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Is Arizona's Internet Voting System Safe Enough?
JMcCloy writes "Kevin Poulsen, senior editor at Wired News, asks readers 'Is internet voting safe?' and has a poll at the end of the article. So far, 32% responding actually think that internet voting is worth it, risks and all. It is scary how easily people can be persuaded to trust a system that is so vulnerable." The system described, used in Arizona in last year's election process, isn't just checking a box and clicking a button, but Poulsen lays out some scenarios by which it could be subverted.
The flaw of mail-in voting is it's not secret. Your spouse, priest, employer -- name-power-trip-here -- can make sure you are voting "right". Only the booth secures that it is your own private decision.
I am politically active student (Member of the Left Youth of Finland, etc.) in a country that doesn't use two party system and I disagree with all of your points.
I actually have the opposite view. I think the reason electronic voting is being done so poorly is to prevent allowing a true democracy strip the power from the current 2 party system.
Well, I live in a country which has never used electronic voting in electing the parliament. There are currently 14 active political parties in Finland (15 in a few weeks as the Pirate Party recently managed to get enough supporters to register themselves as a party), 8 of which are currently represented in the parliament. (The remaining parties only have representatives at municipal level).
You can't blame the two party system on normal voting being so complicated and electronic voting being the answer or anything. It is political system that has it's merits and flaws but it not only can be but is also very easy to implement even without electronic voting.
While not simple to get right, a effective convenient secure system would make voting too simple. We could actually have more rounds of votes, and eliminate needing just 2 candidates at the beginning of the election.
We have more than two candidates here with still a few rounds of votes. We use this method. Each party has it's own list. Let's say I vote a candidate in the Left Alliance as do 1000 others. The most popular candidate within the left alliance gets 1000 votes, the second most popular within the left alliance gets 500 votes, the third most popular gets 333 votes... After that, candidates from all parties use those numbers to see who gets elected. Again, it has it's flaws but it works quite well.
More issues could be voted on, more laws, quicker correction on corrupt politicans, etc, etc. Those in power have much more interest in preventing trust-able e-voting than not.
Direct democracy is beautiful idea. However... If your problem is that you feel people don't pay enough attention to politics in elections (they don't remember the bad decisions politician have made, etc.) then how do you expect them to pay enough attention that they would have good, well thought out and educated opinion on even more issues?
Also... We aren't talking about electronic voting here. We are talking about internet voting. The kind where violent husband can force his wife to vote for extremist parties because there can not be any precautions to protect from that.