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."

Comments

If you're too lazy to vote - no I don't care...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

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!)

Re:If you're too lazy to vote - no I don't care...

[gl4ss]

..just move the voting to sundays, like every other sensible western nation does it.

digital remote voting, which enables vote selling and coercion? fuck that. it goes against every basic principle of being able to vote what you want no matter what your employer or even spouse tells you.

Re:No No No

[CanHasDIY]

Electronic voting just makes it easier to rig elections.

I presumed that's what they meant by "modernize the electoral process"

No

[gweihir]

But since digital voting is all about easy, traceless election-fraud, it will be used nonetheless.

Do not want

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Spoken like a non-techie

[SirGarlon]

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!"

People are not ready for e-voting.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.

Survellience/tracking + secret ballot = ?

[guanxi]

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?