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."

Comments

Dumb article.

[tpgp]

Stupid article - a transparent attempt to get his friend a new bicycle. I strongly urge everyone to go to the Kona website and vote for the Tanuki (if you don't understand why, RTFA).

Oh, and TFA states: That's why no country practices direct democracy. Wrong

Re:Dumb article.

[DreamsAreOkToo]

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?"

Re:Dumb article.

[foobsr]

Democracy redefined

Quote: "The citizens of any given polis were an elite group of people — slaves, peasants, women and resident aliens were not part of the body of citizens."

Any attempt of 'change' would indeed disturb the process of finding the roots again.

CC.

Re:Dumb article.

[rtb61]

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.

Re:Dumb article.

[krou]

Actually, I would say that that has always been the real definition of democracy. The definition of democracy that most people describe is completely different out of necessity, because it's a piece of propaganda that the masses need to believe. The "bewildered herd" needs to be managed, because they're too dumb to know what's good for them. That's been a central theme of elite political theory for a very long time (see, for example, the writings of Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman, Reinhold Niebuhr). Even when the US was founded, James Madison was quite clear about what the purpose of the senate should be:

The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa, or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge of the wants or feelings of the day laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. The landed interest, at present, is prevalent; but in process of time, when we approximate to the states and kingdoms of Europe; when the number of landholders shall be comparatively small, through the various means of trade and manufactures, will not the landed interest be overbalanced in future elections, and unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be jsut, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.

Elections and online voting.

[captnbmoore]

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.

Re:Elections and online voting.

[symbolset]

Until computers are granted suffrage they ought not be trusted to count votes.

Re:Elections and online voting.

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

True story: When I was an undergrad I saw a table setup at the quad with a large sign that said "End Woman's Suffrage" I went up to talk to the guys and they literally had an entire clipboard of signatures, primarily from women thinking that "suffrage" was some bad thing akin to suffering. They were sponsored by the psychology department, I don't know what they were trying to prove, but I learned that day how stupid most people are.

Re:Elections and online voting.

[subreality]

Computers have no practical place in elections unless there is a paper trail to verify the count.

To the point: Computers' place in elections should be solely to produce a clean, unambiguously marked, human readable, machine countable paper ballot, and the subsequent counting thereof.

Re:Elections and online voting.

[Anonymous Coward]

So people don't know what Suffrage is, can't understand what "End womens suffrage!" means, yet signed the "petition" anyway. That's sort of the point...

Robustness

[noz]

Changing democratic preferences is not a subversion of democracy. Many would argue it would make for a more robust democracy.

Polls != Democracy

[QuantumG]

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.

Re:Polls != Democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

~ Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States

Re:Polls != Democracy

[damona]

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.

That's just a facet of first-past-the-post democracies.

There are actually democracies where it's virtually impossible to get a majority.

Americans...

Re:Polls != Democracy

[Maelwryth]

MMP and is currently in use by Bolivia, Germany, Italy, Lesotho, New Zealand, Romania, South Africa, United Kingdom, and Venezuela in one form or another.

Can't really talk about the other countries, but in New Zealand the biggest downfall seems to happen when the major parties are closely matched and have to form coalitions with the minors for trade offs. This appears to be both a benefit and a disadvantage, depending on who you agree on at the time. :)

Re:Polls != Democracy

[martin-boundary]

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

He's right, democracy stinks. That's why many people past and present prefer the alternative of ruling the mob, where one percent of the people take away the rights of the other ninety-nine.

Re:Polls != Democracy

[adavies42]

from heinlein:

Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again too. Who decides?

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.

Re:Luddite alert

[laughingcoyote]

So ultimately, it is all about how secure the process and implementation are, and not whether the medium is on a piece of paper or through the internet.

I program computers for a living. They are an excellent tool for a lot of things. Totally electronic voting (whether at a polling place or over the Internet) is not a good use for that tool.

Here is a user interface. Push some buttons on it. It is going to send some data somewhere. Did it send the data you thought it would? Did it send it at all? If so, was it properly received at the other end? How would you know? Even if the UI tells you so, it could be saying so incorrectly, by either accident or malice.

Here is a piece of paper with readable language on it. Are the dots in the columns where you wanted your votes to be cast? You can answer that.

Here is a data file with a million entries in it. 35% of those entries are for value A. Change that to 60% with little to no evidence anything was changed. A well-designed script can do that in a blink.

Here are one million pieces of paper, 35% of which are (marked in ink or with punches) for value A. Change that to 60% with little to no evidence any changes were made. Now you've got a laborious and intensive process ahead of you, that aside from the fact that the papers are watched and you are very likely to leave evidence of tampering.

Recognizing a technology's legitimate limitations does not a Luddite make. The Internet is great for informal polls. It is not a good tool for serious ones such as an election where the results must be accurate and verifiable.

Re:Luddite alert

[Opportunist]

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.

An easier way to make democracy more effective

[SystemicPlural]

Describing this for the UK but it can be adapted for anywhere.
After the election which took place as normal. Every member of parliament gets a vote that is proportionate to the number of constituents that are eligible to vote.
Everyone who is eligible to vote can change who represents them to any of the sitting MPs, once every 3 moths or so. This takes a vote away from their MP and gives it to the MP they want to have it. (Suggest that libraries are used for this purpose).

This process has the following effects.
1. It does not disenfranchise those who don't want to do more than they already do.
2. It maintains an element of local representation.
3. It makes MPs do what they say they will do, because if they don't people will stop supporting them a lot more quickly.
4. It allows for a far greater degree of representation. Out of the several hundred sitting MPs it is likely that at least one will closely represent your views.

Federalist #10

[supercrisp]

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.