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University Developing Technology To Vote On Your Tablet, Smartphone
smitty_one_each writes in with this story about a professor developing a new electronic voting system. "A Clemson University professor is developing a new electronic voting system that will allow voters to cast their ballots from home computers, tablets and smartphones. As Clemson's chair of human-centered computing, Juan Gilbert has lead teams of students over the last 10 years to create an online voting system accessible at home or on the go that will be more accurate, have increased verification and make voting more accessible to people with disabilities by offering mobile and voice-command options."
hackers will not only steal my identity, they will steal my vote.
Back when Digg was big and Reddit was new, I wanted to make a factional voting site. Basically it works like this: Everyone votes and downvotes stuff like Reddit. But everyone also has sub categories for their affiliation. An example might be: Democrat/Republican. They'd have a long check list and radio buttons of different affiliations. This way something opposing groups disagree on would be voted up for their own personal faction.
We were going to have petitions where you could negative sign the petition to disagree. So politicians don't see a list of 10,000 signatures when 100,000 people hate it.
The problem we had was determining who is a registered voter. It is hard to verify people as having a real identifier especially if you have no start up capital to send out stamps for snail mail verification methods. And another problem is once you have registered voters, how do you watch out for hackers? We decided we couldn't solve these problems and gave up.
Someone really could make a hyper democracy site though. there's a market for it. Educate the voters on their desires for politics, and tell them which of their elected officials voted for or against certain topics they're interested in! It is real simple in concept. It'd start out as a voter education site, but if it seriously got powerful, politics could be different with an educated voter base.
God spoke to me
Even if it could be secure (which I doubt), this would take away the ability for political parties to bully voters as they come to the polling places. It would be voted down by all existing politicians, since it would change the voting demographic too much.
Same story as Gerrymandering. Everyone is against it... except enfranchised politicians that are being protected by it... which also happen to be the only people that can do something about it.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
@echo off
:10
Vote.exe "Hillary"
goto 10
As long as there is the ability for someone to stand behind you and make sure vote a certain way, I won't support it. No one knows how I vote when I step into a voting booth.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
All hail the ruling party of AT&T
839*929
Their...
THAT"S what the funny little drawer that pops out the side of my laptop is for!?
No, that's the coffee cup holder!
I think you have it backwards. According to the Maxwell Poll, 60-80% of welfare recipients voted Democrat. Generally speaking, welfare recipients receive welfare because they have low income. People with low income can't afford as much gadgetry. Thus it will make it even more convenient for a higher percentage of Republicans to vote compared to Democrats because more of them can afford the hardware. You can expect Democrats to resist this far more than Republicans.
(I know, I took your post insulting the intelligence of people who disagree with your political viewpoint literally, but you are wrong regardless of your motive)
Better known as 318230.
Hopefully they'll include a way to spoil my ballot. The last time I actually voted for a party was 1998, and that was only out of naivety.
The whole democratic system doesn't work:
-Two parties don't express the full spectrum of political views
-The two parties you get generally end up pretty much the same and only differ in what bullshit they talk before an election
-None of them do what they say they'll do
-None of them are accountable, so when they don't do what they say they'll do nothing happens
Democracy us upheld as a defining principle of freedom when in reality the whole system is a sick joke. Providing a method of voting with tablets doesn't do anything to solve the fundamental problems.
The only way this would ever be even remotely secure is if users of the system had to get a unique key in person or have a key mailed to them that can only be used once. Even then, it obviously could be guessed what the key is or snail mail could be intercepted. Then you'd have the issue of people claiming someone stole their vote when their party member didn't win. Why are we taking this seriously? Because someone in a University is doing it instead of a for profit company?
Nah, it isn't that at all. Many people who would vote for republicans frequent the interweb and even this site. Generally, the smarter a person gets, the more republican they tend to lean in ideology even if they insist on remaining democrats or liberals. And before anyone marks that down, I said lean as in their positions tend towards but doesn't necessarily hit. Many people will find their natural position on any given topic will lean in a direction they don't consider to be the democratic or republican and will correct their initial assessment once they find out what others in their favored side state.
What they fear is- and why they won't allow it is that the people who don't vote will end up casting a vote anyways and it will always be for the democrats running. That is why they want ID of some sort to be presented when you cast your vote- to prove you are who you say you are and not the guy who got you to register knowing you would be too stoned to get off the couch and go vote on election day.
Two years ago I would have looked down on this, saying that the minimum requirement for participating in government would be showing up one day a year to check some boxes on a form.
However, those two years have brought on voter registration laws designed to disenfranchise, laws so blatantly racist that it's pants-on-heads insane that anybody let them get away with it.
Gerrymandered districts can't be fixed til the next census. Mobile voting could be a hell of a stopgap before then.
People with low income can't afford as much gadgetry.
