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Could E-Voting Cure Voter Apathy?
Bendebecker notes that The Register
is saying that "A major trial is about to kick off in the UK that could help decide whether e-voting is merely a gimmick or whether it can genuinely help cure voter apathy." Voter Apathy or Flash Poll Elections? What is the lesser of 2 evils?
The mechanism for voting will have little impact on current apathy. A significant proportion of the country doesn't vote because they have little or no faith in politicians and their constant lies, double standards, corruption and inability to keep promises. Sure, clicking a button will make it easier to vote but you're stilling voting for the same distrustful candidates.
The cure is more democracy. Abolish the electoral college. Make elections publicly funded, and ban private funding. Implement proportional representation to break the "two-party" system.
. . . and as long as I'm in fantasyland, let's build a time-travel device, and create a perpetual motion machine.
Not until we can devise a foolproof way of ensuring against voter fraud that the layperson can understand.
Schneier makes an attempt at this but it's pretty convoluted, I'm not even sure I understand it all and I at least know a little about this kind of stuff.
We may have to consider publishing who a person votes for. I know it goes against the grain of a longstanding tradition, but to make the protocol simple enough for the average person to understand while keeping it free of fraud may require nothing less.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
There is one huge problem. No-one can verify that you really have cast the vote and not your Hitler-loving-neighbour-with-huge-shotgun. Buying votes or forcing people to vote would become a huge issue. (Of course this seems to happen in someplaces today, but surely not everywhere)
IVAN Nethack is not the king anymore.
This is good for slashdotters. Currently, you have to haul your lazy ass down to the voting station, and lots don't want to do this. Voting results are thus skewed towards the will of the politically active. The politicians surely know this, and pander to them.
Online voting will allow the lazy of ass to participate, and thus skew the results more towards the technologically aware individuals. Again, the politicians will be aware of this, and would start taking technological issues more seriously, to pander to us!
If voting were simpler, those people disillusioned with the two bipartisan condidates might be more willing to cast their vote for a third-party candidate.
Also, eVoting would perhaps lessen the value of the poor voter. While lazy upper/middle-class voters with home computers and Internet connections could easily vote, those without them are still unlikely to vote.
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Take it sleazy,
-The Shockmaster
Voter participation should likewise increase through the use of varied voting methods, including one that can be easily done from home.
(1) Anyone who is too lazy to go to a polling station should not be voting anyway. If they do not care enough to make that much effort, then it is highly unlikely that they would care enought to get informed, and make a good choice.
(2) If people are apathetic because they do not like any of the choices available then making it easier to vote will have no effect (let's see - would you like to eat broken glass or dog-food? Would delivery to your door-step make the choice easier?).
(3) If people are apathetic because they would be equally happy with either party then again making it easier to vote will not make a difference.
Give the people candidates who are actually worth voting for.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Why would we want someone who is apathetic making major decisions? I don't want to see a cure for the lack of voting, I want to see a cure for apathy.
e-voting that takes place in other than an official polling place with be a magnet for abuse.
You will have a lot of representatives from the DNC visiting nursing homes to help people that don't get to the polls to vote for the "right" candidate.
Not that this doesn't happen with absentee voting already, but the abuse will increase, and the weak minded will have loads of help in casting their votes.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
With E-Voting you have to worry about another problem. Spontaneous, apathetic voters who are voting.
Have you ever been in a political discussion where you wonder how the other person can even begin to believe his or her arguments are sound? Remember what AOL joining the Internet did to newsgroups, etc?
I don't think removing the EC is the best thing, rather making it on a much smaller scale, ie County by county. I'm not positive but I would imagine that our counties now are closer to the size of the states when the EC was brought around.
Afaik the members of the EC don't do anything other than cast their presidential votes, which are _suppposed_ to be representative, so just cut out the actual people and do the voting on a county level.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
If you get your ass up, get dressed, go down the street and stand in line so you can present ID to vote, you probably have at least some idea who you're going to vote for.
If you can do it naked, from your bed while eating Doritos, you may not have the same commitment.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
That kills the "I don't have time" argument.
To further get people voting, give them a tax right-off if they have a receipt proving that they voted.
The little dig at the end of the CmdrTaco's intro is absolutely correct. There's a pretty big link between voter apathy and the "lesser of two evils" problem. The root cause for the lesser of two evils problem is Duverger's Law, which gives us the two party system. The link between voter apathy and two-party systems is pretty unmistakable, and there's a lot of research on the subject showing it. Read the Wikipedia link above for good starting reference material.
