Slashdot Mirror
India Starts All-Electronic National Elections
fantomas writes "Forget the problems of e-voting in a state in some middling sized western country as recently reported by Slashdot. The world's largest democracy is about to go to the polling stations and vote for a new government using all-electronic voting systems. Will it work? Will the USA follow if all goes to plan? Can any readers from India comment on how it seems to be going?"
Of course, all kinds of jokes come to mind. Did they outsource it? Blah Blah Blah.
But, really, if they are able to make this work, perhaps some of the outsourcing the US is making to Inida can be justified with their ability to, at least, beat us on the e-voting front.
That is still a big if. It's funny we are worried about fraud on our e-voting machines. They are worried about fights. Maybe if we started having fist fights at the booths all our e-voting woes will dematerialize.
And we all know he stole the election from Gore.
Actually, Gore lost the election fair and square -- 5 to 4.
I wonder what happens when the story comes out on which justices had bet on which candidate in the office pool ( Harry Blackmun spilled the beans in his recently released interviews). Sounds like 9 justices that should have recused themselves.
At least in India, they haven't established the same pattern we have in these cases. Historically in the US, nearly every candidate to steal a presidential election has been assasinated in office.
I'm not sure which would be better, 2 strong parties, like in the US, or dozens of small parties forming coalitions, like in India.
I believe Israel is also similar to India in this sense.
I'm not a big fan of the two party system (the UK is much like the US in this respect), because it divides everything into left or right, black or white. The opposition always tends to feel the need to support the opposite of whatever the current administration stands for. That's why I encourage people to vote for minor parties - if nobody does because "they'll never win" then we will always be stuck with the two party system. (UK folks - vote Liberal Democrat in the next elections!)
Lemme get this right. You are proposing that every voting machine inform every other voting machine the biometrics of the person who has voted?
;-) ), it still seems to be pretty difficult.
Otherwise, all you would prevent is a voter voting twice on the same machine. In a country of a billion, I don't see how your approach would be feasible even in a country of a million.
Even if you plan to check this at counting time as against at run time(er.. make that election time
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I believe in freedom of thought. I have no other choice.
Yes. Instead of feeding and educating our people, we'll spend billions logging the entire population's fingerprints so they can vote and tell us they'd rather have us spend their taxes on better schools and more food!
I also reply below your current threshold.
raj
Sarovar.org Hosting for open source projects in Indi
We have 100% e-vote for several years already and, we are a quite big country with very remote areas. Probably it's not as big operation as in India but quite big as well. ;) ) that connects directly with the central servers that count the votes.
Another very interesting feature we have here is the possibility to follow results in real time via web or a java program (which I run on my linux box
As for the security, the source of the system is not generaly open but any representative of any party can ask for review, random audits are made in the ballots and a part of them print the vote for the voter.
Scientia est Potentia
I for one shall surely do so. The day I vote for a Tory is the day Beelzebub buys a toboggan, but I don't think I could bring myself to vote for Blair, not after all the fun of last year.
I can't help but wonder - why is the leader of a nominally socialist party tied into this destructive alliance with the most frightening right-wing rabble seen in a Western democracy for half a century?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
You know, 2 parties aren't good for expressing your exact political opinion, but the likelihood of either of them going too far from center as the party line is pretty low, since they'd only lose people. I'll take centrist, inclusive parties that only "pretty much" represent the majority of political views, rather than spawning a hundred extremist parties. That is to say, moderate politics tends to be the dominant mode of government, rather than the exception.
It's like the gas station paradox of economics - the best place to put your gas station is dead center in the middle of town. And if you're starting a new one, it's still best to put it dead center in the middle of town, or as close as possible to it.
There's also something to be said for not having your government fall apart every time a coalition has divisive issues to deal with. The Israelis, for instance, have this problem. Evacuate the settlements? Well, that's a great way to alienate UTJ and Likud, and if they happened to be part of the ruling coalition, well, the Israeli government falls apart until they can put a new coalition back together.
I'm not trying to say that I think two parties is better or worse than 2+ parties - only that I think there are some advantages to the two party system that people don't talk about.
I do agree with your sentiment that political participation in this country doesn't receive as much cultural emphasis as it should, though.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
How do you propose to maintain the art form that is used to write laws? Yes, I do mean art form. Laws need to be succinct, definitive, and without loopholes. Our full-time politicians and their lawyer-trained assistants have a difficult enough time with this.
Representatives are elected as watchdogs for those of us who don't have enough time to participate ourselves. They are our eyes and ears.
How do you propose from keeping big-money lobbiests form paying off the voting population? Don't you believe that voting activities and political activism wouldn't be monitored by special interest groups in any way they could manage. Even in a guaranteed anonymous vote, people will want to become involved in the political and democratic process. Wherever laws are written, you will find special interest groups and lobbiests.
Structuring a democracy in the manner you depict, although idealistic, isn't very practical. Yes, many improvements to the democratic process can be realized through electronic voting and informative websites, but it isn't the magic pill you invision. Let's not forget that not everyone has access to or wants to use the Internet.
assert(expired(knowledge));
In the Netherlands, there are currently 5 sizable parties with a good likelyhood of being part of the government. They are Social-democrats, Christian center, Reactionists, Liberal and Conservative. I'll vote conservative, but they might (and have in the past) make a coalition with any of the other parties. If they team up with the liberals, they will compromise on government reform. If they team up with the Socialists, they will compromise on wage levelling and higher tax for rich gits. You get the idea... So, what exactly am I voting for?
Aside from the uncertainty of the resulting policies, a coalition will always have to compromise on their differing principles and choose a middle ground, which can make for a very dull and rudderless government. At least a single party in power can take decisive action.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
With that line of thinking, why not have one party state? One "centrist" party will solve the problem all together, no?
The flaw with your opinion is that you fail to realize that the more parties you have, the greater the number of opinions, and hence dissent. The more the dissent, the more likely something will be thought out and debated.
Even though goverments may fall apart under British-style systems, it is much better. Isreali government, for example, might fall apart but that is actually a good thing. The reason it happen is because the issue at hand is very important (at least from their perspective). In a one party, or two party state (like USA), such important debates will be watered down. I'm sure the two parties will "agree" and just end up passing a bill. For instance, consider how the existence of only two parties (that get more than 1% vote) means that something like war (say the Iraqi war) has zero dissent. Both the Democrats and the Republicans "agree" on everything. There might be some rhetoric one way or another but in the end it's all the same. In contrast, countries with more viable parties are far more democratic. Things like wars won't get a free pass with everyone "agreeing" on everything.
(SIDE NOTE: I put agree in quotes because parties never agree in words. However, they do agree in practice under two party systems. For example, Kerry doesn't agree with Bush's Iraqi war if you just listen to his rhetoric. But in reality, he agrees with everyting Bush has done. In fact, he even voted for nearly all of Bush's decisions).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
The primary reason not to trust the fate of a democracy to a centralized voting system (electronic or not) is that any such system can be taken over. The stakes are much higher with a single system -- a party successfully taking it over wins all. So scumbags will be trying much harder to find flaws in it, than designers and implementors securing, or reviewers checking it.
The danger still holds partially true, BTW, even with a decentralized, but uniform election system -- the same flaw (software, hardware, or administrative) once found can be exploited everywhere.
For example, there are strong indications of elections rigging in the past in different states of the Union (by crooks from both major parties). But those only affected that particular state with nation-wide effects muffled.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.