That they can't afford things like smart phones does not stop "poor people" from buying them. I have seem many panhandlers and other assorted "street people" whip out smart phones and start texting.
I, on the other hand, have a decent paying job, but do not have a smart phone because I understand I have better things to spend my money on.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Actually, the issue is not technological as 'remote' vote could be done over the phone (with or without voice recognition) or even with door-to-door voting unit with a mobile terminal. The problem is how to guaranty that the vote is not cast under coercive situation? Coercive can go form a gun in your temple to simply family members bullying you... That's why the vote is cast in a small secretive room.
Why everyone is so hostile to the PC in recent years?
Why this story left "PC" out of the headline, for example?
Why everyone is so quick to embrace proprietary, locked-down devices that have only a tiny fraction of the PC's power, and only the few can develop for and that nobody can repair or upgrade or even change the battery in?
Ever wonder?
Nah, it isn't that at all. Many people who would vote for republicans frequent the interweb and even this site. Generally, the smarter a person gets, the more republican they tend to lean in ideology even if they insist on remaining democrats or liberals.
Yes. This would explain why places of higher learning are often decried as liberal brainwashing institutions. It's because going to college makes you stupid (and thus Democrat)!
Pass on this story until someone more reputable reports with relevant details.
It's easy to afford a smart phone when you don't spend money on property taxes like a landed wealthy person.
Going to college doesn't make you smart or stupid. It allows you to learn and you can become smart or remain just as stupid. You are a fool if you think you know it all when you leave college or that just by showing up, you are somehow smarter. When it teaches liberalism, the people will end up being more liberal, when those fresh out of college kids end up learning something in the real world, they gravitate back- even if they remain identifying as liberal or democrat.
It's easy to authenticate the votes when the elections are all rigged anyway!
No, it's not. Often they take a side job for a month to do that.
Or I don't know' maybe it has more to do with how easy it would be to hack something with like that or game it in other ways. Do you really not remember the Diebold issue from the last few elections, and that was at an actual voting booth' now imagine that with no accountability whatsoever... voting is a duty, this isn't american idol here it needs to be secure and there needs to be safety measures in place' without accountability we could never trust the results
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Wow. You have created quite a fantasy to project over reality. New voters are a democratic conspiracy to undermine stone age republican thought (lol). You have time yet to mature.
I see what you did there, though I'm curious if you have.
Ok...
How does this follow? You don't even mention what percentage of those who vote Democrat that 60-80% are!
Perversely, you are right. Republicans would support this just as they actively support and push voter ID laws, reduced voting hours, reduced absentee ballots, and fewer polling locations (but only in certain areas) to fight fraud that doesn't actually happen - only to make fraud a real potential problem.
Generally, the smarter a person gets, the more republican they tend to lean in ideology even if they insist on remaining democrats or liberals. And before anyone marks that down, I said lean as in their positions tend towards but doesn't necessarily hit.
The current Republican party doesn't have much room for people who want to "lean in."
Anyone who hasn't gone full retard gets called a RINO and told to GTFO.
It's been a very ugly thing to watch
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I think you have it backwards. According to the Maxwell Poll, 60-80% of welfare recipients voted Democrat. Generally speaking, welfare recipients receive welfare because they have low income. People with low income can't afford as much gadgetry. Thus it will make it even more convenient for a higher percentage of Republicans to vote compared to Democrats because more of them can afford the hardware. You can expect Democrats to resist this far more than Republicans.
(I know, I took your post insulting the intelligence of people who disagree with your political viewpoint literally, but you are wrong regardless of your motive)
How is it that they "can't afford gadgetry" yet they all have newer phones than me?
Generally, the smarter a person gets, the more republican they tend to lean in ideology even if they insist on remaining democrats or liberals.
Except that studies consistently result in findings contrary to that assertion. Higher intelligence is associated with politically liberal views almost across the board, with a secondary emphasis on movement toward the political center. Conservative ideology does not become more prevalent with increases in either intelligence or educations.
Decent survey of literature here:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/unique-everybody-else/201305/intelligence-and-politics-have-complex-relationship
Also:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/millennial-media/201304/do-racism-conservatism-and-low-iq-go-hand-in-hand
Your bias also shows in your anecdote about voter ID laws--empirically, Republicans are responsible for most election-related shenanigans. But then again, someone getting preemptively defensive about accusing people of an impliedly illogical "insistence" on "remaining" liberal might simply prefer to ignore the evidence and make unsupported claims.
Sorry, but I think you mean conservative, and not the reactionary, bigot-infested set of "conservatives" that have assumed the title today. I cannot possibly support or advocate pretty much any policies forwarded by the Republicans these days, as they are often abhorrent or completely ineffectual.
No it isn't. They want you to have ID so that the masses who for some reason don't have ID can't vote. They claim it's to prevent vote fraud (a miniscule problem) but in reality it's for disenfranchisement.