Rob Lanphier
p.s. Visit Electorama! for more on this subject
I live in Michigan. Thanks to our super-DMCA law, which makes it a felony to conceal the source of any electronic transmission, we cannot have E-voting machines unless we give up anonymous votes.
"What's good enough for Granddad, is good enough for me. The way it was, that's the way it's got to be."
You know...Frankly I'm shocked, and not surprised. A lot of the replies here seem to be concerned with the idea that if you make it easier for voters to do their civic duty, you get people who really don't give a damn tilting the scales one way or the other.
But that is what democracy is all about! It's not about "power to the rich" or "power to the intellectuals"...which often wind up being synonymous.
If you stand against online voting because it would "dilute the vote", then you're essentially arguing the same position that the South argued before the American Civil War, that "all people should count for tax purposes, but they don't get a vote". You can argue against it for many other reasons (lack of security, infrastructure, etc)...but *please* don't pick that one.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Any election system which allows a voter to prove how he voted is unconstitutional in many states. This includes publishing ballots by name, publishing ballots by issued ID, etc. I know Colorado has this provision in its constitution because it came up when a local performance artist/election system designer tried to convince the City of Boulder to try telephone voting using software to be written by student volunteers.
The reason for this restriction, as others have stated, is to prevent election fraud. If you can't prove how you voted, there's no point in buying votes or attempting to coerce voters.
The other manifestation of the same restriction is that you must vote in private. Nobody can join you in the voting booth, etc. After all, external proof of how you voted is irrelevant if some 300 lb guy with a lead pipe is in the booth with you.
Ironically, this is provided by voting in public. Since others are around, nobody can force themselves into your voting booth.
But e-voting systems fail miserably at this. If I can vote from the convenience of my home:
- a battered woman can be forced to vote "the right way" by her abusive husband. (or use "spouse" all around, since there are some battered husbands)
- an employee can be forced to vote in his boss's office.
- a church group can get together to pray and then "Witness" each other voting the right way.
and so forth. All highly illegal, but difficult to prove and expensive to buck since you're still beaten up, fired, excommunicated, whatever.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Most of the comments here seem to be along the lines of "Oh, great! Let's put the future of the country more in the hands of the unemployed apathetic slackers ...".
Maybe it wouldn't turn out that way, though.
Here in the states, the last few times I've seen some big-wig try to push e-voting, the equal-opportunity folks get their undies all bunched up over it, claiming that it discriminates against the lower-class (who don't own as many PC's as the rich people do).
So, you need to kinda ask yourself what there is more of:
A: Apathetic slackers who are too apathetic to go down to their traditional polling place, yet still motivated enough to own a PC or to trek over to visit a friend who does (or to an internet cafe), or...
B: Busy professionals who have plenty of access to PC's, but who are arguably too busy to swing by their polling place.
Personally, I fall into the second category.
Lastly, when I think about it, I'd have to venture that someone who has a PC has got to be, at least marginally, more informed than someone who doesn't. I mean... what kind of hole do you have to be living in to not have (or have access to) a PC?
So, something like this isn't necessarily the end of the world. We'll have to see.
I can't believe the responses coming from these slashdotters! I have been a STRONG advocate for online voting for years and see it as the ONLY way to save our unbalanced voting system.
In college, we successfully used an online voting system where the GREAT majority of votes were taken online. Not only had the percentage of votes been much higher than in years without online voting, but there was plenty of supplemental material to educate yourself on the votes beforehand.
It seems like many of you are worried about stupid people making stupid votes - I disagree. I still think that the lazy voter who doesn't care won't even bother to do an online vote. I think that many people who either can't make it, are too busy, or just intimidated by the process of our current voting scheme are perfect candidates.
So few in the US vote, it's rather sickening. I'm inclined to believe that if the percentage of eligible voters raised to even 60%, we would most likely never see a conservative in office again.
How brilliant - the last thing we need is people who spend an entire minute on figuring out who to give the nuclear launch keys to.
Voting -- like jury duty -- should be harder to do, not easier. Otherwise we end up with people who put as much thought into who should run the country as the OJ jury did into their statement that "we didn't understand that DNA stuff".
Wow, classic, go ahead and make this a "white" against "non-white" issue. Brilliant. Is it your belief thta non-white people cannot be wealthy or do not possess Internet access?
