal social friction, while still maintaing opportunities to pursue our interests? Many societies have achieved this, with varying degrees of downside, inequality, etc. Not one has achieved this goal with the axiomatic value of self-interest you claim is the Right Way to Go.
I could point out why, but I'm confident that we will find out in due time. In the meantime, why don't you extend your current attitude and prevent people who dont pay as much taxes as you (the poor) from using the roads taxes are used to build and maintain, and see how far you get with that. Deny them voting. Deny them education to! Oh, and no loans. And deny them any access to anything unless they work very hard. And even then, tell them they arn't working hard enough, and deny them more. Keep denying them until they meet your level of approval, and then
"Old man yells at systemd"
The trend that the USA will be our world boss will probably continue. Seeing that the choice of US president probably has as much impact on citizens of other countries as it does on US residents, I think we should let foreign citizens have some say as to who our president is. In a very real way, s/he governs the entire world, so most of the world is being governed without its consent. Internet voting would be one easy way in which we could give foreigners some input into our elections. (BTW, this is a joke, in the sense that I know this could never happen--though I do seriously think it would be the right thing to do, and the world would become a better place because of it.)
This is not flamebait. The person who moderated it as such should be ashamed.
How would you like it if your rights were stripped from you in this manner?
Disencfranchisement of thousands of votes through beaurocratic incompetency is incredible thing to see in a country that prides itself on being a beacon for democracy.
Isn't free speech one of the bedrocks of American society? Or is the First Amendment a figment of my imagination?
Short of devoting a large chunk of their life to public service, being able to vote is the only chance the average citizen has to voice his/her beliefs on how their society should be governed.
Voting and free speech don't just go hand in hand, voting is free speech.
Next time you step up to the ballot box, or even open your mouth to complain about being given a latte instead of a mocha, imagine how mad you'd feel if someone ripped that ballot paper out of your hand, or stuffed a gag in your mouth so you couldn't raise the issue.
Remember, democracy isn't just for you, it's for everyone out there too. Otherwise, it's not democracy.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
>she hears single mothers on welfair wonder why a mother would ever work because they need to be home with their kid
.. the greed I see in my 200K earning bosses shows up in the culture and society, and thats why people want to bilk the system. If you feel top money earners dont scam the system as much as welfare freeloaders do, you're one very naive and inexperienced worker.
You're right! Fuck the kids! Live for yourself, girl!
The point is, if one cannot survive by working part time (and you can't), with kids, you're saying that the time the mother spends with the kid is less important than her spending most of her waking hours making sure they have something to eat, rather than have someone there to help them grow and mature as humans. Shit, don't put the cart in front of the horse. I'm all for equality, meaning men should stay home as much as women, but to suggest that people should put their career ahead of their kids does as much of a disservice to society (although not as immediately, quantifiably, or visually) as does welfare freeloaders.
And lets not forget
"Old man yells at systemd"
Which they don't. The "greedy fucks" you are so fond of demonizing earned about 15% of the national income and payed 30% of the taxes (source here). The top 5% earn 29% and pay 49%. Your welfare programs couldn't exist without the evil and greedy people who fund most of them.
are earning money as a biproduct of a desire to help the people around them
No, in general they're helping people as a byproduct of earning money. The only legitimate way for a capitalist to make a profit is to offer products or services at a price people will voluntarily pay. Of course there are some, such as the RIAA and MPAA thugs, who prefer to use government force to secure their profits, but that is a failing of excessive government power, not capitalism.
greedy fucks that should be taxed more and should stop trying to sell useless bullshit to people who have more important things to try and focus on
I guarantee you that the computer you typed this rant on was produced by a company whose leaders fall into that group. Apparently you don't find all their products to be completely useless. Perhaps you should make a list of which products are beneficial to society and whose sale should be permitted, and which should not. Worked great for the USSR.
if freeloading is so wonderful, why not do it? Maybe cause you feel you're doing things you dont want to do in order to live the life you're living
Or maybe some of us feel it is fundamentally immoral to survive off of resources forcibly taken from those who worked for them, if we have the ability not to.
if they did help themselves, you might not have to give up taxes, but you would have to give up some of the inequality of your salary and opportunities, which, when you claim money is your primary motivator, is pretty much exactly the same thing.
Classic socialist fallacy. The economy is not a zero-sum game. If you have more, that does not mean that someone else must have less. Republicans very much want poor people to become richer. After all, if Republicans are the party of the rich and Democrats the party of the poor, which of them has a vested interest in maintaining poverty?
Pay less taxes, and watch your salary drop.
Funny, I did pay less taxes this year, as did most Americans, and yet my salary didn't drop. Are you also going to claim that tax increases raise salaries?
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Don't forget the converse of this. For many people, this isn't easy, because they don't own a computer. To you and me, voting on the computer seems the simplest of things, ignoring implementation, but to the millions of people below the poverty line, even considering buying a computer is beyond their means. Now, I know that it's possible that we could also have public terminals from which the underprivileged could vote, but even that is discriminatory. Forcing the poor to get out of the house (or away from their two jobs) to go to a facility to vote while the more affluent get to spend two minutes doing the same thing from the comfort of their homes while still in their pajamas is wrong. That will end up meaning that the affluent have a more strongly heard voice than those less fortunate, and that is, very simply, wrong.
Fuck 'im up, Tim! His views are invalid! -Pirate Corp$
If they handed you the private key, they have a copy of it themselves.
Obviously in theory they would destroy any copies of the keys. It would take quite a conspiracy at many levels to keep a repository of all the keys and not let the public know. That being said, it is still possible, so...
If you use that key and it becomes associated with you, then they can use that key and claim you used it.
Maybe against strangers, but my friends and family are going to believe me before they'll believe some cryptographic sequence (and apparently your paranoid friends will as well). As for strangers, I believe that the government already has the power to tell lies about me if they really want to. They could easily fabricate an audio recording, and possibly even a video recording. That's going to convince the public a lot more than some possibly cracked, possibly stolen, possibly subverted prime number.
The reason they wouldn't do this very often (if at all) is because every time they do it, they blow their cover, and more people know that they are secretly keeping keys. Of course all of those people who discover that information and can't be intimidated must be either killed or made into a lunatic in the eyes of the public, and there's only so many people you can kill or make into a lunatic without getting caught. So as long as you only use the keys for low-profile things (and even then perhaps only with people you can't establish a secure channel with), the government's not going to bother blowing its cover.
In my particular example, to eliminate spam, the signature is merely used in the first correspondence between complete strangers. That email might really be from Joe Schmoe from Topeka, KS, it might be Joe's sister, who stole the CD, or it might really be from the government, but I don't really care, because I have about the same level of trust for all three of those people. What I can do is check if the key is in a list of known spammers, and decide whether I want to bother opening it based on that. Unless the government is willing to blow its cover to send me spam, it makes no sense for them to steal anyone's private key.