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1st Real Internet-Option Election in North America
gpmap writes "From the London Free Press: As voters across Ontario were preparing to head to the polls today to elect their municipal leaders, a technological first was quietly taking place in the easternmost reaches of the province. About 100,000 voters the counties of Prescott-Russell and Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry were registered to cast their ballots online. Under a new system developed by CanVote Inc., an eastern Ontario startup company, registered voters in 11 area municipalities had the option of voting via the Internet or telephone. "I believe we're the first to do a real full Internet election in North America," said Joe Church, president of CanVote Inc. "People vote by Internet or telephone at their choice. There is no conventional ballot at all." Voters were issued a PIN number with conventional registration cards mailed to area households. Since Nov. 5, people have been logging on to a CanVote website to vote. Church said the new system makes democracy more accessible by removing such barriers to voting as limited mobility or even poor weather." Of course, systems like ProxyVote have been around for a while, but those are commercial issues, rather then state issues.
It would be easy to catch that...
Caller ID.
Just have them call an 800 number and the reciever would know the number. Number gives you addresses that give you head counts. If to many votes from one location and PIN's do not match the addresses. You are found.
Internet may cause a bigger issue, because of reuse of IP's. But software that IDs the NIC's MAC would help stem that problem too.
I don't understand why people have a problem with this. If I could sell my vote for $10 I certainly would since I'm not even currently registered. I mean, it just cuts to the chase really. Instead of spending millions of dollars on campaign advertising they could just buy the votes they need to win. Seems fair to me. Just don't sell your vote to the guy you like. We'd cut out a year of campaigning and profit at the same time. It's not like corporations don't already buy Congressional votes anyway.
...and I'll tell you, if this works anything like some of the municipal services, they're fscked! Prescott-Russell is a backwater. Half the places there are still on dialup, for starters. The road and water systems are a shambles. My ex is going to have to shell out an extra $2K this year to help upgrade everything. Never a cop in sight, so the kids in their damn rice-boy POS cars run rampant on the residential streets. Meanwhile, the little guy in his white pickup who enforces municipal bylaws seems everywhere, looking for those hapless individuals who run their lawn sprinklers on the wrong day, or have a hedge 6 inches too high. Shows where the priorities are. I think this election is going to be a farce!
Whoever has access to the records:
pin xxx -> voted for yyy and pin xxx -> is person zzz, could apply the transitive property: person zzz -> voted for yyy.
At least with low technology (cross on paper), your vote is mixed with several others.
One subtle problem with online voting is that it's much easier for a third-party to coerce your vote and to check that you voted "correctly". The third-party (an employer, union official, local mob boss, etc) can "encourage" you to make sure you vote at an online facility where they are watching... and there goes the privacy of the polling place and the anonymity of the ballot box.
Of course, in earlier times this was recognized as an issue with absentee voting. The solution that traditional voting systems adopted was to allow the voter to vote in person later at a real polling place, and that vote, (presumably more free of coercion), would invalidate their earlier vote.
I wonder if CanVote provided a similar "vote override" option for Ontario citizens? A polling place vote should always override an alternative-mechanism vote. I hope in the move to online voting we don't lose the non-obvious protections that have been added to our current electoral system over time.
--LP, a programmer who also supports voter-verified paper trails
That's the way proxy votes come out in business, there is rarely any suspense about how it will come out because everyone knows before hand who has the blocks of proxy votes needed. Also, you would expect a new PIN for each election, but if you signed up for the right program, each of your PINs could be delivered straight to the party headquarters of your choice.
Many states with lotteries already do something like this. Sign up and have your same favorite numbers played every week and charged against your credit card. Voluntary taxation made easy.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not suficiently advanced.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
If you were black and lived in Florida this might just allow you to vote instead of being turned away from the voting booths.
Of course there might be other ways of eliminating votes from inappropriate people - "His name is Leroy, just drop the vote into the bit bucket~.
Egad! Is this the destination we have reached via all of the bloodshed and vigorous negotiation in US history? The richest guy wins?
We may suspect that to already be true, but we live by the illusion that our votes count.
If we give up that important illusion, there are some not-so-mentally-stable elements of our society who might start voting with higher velocity ballots. BN
Not if the system is closed source, and records the wrong votes. That's why we need a paper trail. That simple.
And I highly doubt US Employers are required to pay you for that time. And anyone who doubts that you asking for time off to vote will not have a potentially negative impact come review time is a little naive. There are probably millions of folks out there who can't afford to loose that money. Not "I can't go to the movies this week" can't afford, but "I can't feed my family" or "I can't pay my gas bill" can't afford.
I'll admit I might be wrong and they have to pay you, but I'd be surprised. I still stand by the negative attitude modifier on your review though.