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Is New York City Ready For Digital Voting?
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Turnout for local elections in New York City was 33.7 percent in 2010, according to Fair Vote. And while some apps and startups are looking to resurrect turnouts in future elections, most candidates still couldn't tell you how they work or why they might be necessary. Benjamin Kallos is a candidate for New York City Council's fifth district, which includes the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island, and has his sights on modernizing the electoral process. He's campaigning on a high-tech platform that he says aims to deepen technology's role in promoting transparency, inclusion, and accountability within pockets of New York City's voting pool that remain largely disengaged."
So it has come to this.
Electronic voting just makes it easier to rig elections.
If you're too lazy to vote - no, I don't care about your opinion.
(Can't make it to your polling place? I'll bet you can find some time in the months leading up to the election to vote absentee. Don't have transportation to go vote? There are a dozen different programs and thousands of volunteers who will help. GOML!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
For digital "voting" to even be considered, the city needs to provide every person over 18 with a functional computer and dependable connection.
Oh god! The humanity..... put that thing away Anthony.
Most Americans are barely capable of making an informed vote, much less being "ready for digital voting".
That's why we're $17 trillion in debt and running a massive defecit.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
But since digital voting is all about easy, traceless election-fraud, it will be used nonetheless.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
'nuff said.
Potential voters who can't be bothered to show up at the polling station on the correct day, and maybe stand in line for an unknown amount of time don't deserve to have a vote. It's just a commodity that is ripe for manipulation anyway ("we have a deal just for you").
And that's not even going into the well-known security problems of e-voting.
Yes, this is exactly the right direction. Let people who know something about what's going on, and actually care, vote more often. But raising the turn out percentage will probably just mean more people voting the party line all the way down.
Anyone who thinks that new technology for voting will improve transparency, inclusion, and accountability has not been keeping up with the news. Or bothered to search the EFF web site.
Or is his platform, "Oh, never mind the past! We'll get it right *this* time!"
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
The electoral process must not only be fair, but also it should be very visibly fair. Otherwise the losing side will always accuse the other side of "fixing" elections. So the switch to e-voting requires the much harder work of persuading people that it is trustworthy. Other technical challenges are also very difficult. The voter should be able to verify that his/her vote is cast correctly and counted correctly. At the same time no one else, even with the cooperation of the voter, should be able to connect the vote cast to the voter. Voter not being able to prove how he/she voted is a fundamental requirement, without it people would buy/sell votes with confidence.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I keep seeing many Americans complaining online how their government keeps ruining their country. I wonder if many of those complainers actually voted seeing that turnout percentage. Are the complainers just silent minority? Do majority of Americans actually love how things are or why don't they go to vote? And those who vote, why they always vote the same shit with a different arsehole?
Although personally against the idea, I've often wondered how our elections would turn out if everybody was required by law to vote. Would the current patterns be re-enforced? Or would a radically different political landscape come about?
who will win the election?
How about you then give us some real choices? I don't like in NYC so I really don't care about who was there then - but the issue is the same across the country. Here, we had a choice between a D who cheated on his taxes and an R who cheated on his wife. Neither had any qualifications that made me feel he had any chance of doing a good job... On state level it wasn't any better and don't get me started on presidential nonsense. One promises to waste money we don't have on war, the other sugarcoats it a little better and says we just have to find a way to pay with money we don't have social programs. In the end, it didn't matter - or do you really think Mittens would act any different to the NSA revelations? We need a choice between black and white (or call it green and red if you're too afraid of being called a racist) - not between ivory and snow! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_white)
Peter.
Yes, this is exactly the right direction. Let people who know something about what's going on, and actually care, vote more often.
You don't need black box voting for that; it's not like election days and polling places are clandestine secrets, you know.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Instead of high-tech and failure-prone ways to count plurality votes, why not some actual progress in the form of a better voting system? Instant Runoff voting, approval voting, and Condorcet methods would all produce a much better government and reduce voter apathy. Of course only the third parties support such changes, since existing representatives know they can be re-elected under the status quo. So they'd rather we focus on high-tech ways to count obsolete votes.
The only way out of this mess is to suck it up and vote exclusively for candidates who support voting system reform. Personally I'm a libertarian, but I voted for Jill Stein instead of Gary Johnson because her platform included voting system reform. We should only have to fight for one more 3rd party victory, not repeat the process once the Libertarians become the new Republicans. Our problem isn't inherently evil people, it's a broken process which corrupts good people.
If some very bright person could figure out how to under gerrymandering of precincts, I'd vote for them on that principle alone.
Nobody likes that idea, though, because it threatens all the little fiefdoms established in congress and state legislatures, and might result in the end of millions of dollars of corporate bribes, er, contributions.
To Congressdorks: Remember Arab Spring. It can happen here.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
A union thug or employer looking over your shoulder to make sure you vote the right guys in. Or a husband that will force his wife to vote for his candidate under threat of violence.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I like it. I vote in every election that I can now. But with digital, I probably WILL vote more often as you suggest. I'll most likely vote 5 to 6 times per election. It can't be too hard to do. Even without "hacking" anything it should be eminently possible to use a couple of older folks voting credentials...
The only way to be as sure as possible that every cast was both cast and recorded correctly will be to have a verifiable paper trail.