New voters are a democratic conspiracy to undermine stone age republican thought (lol). You have time yet to mature.
You should stick to what was said and ignore what wasn't said. I never said anything of this sort- I said they want to make sure the people voting- whether new voters or existing voters, it doesn't matter- are in fact who they claim they are when casting a vote. It really is that simple and has nothing to do with being a new or existing voter, it has everything to do with being the voter you claim you are.
Your argument: "Being poor does not stop people from buying smart phones". The evidence for your conclusion: seeing many panhandlers and other assorted "street people" using smart phones. While your anonymous anecdotal evidence is compelling, the counter argument "poor people are less likely to own a smart phone" is backed by actual "research". For instance, a Pew study published in 2011 that considered the adoption rates of smartphones among different demographics concluded that
Smartphone ownership is highly correlated with household income.
(link), drawing this conclusion from the 22% ownership rate among households with an annual income of less than $30,000.
Generally, the smarter a person gets, the more republican they tend to lean in ideology even if they insist on remaining democrats or liberals.
What on Earth are you basing that on?
Nah, it isn't that at all. Many people who would vote for republicans frequent the interweb and even this site. Generally, the smarter a person gets, the more republican they tend to lean in ideology even if they insist on remaining democrats or liberals. And before anyone marks that down, I said lean as in their positions tend towards but doesn't necessarily hit.
That's a strong claim. Do you have evidence for it?
My impression is a but different... that the more wealth someone squires, the less ashamed they are about voting for their own greedy self interest, and the less they care to vote on behalf of the poor and needy and disenfranchised.
Generally, the smarter a person gets, the more republican they tend to lean in ideology...
That this was not modded "Flamebait" is not a positive thing for Slashdot...
as i've mentioned before, i owned a software company in the 80's that developed real-time interactive modules for Galacticomm's MajorBBS...pre-www and http stuff. it was actually really cool and cutting-edge stuff.
Tim Stryker, the creator of the MajorBBS (who sadly committed suicide in the 90's), preached that he built the MajorBBS to promote the idea of "Superdemocracy", the idea that citizens all vote on the issues that our relatively-corrupt politicians currently do.
Here is a fascinating newspaper article about his idea...from 20 years ago!
in a nutshell...
SUPERDEMOCRACY - A PLAN WITH `SYMMETRY`
In contrast, what Stryker proposes ``is a continuous network hierarchy of online referenda, open to all.``
By plugging into the system, any time -- 24 hours a day, 365 days a year -- citizens (anyone, in fact, 16 or older) could propose law, add their comments to the public debate and vote on the proposals offered by others.
Stryker likes to stress the ``symmetry`` built into his plan. There is, he contends, no built-in elitism, no snap decisions required, no lack of checks and controls to protect against what he calls ``wild gyrations about the legal landscape.``
While Stryker`s system would abolish Congress, it would retain all the implementing portions of the government: the president, cabinet, FBI and so on. (Originally, he thought even juries could be eliminated, but he`s not so certain of that now.)
Citizens` proposals would be collected into a subquorum pool, accessible to all, where they would be discussed, debated and voted on. When a critical level of interest was shown (reflected, in most cases, by participation of 50 percent of the eligible voters, 75 percent if a constitutional change were involved), the measure would be elevated to an active pool where debate and voting would continue for precisely 30 more days.
trust me...i read his books...Tim was a genius and thought everything through and even engineered and developed a brilliant system to make it really happen. his idea on voting proxies and subquorums seems to be light-years ahead of the stuff this professor is doing. ...and so what became of all this effort and thought? exactly nothing.
lets face the facts...the LAST thing our politicians are EVER going to do is write laws that limit and restrain or HELL-EFFFING-NO!! ELIMINATE their power and their ability to coerce the wealthy to part with their cash and give it to them.
So the chances that this guy's ideas or work are ever going to see the light of day are exactly 0.00000000001%, IMO
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Wow.. Just wow. I understand your need to post AC after all that. Smart does not equal intelligence. They are not the same things. Intelligence is the ability to learn new things and concepts and smart is the ability to use or apply what you already learned. Answering a comment about someone or something being smart with a post about intelligence is the opposite of smart.
And for your attempt to link racism with voter ID laws, you fail big time there too. Unless you can show that voter ID is racists in that somehow minorities are not capable of getting IDs or something and the republicans know this, all you are doing is mud slinging in hopes that it distracts enough from the issue presented that your concept wins out. I don't even think it qualifies as a straw man tactic either because it relies on a complete fallacy that you failed to connect to the concept presented in order to exaggerate the concept out. In short, you just applied the equivalent of "nuh uh, your mean so I win". This is something I would say lacks both intelligence and smarts.
On your last paragraph, have you ever heard of a place called Chicago? Famous for the most corrupt politics in the country. And also extremely liberal.
