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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.
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.
"We"? Who is this "we"? Here in New Hampshire, they passed a paper trail law in 1994 and we've not had any of these problems.
Liberty in your lifetime
... 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.
People would rather blame an election on stolen votes instead of realizing the electorate really is that stupid.
This is all your fault. I voted for Kodos.
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).
> 2) is online
No, that is just stupid. And so is mail in btw. Anything other than voting in person with a photo ID on election day with a paper ballot where the count is validated right after the polls close while poll watchers from all interested parties are there to witness is asking for fraud.
No, don't jump in with a reply until you STOP and think for a minute. Then you will realize I'm right. The problems with voting boil down to these:
1. Ensure that registered voters have unrestricted access to their polling place.
2. That inelligible people do not vote.
3. Ensure people only vote in the races they are elligible to vote in.
4. Ensure that the vote is secret and immune to outside influence.
5. Ensure that every vote is counted and only counted once.
Violate my formula in any way and one of those rules is impossible to ensure and thus the election by definition is unfair to some extent. Allowing a small percentage of absentee voting, contested ballots, etc. are perhaps acceptable compromises but must be understood as a compromise to prevent certain parties from trying to extrapolate those exceptions into bad general rules like universal mail in ballots, online voting, etc.
Democrat delenda est
Funny how you never see anyone who has a credible chance of winning running on a platform of election reform...
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
doesn't have a subject.
fixed!
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.