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US Election Year, Still No Voting Reform
An anonymous reader writes "A year ago, we discussed this on Slashdot: E-Voting Reform In an Out Year?. The point was that due to the hoard of problems with electronic (and mechanical) voting, it is best to approach reform in an out year, when it is not on everyone's mind yet too late to do anything about it. Well, we failed, didn't we? Another election year is upon us, and our vote is less secure, less reliable, and less meaningful than ever. To reference the last article, we still have no open source voting, no end-to-end auditable voting systems and no open source governance. So don't complain if this election is stolen. You forgot to fix the system."
We have one. It's called the "paper ballot".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
No one worthwhile to vote for, and congress will screw up everything anyway, so even if you DID fix the voting, nothing would change.
If voting actually worked, they'd probably outlaw it.
So don't complain if this election is stolen. You forgot to fix the system.
The system doesn't want to be fixed. It is, of course, setup that way on purpose. Sometimes it is better to just start over than it is to try to fix something broken beyond repair. If voting actually had the power to change anything, it would most certainly be illegal.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
You think voting is anything other than a public circlejerk to keep people busy.
Ahh to be young and stupid again.
I'm more interested in the results that a different kind of voting system would produce, such as how the ability to rank candidates on a ballot would affect campaign strategy and the kinds of people we'd elect.
I live in what the Europeans like to call the backwater redneck racist Christian "fly-over" part of America. I guess we are so stupid here that our voting system isn't worthy of being audited. We are so stupid that the state actually has a balanced budget.. what a bunch of inbred hicks we are.
All we have here are simple to fill out scantron ballots that are anonymous, simple to scan in, and trivially easy to recount in an offline manner if needed. We get our election results within hours of the polls closing on election day. Oh and as for software, the software in the system is so simple that Windows vs. Linux doesn't even enter into the equation because you don't need either.
Frankly, even if the voting software is "open source" on some website, you have zero guarantees that the voting machine you are using actually runs the wonderful open source software you spent months auditing in the first place.
We are so backwards here. I feel so inadequate compared to those places that blew tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money on systems that don't work. You can tell they are *so* much superior to us.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
... get the basics right.
Like having an non-partisan public service, a non-partisan committee of civil servants administering the election and drawing the boundaries?
Like any non-banana republic?
From the point of view of other Anglo-Saxon countries, and Europe, the US is a basketcase.
Recent US elections, e.g. Florida during Bush Jr's reelection campaign, would make disgrace your average Third World shithole, let alone the richest and most powerful nation on Earth.
Look, tampering or wholesale stealing of the vote is about the worst thing that can happen in a democracy. No really.
So punish the people caught with VERY severe punishments, like multi-decade stints in prison (sorry I'm against the death penalty). That way, even if you catch a little fish, chances are good he'll squeal like a pig and rat out the higher ups.
My only fear is that some of the people who are crazy motivated might actually think that their cause is worth sacrificing the rest of their lives for. Fortunately the U.S. hasn't quite gotten to the point where those people are more than a tiny fraction of the population; otherwise you'd see suicide bombers at political events.
(Also, "dirty tactics" like fraudulent robo-calls which claim to be someone who they aren't or send people to the wrong polling place, should have their punishments significantly increased. Again, you're subverting the basic premise of a democracy).
No one's vote counts at the federal level. With 300,000,000 people in the country, there is no possible way to have representative government. Federal elections are as meaningful as beauty contests, only more corrupt.
This is the single biggest argument for federalism, i.e., limiting federal power and keeping government as local as possible.
In a local election, you can actually have an influence. Not only your vote, but your ability to contact and coordinate with some meaningful fraction of the electorate.
This argument can be applied recursively. What can be done at the township level, should be.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
It really isn't. What we're talking about here is voting platform reform. I don't really care how voting is done (via computerized terminal, via paper ballot, or even via Internet, after all I can file my taxes online). What I care about is that the system we have in place for voting for candidates almost always elects a candidate that a minority (generally a superminority) actually wants to be president. It also gives political parties extreme power based on sheer advertisement; most people view it as this-guy-or-that-guy and so they just pick the one they don't like and vote for the other guy. Political advertisement capitalizes on this behavior which is indeed caused by FPTP. It's also susceptible to gerrymandering and isn't friendly to new parties. And the entire electoral college is completely unnecessary given modern transportation systems, so we need to throw that out altogether.
Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
When we say "voting reform," I fundamentally mean that I want the actual voting system we use changed. We need a system that isn't susceptible to gerrymandering, that doesn't suffer from the spoiler effect, and that meets the condorcet criterion. Take your pick: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system. On top of that, we need to shut down campaign contributions from corporations, political advertisement in main-stream media, and require all of the relevant information be gathered somewhere online like at vote.gov or something and make it accessible to everyone via public libraries, etc.
There's a lot of reform that needs to be done, the least of which is how we collect votes. Come on guys, this is such a strawman to the real issues. Having your vote for dumbass #1 stolen and given to dumbass #2 doesn't matter. You are getting a dumbass as president almost nobody wants either way.
I just googled "walker recall polling" and you are wrong. Here are the first 5 results (after the first one which is about fundraising):
Dem poll: Walker recall battle is a dead heat
Wisconsin Recall Polls: Scott Walker Leads, But The Margin Varies
Scott Walker Recall: Dem's Internal Poll Shows Dead Heat, Growing ...
Walker's lead in Wisconsin recall election tightens in new poll - ABC ...
Late Polls Find Walker Is Still Favored - NYTimes.com