If you are too lazy to vote, chances are you are definitely too lazy to get deep into the issues you are voting for.
:( duh...)
I'd go as far as to say we shouldn't let everyone vote, but only those who feel sufficiently strong about the issue being voted upon. Unfortunately, there is no good way to measure how strongly you feel, so you can't implement such restriction, but it would be nice (however utopian) to have this work.
I have noticed something really cool in the opensoruce development. In short you can summarize it as "Jumping through hoops helps". It goes like that:
If you want to affect any sufficiently mature open-source project, you have to jump through hoops. However inefficient that may be, it shows your interest. First, you have to post something useful to the mailing lists to get past moderators. If you have a patch, it has to be valuable AND follow THEIR coding style, not your own. The burder of getting YOUR change into the project is on YOU, and is YOUR responsibility. It is also YOUR problem if you didn't RTFM and asked stupid questions till people stopped answering you.
My point is that if you feel strongly about something, you will just through soome hoops to make yourself heard. You have the capability to change whatever it is you are trying to change, but you have to show some knowledge about the subject and respect to other people first. And will learn something valuable in the process.
Also, when I say 'I worked on such and such, and some of my code is running in your kernel (or app, or whatever) right now', I can be proud of that, because there is work and appreciation involved. Do I feel proud when I say 'I voted for Bush'? No. Why? Because it was so easy, and because 10 other people just checked the box at random. I wish I could be proud of that. But you've got to raise the bar first! (like that's ever going to happen...
Jobs? Which jobs?
If you vote from home, then there's no exit polling. How is Peter Jennings going to tell California, Alaska, and Hawaii how to vote if he doesn't have the numbers from Maine, Florida, and New York in time??
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
I find it amazing and disappointing how many people are posting excuses why they don't vote. For most of their imagined problems, actually going out and voting would do a small part in fixing those problems. By voting, you, in a small way, are making your mark on the statistics of the election. Even if there is only one vote--your vote--for legalizing dog-weddings (for example), the fact that someone wants them is know known to the public. The effect is subtle but real.
Another good example: a recent school bond referendum fell through by a measily 200 or so votes in a county of thousands of registered voters. If only 200 more people had formed an opinion about the referendum and actually voted, the outcome could have been completely different. Remember, the outcomes of elections are decided by the majority of voters, not citizens.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
The reason voter turn out is low isn't caused only by "The lesser of two evils" It is because the ultra majority of people don't care as long as the status quo is preserved. As long as they can go to work, buy their car, watch CSI and take a nap, No one really cares.
As for the lesser of two evils... We have system that lends itself to two partys fighting for the top; However, they system also allows for other canidates to arise. If you don't like the two evils on the ballot WRITE IN YOUR OWN FRICKEN CANIDATE there is nothing stopping you.
While unrelated, people in the USA need to stop and realize they live in democratic federal republic. Once they realize how our representitvles get elected, how the federal system is supposed to work, and why their state governments should have more control, I think everthing else will fall into place.
It's true, I don't spell check
Rigged elections made easy? With no paper trail it will get easier. Four years ago this would have been dismissed as too unlikely but I'm not so sure anymore.
More people might vote, but they'll still be the same people who don't care about it, and are more impressed by image than substance. Getting elected these days is more about showmanship than good ideas, integrity, or even politics. Money spent on advertising is _strongly_ correlated to election victory, which either indicates that advertizing works, or that people are more likely to vote for politician with rich allies. Given that political advertizing is all about image, and maybe some grandiose promises, it's a bad thing that people are so dependent on the ads they see to make their voting decisions. Online voting will make this worse, because now some of the people who don't care just don't bother voting at all. If they can vote online, they might be sitting at home watching TV, and see an ad (if ads are allowed to be shown during polling hours), or something about one of the candidates that makes them decide to vote for that person without knowing anything about what policies that candidate supports. After voting, they'll probably stop feeling guilty for not voting, like in the past, since they think they've done their civic duty just by voting. Of course, they haven't. They've diluted the vote of people who are familiar with the candidates. The media is a critical part of democracy, but biased media (check out FAIR) and flashy ads don't help.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
I did a paper on this subject. I did not find that there was very much to benifate from an electronic system in terms of user turn out.
The main stumbling block with electronic voting is trust. Even if the system is perfectly trust worthy, people must be able to believe that it's trust worthy to trust it. People must be able to see why it is trust worthy. Electronic voting would be too obscure for most people to be able to understand.