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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?"
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
No. When people don't vote, it is not usually because they know so little about politics that they don't know who to vote for, but rather because they know so much about politics that they know there is nobody to vote for.
I have never voted. No party respects the values of equality, freedom and democracy that I have.
If all the non-voters came out, they would boost the slightly-progressive vote considerably, and perhaps prevent the worst excesses of the craziest parties.
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.
> 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?