And who are these masses and why cannot they produce an ID? I mean every voter ID laws I have seen allows bank statements with addressed on them, credit card statements, utility and electric bills, cable bills, and so on as the ID required. I mean some of the states even went as far as to offer free state IDs that you need in those states to get welfare benefits and similar things.
So what specific is inherent in these people you claim are targeted for disenfranchisement that they cannot produce something to prove their identity and residency?
Generally, the smarter a person gets, the more republican they tend to lean in ideology
I love how members of both parties believe they have superior intellect because they've chosen red or blue. It's too bad report cards stop after we leave school, because everyone in this country is a self proclaimed genius from the moment we stop getting them.
so you boss can force you to vote at work there way.
No we need the system where you can vote in that box where others can't see you are voteing for.
Anyone who thinks logically about something before inserting emotion, tend to come to conclusions that don't favor anything but reality (even if it is slightly distorted). It isn't until emotion is put into the arguments that your observations can even be made. You see, your statement is almost entirely reliant upon emotion which is more of a description then any fact. Ashamed, greedy, self interest, poor and needy, disenfranchised are all examples of emotion that doesn't come into play when you are just processing facts. So lets look at your statement with the emotion removed a bit.
"that the more wealth someone acquires, the more they are about voting to keep their ability to acquire wealth, and the less they are to vote against it."
Now does that sound like something logical a person would do or tend to want to do before letting emotion override facts? If you are making $60k a year, you certainly are not going to directly vote for anything that causes you to be fired or take a pay cut, you may even vote for something that would encourage your job security. But once you put emotion into the mix, you might sacrifice your job and position to help out someone with less than you. I suggest you donate to a charity and help that person become as successful as you instead but to each their own. It's the old hand up verses hand out question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR3A9rG022M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmsdSVQSXLg
Sure it will happen. The nice Democrat candidate will come down to skid row with a truck of booze and a computer and "help" the poor downtrodden cast their vote. Or the Republican business manager will invite everyone to come into his office and cast their votes, and don't worry about that Christmas bonus- those that don't get laid off will do well.
Making your vote not count even faster
you don't need to buy a new smartphone
and if you have a decent paying job then.. well, i guess some people don't understand that you don't need a ripoff 100$ a month plan for a smartphone.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Yes, Chicago is ruled by Democrats, but that does not mean that the people are liberal.
Generally, the smarter a person gets, the more republican they tend to lean in ideology even if they insist on remaining democrats or liberals.
There's at best no evidence for that assertion. And there's also serious counterarguments.
What is definitely true is that the richer a person gets, the more conservative they tend to lean, because of simple self-interest. People who are poorer tend to lean liberal for the same reason. This can appear like a person gaining wisdom with age and success, because your average newly minted young adult has approximately $0 in assets (-$25,000 or so if they have a college degree) while middle-aged and older people have had the time to accumulate assets and demand higher salaries for their work, but it is actually simply a matter of flipped social and financial position. Conservative values like deference to elders also are a lot more popular among 65-year-olds than 25-year-olds.
I am officially gone from
Voting on your computer at home, or on your cellphone, or anything like it, means the elimination of the secret ballot.
The point of the secret ballot is not only to allow you to vote without any person knowing how you voted, but to compel you to vote secretly, and thus prevent bribery, coercion, and other evils.
That's not just me talking, that's The American and English encyclopædia of law, Volume 10, from 1899, page 585.
But voting on your own device on your own time opens up for possibility all manner of coercion. This is probably where we're headed, and if you don't care about the issue, fine, but at least educate yourself about it first. I hope that's not too much to ask.
In Europe it tends to be the opposite. The more intelligent the person the more they realise that having a fair society where everyone has a real chance to live a good life and where it isn't just dog-eat-dog all the time is in their own best interests. We have several successful socialist countries that continually come top of lists of good places to live, with real freedom and quality of life.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No. Actual poor or people on welfare can't even get a free phone from a carrier because their credit score is too poor. So they're left with prepaid phones. Prepaid phones usually do no have data plans or they're so horrible expensive that they're unusable. However texting is rather cheap on prepaid plans, so I could see how someone would be txting, and there are prepaid smartphones for about $50 now days.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Please. That poll's just there to push an agenda. Not like GP's totally rock solid anecdote!
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Having someone stand behind you and make you vote a certain way could be a problem - especially if employers started coercing employees to vote a particular way in the office (which no employer may ever do, who knows, but there is a power difference and proximity).
The bigger problem is vote buying. If you can prove to someone that you've voted one way rather than another then suddenly vote-buying becomes possible.
(In contrast, there is currently no way to prove which way you voted to someone else. As such, if someone pays you to vote a certain way they are basically limited to hoping you follow-through on your promise. They can't check.)
Considering the amount of money being spent on election advertising, outright buying of votes could be quite a low-cost way of winning an election. If it was $100 per vote, then the election could have been turned by spending under $500m in a few key states, and frankly I suspect you could probably convince a non-voter to vote your way from the comfort of their own home for less than $100.
