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Using the Internet To Subvert Democracy
david_adams writes "All the recent talk about various polls and elections being pranked or hijacked, serious and silly alike, prompted me to write an article about the technical realities behind online polling, and the political fallout of ever becoming subject to online voting for serious elections. Even if we were to be able to limit voting to legitimate, legal voters, the realities of social networking and the rise of Internet-based movements would dramatically alter the political landscape if online voting were to become commonplace."
Computers have no practical place in elections unless there is a paper trail to verify the count. They just cause more confusion than hanging chads.
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
Agreed. The original story makes it sound like a deviation from the current would be bad. I think pretty much anything would be better. In particular, more actual substance ... more discussion ... more grouping of people of similar interests. This isn't "subversion". It's just discussion. God forbid people actually have a fucking clue what they're voting on before the fact ...
Democracy is the force of the majority over the minority. It doesn't matter if you have elections or not.. that's just a formality.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Doesn't your suggestion to vote the opposite essentially represent the exact same behavior?
People should be encouraged to vote their minds, not vote how you think they should vote.
I like how it says that internet based movements would alter the political landscape (translation: people would be heard again) but the article is "Using the Internet to Subvert Democracy."
Since when was Democracy redefined to, "What the rich and powerful want?"
Even if you could transport that vote 100% of the time securely and accurately you still have a huge problem. The problem with any system where you can vote in plain sight of other people will lead to all sorts of complications. Mainly the creation of a new market, the votes market. People will probably buy votes. Even if its not enough to change an election it is still going to be considered far more important to ensure this isn't happening than to let people vote from home.
So maybe we can transport a vote safely, but without some way to make sure that a vote is a 'real' vote and not a product of bribery or criminal behavior is still in question.
Computer based voting can never be secured to the same point as paper based voting. For a very simple reason: Trust. You would have to trust someone.
Paper has one key feature that a computer can never reach: Anyone literate can use it and verify it. You can read, or at least tell left from right and someone tells you left is Party A and right is Party B, you can recount. Also, should someone try to mess with the ballot, anyone with normal working senses can be a bystander to ensure this won't happen. You can see that someone opens the ballot, a simple (but very, very special) paper slip glued to the lock (aka a seal) can already show whether someone tampered with it.
With computers, you first of all have to trust the maker of the election hardware and software, or at least you have to trust all the auditors, first that they did their job right and second that they're not "in" with the makers. You, Joe Average, cannot test the reliability of the setup. You're no computer expert. And if you are, and even if you're giving the chance to audit the software, you know that you simply cannot ensure to 100% that every single vote will be counted the way it is supposed to be. With paper, no problem. Take the votes and start counting. Anyone can do it.
Tamper proof... is it? I can't tell if the ballot has been opened, I cannot tell whether someone will see who voted which way. Can you? Can Joe?
No matter how you twist and turn it, computer elections cannot be made reliable to the same extent we have today with paper ballots.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What is really odd about your statement, you use sub as in subculture but I think you don't really know what it means, in light of the way you used it. So the new internet democracy, people as individuals have the opportunity to have a voice, and collections of people ie. all of the various subcultures of the overall culture of that particular societal group will be able to share their thoughts within that subculture as well as within society as a whole.
So 4chan, or the Republicans, or the Klu Klux Klan or Bankers or Corporate Executives or Religious Fundamentalists or any of the other subcultures which express views which substantially diverge from the average, more reasonable and moral view of the general populace, will have a voice, however they will not be able to inflate that voice through violence or by paying for a much louder voice and effectively silencing the majority as they have done for the last couple of hundred years.
So the internet age is, the age of "a government of the people, by the people and for the people" and not as a platitude but as a developing reality.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Federalist #10 explores how true democracy would be susceptible to faction: http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm. The "founding fathers" were very concerned about how easily swayed the common people are; in fact "mob" comes from "mobile vulgaris," the movable herd. I think Nietzsche's considerations on class resentment apply here too. Think about the true but disturbing populist movements like the French Revolution, the Stalinist and Maoist revolutions and so on. They're nasty things. Populism can become ugly quickly.
Which makes the outcome of the vote fair?
No. What on earth made you think it did?
My pics.
Which makes the outcome of the vote fair?
No. What on earth made you think it did?
That was exactly my point.