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The World's First National Internet Election
InternetVoting writes "Expanding on the limited 2005 Internet voting pilot successes, the small European nation of Estonia will become the first country to allow voting in a national parliamentary election via the Internet. Fresh off the news of France's successful primary election using Internet voting and the announcement of 12 new UK election pilots, is Europe leaving the U.S. behind?"
As soon as "internet voting" has been reviewed to see how well a rigged election can be performed, the U.S will switch, too.
is Europe leaving the U.S. behind?
I didn't know they were related...
Nice dis of the US though [for no reason whatsoever]. I should point out that Canada doesn't have voting over the net either. Neither does most of the free world. [and yes, I'm Canadian...]
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Don't all the qualms with electronic, paperless voting apply here?
The question is, is that a bad thing? We have enough problems trying to secure our electoral process without internet voting to make everything even more difficult. In addition to the security concerns (now elections can be hacked from anywhere, Russia, China, Iran) there's also the problems with coercion. With secret balloting, it's more-or-less impossible to coerce voters, because there no way to prove how someone voted. But when you can stand over their should while they vote, it becomes a lot easier.
I think the biggest question is, what problem is this trying to solve? What's wrong with non-internet voting that internet voting will fix? And will whatever that is be worth the consequences? I'm one who feels like the days of a pen-marking-paper ballots should come back (hey, we still have them in my district) and leave behind all of these more modern, more easily hacked systems. Is it really that important that the results of the election be known the of the election? Important enough that we're willing to sacrifice the security of the balloting?
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
Really, the point of voting in person is to provide a safe place so that no one sees who you vote for except for yourself.
What measure did they take to ensure that no one looks over the voter's computer screen and bribe/threaten the voter ?
Population of Estonia: 1,324,333
Number of votes that will be cast in next Estonian election: 13,371,337
Voting over the internet has its attractions, but it often involves leaving behind the concept of the secret ballot (as does mail-in voting as in Oregon of course) and also can generate serious security risks. Not enough details on the Estonian system -- if the real voting is done on the small box they put their card into and it can generate a secure channel to the voting system, then it's possible to do it securely even with a compromised network or PC, but if the PC is involved in anything but passing along encrypted traffic, there are serious risks.
Likewise if these are terminals at home, secret ballot goes out the window. If these are terminals in a secured location just using the internet as a platform for encrypted communication with a server, you can still have secret ballot.
But in any case, voting over the internet presents real problems in auditability. Where is the paper trail?
It's good to be left behind in these areas.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
A really, really bad idea. It's called mob rule, or the tyranny of the majority. Unpopular, difficult decisions are (occasionally) made by governments. For example, in the US, the civil rights reform in the 60s.
Plus government funding would end up solely going to the most populous areas. Government services, on the other hand, generally cost more in rural, rather than urban, areas (for example, rubbish collection is cheaper in a city, where the truck has to go less distance between pick ups, than in remote locations).
Of course, the status quo is hardly nirvana either...
At least in America, the representational system was put in place not due to communications, but from fear of the problems with direct democracy. Under this system it is much easier to go to war, as if everyone gets hot tempered about Canada they can accelerate things with pretty much no checks. Also in this system you are unable to enact positive yet possibly unpopular policy (like freeing slaves, desegregating schools, allowing women to vote, etc.) If you've ever seen the amount of minute tax increases to increase local school funds turned down you would also know the government would have a nightmarish time raising funds. More democratic does not mean better, this is why there are pretty much no democracies in the world anymore.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
What you describe is "direct democracy". They had that in Athen. It has all kind of fun effects, like first executing the homecoming officers for leaving their dead beind after a lost battle, then, after realizing that was a bad idea, executing the people who ordered the executions. Or executing one of the worlds greatest philosophers (Socrates) for being a stubborn pain in the ass.
The idea behind representative democracy is to avoid the "heat of the movement" decisions. In fact, the major problem with representative democracy these days, is that with the constant polling and professional politicians who adjust their views to follow the vims of the (voting part of) the population, we are getting closer to direct democracy. Representative democracy works best when politicians actually stand for something.
Surely there must be a way for you to vote for "none of the above" as Per Abrahamsen says. For example in Mexico you can cross out the whole ballot to make your vote null. It is still counted but it's not alloted to anybody. And it is usually a good measure of protest. High intentionally nullified vote count is always given a lot of air time and puts pressure on the government to take some corrective actions.
The problem I see with this is that they just know you are not happy, but there is no other mechanism to provide feedback as to what are you actually upset about. Best way is always to get involved. Support those that most closely resemble our values (in the real world nobody will ever match our values 100%), or if they are truly appalling, start our own, join one and change it from inside, etc. Inaction only gives the fascists currently in power to continue turning the US in a police state and that is bad for you and bad for the rest of the world given the USA's power and penchant for meddling in other people's affairs :P
I'm not trolling, if somebody disagrees please reply, don't just mod me down =P
+Raider of the lost BBS
> I'm sure paper ballots work great when your country has less than half the population of Los Angeles.....
The logic behind that kind of statements escape me. If we have the half the population of LA, we also have the same population as half of LA. So have a paper ballot in one half of LA, and another paper ballot in the other half of LA, and add the results.
Hvor svært kan det være?
It's called direct democracy.
And it's already the case in Switzerland. By law an change in the constitution must be approved by a referendum. Any law proposed by the public (a public initiative with enough signarutes) must also undergo mandatory referendum. Same goes for any international treaties (when Switzerland accept some treaty it's not in fact the country but the actual swiss population !). And any petition that collects enough signature can ask any other proposed law to undergo referendum, which happens almost always. Thus almost no law haven't been voted before being applied.
Although that sometimes people aren't interested about the vote, there's always at least one third of the population that participate in any vote (that's still a much more important and more representative part of the population than any assembly), and much more citizens get involved in more important votes (up to two third approximately. There's always a third that don't give a damn shit about what's happening and accept whatever the other want).
And unlike other
And the fact that we constantly vote (each few months) has three results :
- The population isn't fed up with voting. In fact at least one third of the population is getting used to the idea of always, no matter what, giving its opinion on the voted law.
- Being used to give its opinion makes that the population more often votes according its opinion of the law. The votes aren't used as ad hominem attacks to express disagreement with the politicians that are proponents of them (unlike what happened in France where the EU constitution was also partly refused because people disliked the politicians that encouraged the pro-EU vote, and note only because of the content).
- In the USA because the biggest part of the population contribution to politics are election and they only happen seldom, the different parties pile up a lot of money and then deploy campaign that start to look as marketing. In Switzerland nobody could afford spending that much money every couple of month and therefore, most of the information the public has comes from debates, from (non-paid-for by the government) journalists' articles, experts on the subject (economists / scientist / or whatever is related to the subject of the law being voted) from both camps give opinions, etc. Therefore the population tends to vote being more informed as enticed by ads, and end up accepting difficult decisions, fully knowingly the implications.
The only difference with what you said is that we don't use internet that much for voting (except for some pilot projects). Only as an information medium.
Voting is still mainly done by dropping an envelope in an urn, or by mail. But there are active development done to introduce e-voting in order to facilitate the voting procedure and attract a higher participation)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]