That already happens in some states in the US. When I was an admin at Microsoft, our boss's boss told us to bring in our ballots one day. Yes, in this state, we are not allowed to vote securely like in much of the country. Instead, ballots are mailed to us then are returned by mail. Several women's groups claim a large portion of husbands votes with ballots intended for their wives or children over 18. I know that working for a huge tech company means that you will have to vote the way you're told. A friend's church has their members collect ballots then a group of volunteers fill-in the forms for the members and drops them off in bulk. It's a shame that the Republicans that rule this state care so little about the right to vote that they decided to destroy our rights by making voting 100% insecure. The Democrats may have the majority, but they always do what they are told to by the Republicans.
What "masses" are these? Not only is ID de-facto required to travel around this country by air, you can't ride Amtrak without an ID either. Bus operators (I was told by one of them) are also supposed to check IDs, though nobody currently enforces the requirement.
So, if Obama-managed TSA has some good reason (whatever it is) to keep those "masses" from traveling, is not it logical, that same reason applies to keeping them from voting?
Plus, of course, the very good other reason — already cited — of preventing voting fraud, which you dismiss as "miniscule" problem without citing any evidence. We are told repeatedly by the ruling classes not to worry our pretty little heads about it, but the only evidence ever offered is the low rate of fraud-prosecutions... That's a rather bizarre logic — I wonder, if GLAAD would've accepted the argument claiming there being no gays in America based on absence of applications of anti-sodomy laws.
The conflict of interest is staggering — few politicians want to talk much about voting fraud, because that would endanger the validity of their own mandates. Why would you be willing to accept such claims without skepticism, is beyond me.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
How can I vote if I don't have tablet, smart phone?
Have you ever heard of places called the Deep South, West Virginia, or Texas? Famous for idiots and extremely conservative.
In support of your argument: after Voter ID laws were introduced in Georgia, voter participation among Blacks and Hispanics increased at rates faster than their population rates increased. [source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution].
There are two equalities, which people frequently confuse:
Actually, you do not. For just one example, a country, that can not defend itself, can not be considered "successful" and all of the Western European countries have relied on the US' protection for decades. Had it not been for us, "Warsaw Pact" would've reached the Atlantic by 1960-ies... Then you would've known, what real Socialism (a.k.a. "Communism lite") is...
Unlike many of my fellow Americans, I travel quite a bit. I'm yet to see a European country, however exciting they all are to visit, that's better for living than the US (for all its faults). I may like the food better in some places — possibly because I myself grew up in Ukraine — but it is much more expensive than here. In fact, everything, that is not government-subsidized, is much more expensive (clothing, children's nannies, gasoline, you name it). Your apartments (a.k.a. "flats") are smaller and less comfortable (very few people own their own house) and showers tend to be outright cramped. Your cars are, likewise, smaller — as other traveled Americans put it (much to your annoyance), Europeans just make everything so damn small.
I hate to spoil your comfort, but real freedom begins with money. No, money is not sufficient for freedom, but it is required...
But even if we take your idea of "freedom" — do you suppose, Julian Assange would've been prosecuted for rape, had he not angered the world's powers? Do I need to remind you, which nice and free Socialist country is doing the prosecution?
In short, I posit, that it is not the Socialism, that makes those countries nice and comfortable, but what little Capitalism still remains in them. Oh, and some natural-resources wealth — like Norway's oil — that helps too.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You do realise you don't have to live up to your account name.
Nihil in publicum sputa.
Let people vote on lots of issues that are important not just an occasional one that the pols decide we are allowed to decide once every couple of years. We should have the option of having a say in the every day issues just like the pols. This is plenty doable with current tech. It will be the more informed people that want to be more involved, too.
Wow.. Just wow. I understand your need to post AC after all that. Smart does not equal intelligence. They are not the same things.
Apart from the fact that I don't have an account, making the "need" to post AC fairly trivial, your attempt to redefine terms is still missing one important piece: evidence of your proposition.
Whether intelligent people are more likely liberal because they're "not smart", and "smart" people regardless of "intelligence"
And for your attempt to link racism with voter ID laws
Who said anything about racism? It's established by data that election tampering is more prevalent in the Republican party. You're the one ascribing motive to that and making the unsupported claim that there's a legitimate fear of fraudulent votes, "always" for Democratic candidates, that somehow undermine the results of elections. There's no evidence of any kind that election fraud is an actual problem on any meaningful scale, let alone that your crackpot theory is justified in pinning it on Democrats.
In short, you just applied the equivalent of "nuh uh, your mean so I win".
Whether you're mean or not is irrelevant. What you are is intellectually dishonest and devoid of evidence for your claims.
The scientific consensus on the matter is that higher educational and intellectual achievement is associated with two trends: higher incidence of liberalism and secondarily, a higher incidence of centrism (likely due to the mixed perspectives on economic regulation). Basically, every trend direction except what you proposed.