Whether a piece of paper is spit out to the voter after voting and stored in a secured box or is actually used to cast the vote, without a verifiable paper trail the means to rig elections go up exponentially.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
People were voting in places other than the east coast, but it wasnh't covered by anything other than local media.
Somehow the extra word 'Digital" was added to that question.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
You don't want "a barcode" or something on the paper to represent your vote, since that can't be read (easily) by humans. We only get to vote every few years. If it's too much trouble to count those votes or if it's absolutely vital "for democracy" that we know the result of the elections the second the election closes, we have something wrong in our democracy. Cast votes in a non-tech way that each civilian can verify if he or she can read. Count the votes afterwards, have them recount by someone else. Keep a group of people from all camps in the voting office and during the counting present. That way, it will be almost impossible to rig the votes, it will be just as expensive or even cheaper then electronic voting, because expensive machines that require programming for every use and then get put away for a long period are extremely expensive per election and people are cheap and/or volunteer. There is nothing that needs improving on the technology of voting. If people don't come to vote, it means that politics aren't interesting enough for them. If candidates would have a program that would actually mean something to the people eligible to vote, they will show up, even if they have to take time off work for it. Maybe that's what needs improvement?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Electronic voting is not secure and can never be made secure.
I won't rehash all my arguments here; if you're interested read the "dskoll" comments on this LWN article.
Of course New York City is ready for digital voting! Think of the opportunities for even greater voter fraud and intimidation.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Want to get turnout up then try vote by mail. Works great in Oregon.
I am voting electronically this year in the Norwegian election. If somebody is stupid enough to give me money for voting for a certain party, then let them. I can vote as many times as I want, and it is only the last vote that counts. If I want to be even more evil, I can vote by paper as well, and let the guy paying money to see me vote on the net be there until the end. The paper vote superseded the electronic one.
This is blinging
Aside from the headline, I don't see a single mention of electronic voting in the summary, the article, or the candidate's website. Somebody at Motherboard just thought "digital voting" sounded more exciting then "digital campaigning".
I first read that as, "Is New York ready for digital vomiting?"
Is there a Microsoft expo in town?
The 2013 mayoral race won by "Hitler Did Nothing Wrong" in a landslide.
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
Perhaps people have noticed some recent news about surveillance and tracking, by government and business, of people's computer use.
That's how people want to submit their secret ballots?
With digital voting it is really easy to sell your vote, or to force someone (like members in a family) to vote in a certain way. Since who's to stop coercion when nobody is around?
First "eVoting" and now "Digital Voting"! Can we not waste all the good technology-using voting systems before we develop a trustless, distributed network for it? There is a bright future for such voting but it cannot come until we take as axiomatic that trusting an individual, a company, or a government, is utterly out of the question.
Let's roll out the e-vote!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Is New York City Ready To Abolish The Secret Ballot?
Pitch the idea as a cheaper way to use the 8 zilllion languages of NYC.
Politicians would like nothing better than to rig elections in their favor. And the easiest way to do that is to have the elections conducted over the Internet.
We're already in the process of losing our democracy to socialists and communists in the federal government. We don't need to accelerate the process by going digital.
Fata viam invenient.
I came up with the concept of online voting years ago. The name I gave it back then was "Unauthorized Proxy Voting Made Easy".
I am voting electronically this year in the Norwegian election. If somebody is stupid enough to give me money for voting for a certain party, then let them. I can vote as many times as I want, and it is only the last vote that counts. If I want to be even more evil, I can vote by paper as well, and let the guy paying money to see me vote on the net be there until the end. The paper vote superseded the electronic one.
That implies you guys don't have a secret ballot. After all, how would they know which vote to cancel on the subsequent electronic votes? Or worse, they're even able to match up your paper ballot to your electronic vote to know to cancel your electronic vote. Which necessarily implies that if somebody is coercing you to vote a certain way, all they need to do is bribe someone in government that has access to that information, to verify that you actually voted the way you were supposed to.
Of course, that's not even the worst problem with electronic voting. How do you know your vote was actually counted if there's no physical record of it that can be verified? I think electronic voting can work, but you can't do it from home, and it must have a paper trail. You go to a voting booth, electronic select your choices, submit your votes, get a human-readable printout with which you may confirm your vote, deposit human-readable printout in ballot box. Votes get counted based on electronic submission, but if anyone requests a recount, or if a recount is automatically triggered because the election is close, we count the paper.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Digital voting == voting with one's digits. Typically the center, longest one. Just ask any cab driver.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
And may never be. 'BBV' was a common tag on Slashdot for years, and with good reason: There will always be major obstacles to auditing the machines even after you open source the software. Mountains worth of logic still reside within the ICs and there is no way to just pop the hood and see what logic gates affect which bits of output.
IMO, the closest thing anyone has gotten to a properly verifiable computerized voting system is one where the ballots are printed out with the voters' choices in easily readable form and then must be submitted by hand. OTOH, I think this method wastes time and it is better to use pre-printed forms that can be scanned; the voters do not have to wait for delays in printing or the voters checking the printed selections before the submit.
'Computerized voting' is acutally backwards voting with the list of priorities turned upside-down. Let the computers help with scanning the votes after they are made in a sensible way... not have it "help" create the votes themselves and then cough out facsimilies.