If you want to craft a definition of "smart" that positively correlates with an increase in "Republican" sentiment, we're all ears for your data, but both parts of that assertion are not backed by any evidence. In fact, even among conservatives, trends toward identifying as Republican is problematic.
Quite a few, shockingly. Mostly those in lower income areas, full of people the GOP wishes to disenfranchise. It's harder, logistically, for them to acquire an ID and most laws mandating ID to vote have done nothing to make it easier.
TWO of those, required to get the state issued ID. Unsurprisingly, a lot of lower income people don't have a lot of that.\
Really? Can you name some?
Every one of these voter ID laws were crafted explicitly to deny a vote to those the GOP feels would vote Democrat. Their logic is simply "if they won't vote for us, we can't let them vote." You know, rather than being better stewards of this country and doing things that convince them to vote differently.
The poor being targeted by these laws generally don't travel much.
Sorry, here you go: Snopes wrecked at least one lie-filled list that was going around.
Or maybe some more: Very little as a whole, keeping in mind those are cases and not confirmed fraud.
So not only do you refuse to accept actual journalism on the matter (why bother asking for evidence, them?) but you pop off that completely nutty bit at the end there that is rather apples to oranges.
I do, but compared to the largely minimal hazard of vote fraud we have a far greater threat of gerrymandering and disenfranchisement being pursued aggressively by the GOP.
You do realize that that's not actually evidence of that particular argument, right?
There was no appreciable decrease in voter fraud (being mostly nonexistent to start with, that's not surprising), which was the whole point of the law according to Mr. Dumbass.
Second, minority participation outpacing population growth does not mean that voter ID laws don't disenfranchise minority voters. Since those population groups are statistically underrepresented and their participation rates have been increasing faster than population growth since before those laws went into effect, the only conclusion to draw from that is that the laws did not completely destroy that progress. Only the blowhards actually predicted that it would, or pretended that their opponents made that claim.
Meanwhile, 1586 votes were discarded under the law--an order of magnitude more than the estimated fraud rate. That's a disproportionately high false positive rate, which should be far more alarming that a few dozen fraudulent votes. Well over a thousand legitimate votes being discarded does show that there's a negative effect to the law that outweighs its claimed benefit.
Why not just apply Bitcoin to voting, so that we are able to have real democracy?
Instead, for some odd reason, people think the federal government is the end all
Corruption. The reason is corruption.
State and local governments tend to be corrupt. Also small-minded.
What I gather from your post is that 20-40% of the low income voters vote against their interests.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you really think that anyone who has not made it by age 30 has only themselves to blame you are an idiot. Socialism is not about equality of outcomes, it is about opportunity for all and providing a minimum quality of life for all. It is also a recognition that we are better off working together and none of us live in isolation from society.
Capitalism is wonderful for the 1% who get really rich. Everyone else, including the middle classes, ate better off with socialism.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I tend to think that the smarter people get, the more they are interested in liberty and (drumroll...) fairness. Fairness is something you can afford if you're well enough off that you don't have to play the dog-eat-dog game.
I live in a country, and a town, that has been dominated by left-leaning parties since WW2. The town I'm in has been ruled mostly by the socialist party for that time. Last time I checked we've been consistently amongst the 3 towns with the highest quality of life on the planet. Yes, that's expensive. Well, if you're rich. I tend to pay way more than my "share", yet live in a way smaller apartment than the average 5 kids family living on social security will stay in. But that's quite ok, I certainly don't need a bigger apartment. They, otoh, do.
But in return I can actually leave my apartment after nightfall and wander wherever I wish in that city of mine without fearing for belongings or life. The closest I got to the "seedy underbelly" of our nice little town was a drug dealer offering me some dope (and even him was fairly polite and readily accepted a "no thanks"). People got something to lose here. And that's important, and that's what keeps me voting left. Yes, it costs me dearly. But I buy something for it: I buy security. And far better security than any private watchdog service could provide, I "buy" the riffraff off. It's simply not worth it to mug me for the 20 bucks in my wallet because they can get far more by simply showing up at the social service office and holding their hands out. And legally so.
Yes, that costs money. But in the long run, it's cheaper. It's simply cheaper to hand someone a few 100 bucks a month, locking him up costs many times more and until he gets caught he'd be a source of trouble. Not so here. By giving them something to lose, they fall in line and "play nice".
It's also not so that these people don't want to work. They do. You can easily see that by the way our unemployment offices are besieged by people who could easily live on handouts but prefer to work for a few bucks more. It's a matter of personal pride, I'd say. And, frankly, I'd be the same.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They don't vote much either. The point is, they are not allowed to travel despite the country being ruled by the Savvior for the last 6 years. The poor need an ID — and a number of other document — to receive government assistance, why can't they bring that to vote? Of course, they can...
Snopes refutes the claims made in one particular chain-mail, that was making rounds after the 2012 elections. Nothing in the Snopes article talks about the scale of voting fraud — very intelligent of them.
I'm not asking you for evidence. I'm pointing out, it does not exist.
What's "nutty"? If the number of prosecutions under a particular law were accepted as a valid benchmark of how prevalent the outlawed activity is — and that's the only evidence offered by all of those "actual journalists" you cited off of the first page of Google search — then we must also conclude, there is no anal sex taking place in any of the locales, where sodomy remains illegal.
Which means simply, that the method we are told to use is bogus and the evidence I was talking about simply is not there.
There you go again, repeating that "minimal hazard" canard... And making another unsubstantiated claim: that gerrymandering is pursued aggressively by the GOP.
Now, I'm asking you for the last time: what "masses" are those, who, while legally eligible to vote, have no identification deemed sufficient under any of the recently passed "voter-ID laws" — and no way to obtain it? Unlike the voting fraud, the numbers of such people really can be reliably estimated — and the estimation comes out as (what was that word?) miniscule, if not a simple and round zero.
Thus, anyone objecting to the voter-ID laws (who is not also suing against an ID being required to travel and to receive government assistance) is either soft in the head, or hopes to benefit (either personally or as part of a group) from the activity, which the laws aim to reduce: voting fraud.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I know what they say about assuming, but I assume you mean that 20-40% of low income voters would vote Republican. I'm not familiar with minor US parties (my excuse: not living in the US) but surely there are other parties that they could be voting for, like a socialist party that would at least seem like a better option for poor voters?
Hans Christian Andersen — a most respectable European indeed — exposed this type of argument as rather fraudulent... And he did it in a manner, that was entertaining, educational and well-articulated (all traits, you ought to pursue developing in earnest). The fable was about emperor's new clothes, which only a fool ("idiot" being too rude a word for the times) would not see.
Although the top 1% lives better — by the very definition of "top" — in any society, a street beggar in New York is better off than a North Korean general...
Having tried both — first in the Socialist USSR and now in the Capitalist USA — I can tell you first-hand, that you are wrong. But don't take my word for it — perfectly scientific evidence of you being wrong exists today. While many factors affect the country's success and happiness, several accurate and well-controlled experiments have been inadvertently staged in the last century, where the nearly identical societies have taken different routes. I invite you to compare:
Can you offer even one counter-example?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Yeah, let's trust an SEC school when it comes to voting....
Strawman, apples-to-oranges comparison.
You've taken the ideal of one philosophy and compared it to the weakness of the other. A counter-argument, equally bad, could be made by flipping those.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Not much bleeding point in having the most secure voting software in the universe if the client's OS or GUI is compromised. This is what TOR users found out when the NSA broke not the TOR network, but simply hacked the user's browsers and got them to betray themselves.
First, drop the infantile "savior" nonsense. Second, they can travel without ID, it's just more difficult and slow.
Which is hyped up by only one group: the GOP, who is pushing voter ID laws without any evidence that voter fraud is the horrible bane they portray it being.
So you're saying there's no evidence that voter fraud isn't a massive problem? What?
The idiotic notion that because there are no prosecutions that there are no gays. The two situations aren't even remotely similar.
Your entire argument is this "There's no evidence that there ISN'T massive voter fraud, thus there obviously IS massive voter fraud." Completely irrational.
Since you ignored what I posted earlier, try this. I eagerly await your dismissal of that too. But a snippet:
In Pennsylvania, nearly 760,000 registered voters, or 9.2 percent of the state's 8.2 million voter base, don't own state-issued ID cards, according to an analysis of state records by the Philadelphia Inquirer. State officials, on the other hand, place this number at between 80,000 and 90,000.
So anywhere between 80K and up to 760K might be unable to vote.
Well we'll ignore the fact that at the same time the voter ID laws were passed, many states with GOP controlled senates also rammed through changes to voting, including fewer hours and fewer polling places, in very, very specific areas. It's all a campaign of disenfranchisement.
Before: "BUSH ELECTED PRESIDENT"
After: "ANONYMOUS ELECTED PRESIDENT"
Hey! There is an up side!
it would not be democratic, at least not by German standards, since the layperson cannot check it. Even if it's secure, which it cannot be, you need at least a degree in mathematics and several days of work to understand and check it yourself. Since a voting system must be resistant to large scale attacks, i.e. the government conspiring against the voters, it is vital that everybody can check it for themselves.
With pen and paper everything is easy to check. You look into the ballot before it is sealed, you check if everyone just throws in one ballot, and on the end you can count the ballots easily. This is something which can be checked trivially.
The technology has existed far longer than tablets and smartphones. It's called HTTP/HTML and consists of so-called webpages with so-called forms that allows feedback using buttons and similar. Technology to read a webpage aloud to the visually impared has also been around for a long time.
Now, how to secure that vote - making sure the right one votes and votes only once - that's the tricky part, but hardly a giant issue. We've had systems featuring parts of this also for a long time so it's just a matter of putting together the appropriate parts. One bit would be fairly important and different from most other systems: While we want a secure login, we don't want to retain who exactly the user is once we're logged in. Usually linking the login to an account is the center of most systems but in a voting system this is exactly what we don't want. But besides that it's all business as usual: Secure communication, login-screen that makes brute-forcing very difficult, data handling that ensures only one vote and that this vote isn't changed later etc.
It might also make sense to add a full backdoor to the NSA so they can register who votes for what and whatever else they need to know without having to hack the system and thus possibly open up new vulnerabilities that can be exploited by others for vote manipulation... ;)
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Those parties exist but get very few votes; for all practical purposes votes not for Republicans or Democrats can be ignored as a rounding error with few exceptions (e.g. Seattle just elected a Socialist city council member). It would be more believable that 20-40% don't vote at all (if they're welfare recipients, it's not unlikely that they can't afford to take the time off to vote).
http://www.paul-robinson.us/index.php/2008/10/25/the_robinson_method_a_really_simple_way_?blog=5
Yet every time I post it up, people seemed to be terrified of the thought of a fraud proof voting system, with instant results, that ALL participants can see. Why?
No what you said is that "intelligent people vote Republican" and then went on a tangent about the non-existent in-person voter fraud (which so far, has only been actually done by Republicans who then claimed they were "just showing it was possible" - you know, except they got caught and rightly jailed).
"Generally, the smarter a person gets, the more republican they tend to lean in ideology even if they insist on remaining democrats or liberals."
I truly hope you are trolling and don't believe what you wrote. I have read some idiotic stuff on /. over the years and this one is right up towards the top.
It is more like: "Generally, the older a person gets the more conservative they tend to lean..." The older you get the more you have thus you have more to lose. I tend to think it is more like "Generally, the more intelligent a person gets the more centrist they tend to lean..." Key being intelligence (contextual application of data) vs smart (memorization of data) and realizing that voters are a diverse group with diverse wants, needs, etc etc so there is rarely a single right answer to complex issues.
Having said that, thinking of politicians as "democrat" or "republican" is a trap. If you pay attention you will see they are more alike than they are different. I tend to think of them as two different marketing campaigns for the same organization.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
But even if we take your idea of "freedom" — do you suppose, Julian Assange would've been prosecuted for rape, had he not angered the world's powers? Do I need to remind you, which nice and free Socialist country is doing the prosecution?
Julian Assange has subtly turned the Wikileaks foundation into the "Julian Assange sexual assault defense fund".
Frankly, everyone is being taken for a ride since rather then reduce his image and involvement with it, he's made sure he's front and centre so that he can dodge court on a very serious but entirely unrelated charge. Wikileaks has been notably absent in trying to protect it's actual informants.
seems legit
Why do well-meaning researchers waste so much time and energy on e-voting? They should do something more likely to have a positive outcome, such as working on a perpetual motion machine.
The USSR is a red herring. Socialism or capitalism taken to the extreme are both bad. I'd hardly compare Norway or Germany to the USSR though.
It's like arguing that because having your legs broken with a baseball bat is unpleasant a gentle massage by a competent professional is terrible too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Those two are not synonymous. Quite the opposite: In a fully free market, your opportunity depends very much on your starting capital.
If we made sure that everyone started with the same amount of money and other possessions, then you could speak of same opportunity (it would still not be, but it would be much closer). However a free market alone neither enforces nor supports equal opportunity.
To American standards, Western Germany was very socialist.
To American standards, Finland is extremely socialist.
Your counter examples are all states which had no free market at all. So all you can say from those comparison is that it is better for a country to have a free market than to not have it. Not that a system where you have everything controlled by an almost unregulated free market is best (indeed, the USA are a counter example).
You might want to lookup the "Battle of Athens", a corrupt group of local politicians and a sheriff were using intimidation and vote rigging to stay in power. It took a major effort on the part of the community (including an armed raid by WWII vets) to route them out.
It also opens up an avenue for flash votes. Not sure if that's good or bad, but it could enable new rules. President violates the 4th amendment rights of every person on Earth? Why wait years for it to get to the supreme court? Hold a public vote tonight. Vote his ass out and get a new guy tomorrow. Same goes for congress or any other public official.
Frankly, with >30% of the votes now coming from absentee ballots, I think you've already lost the coercion/buying votes battle.
And by Simpsons I obviously mean Estonia.
"It is also something that can be manipulated easily."
On a small scale yes, but on a scale necessary to swing an election? First off you would have to have agents in a large portion of poling places, you would have to generate false ballots, you would have to dispose of the official ballots and somehow keep the whole conspiracy a secret. You might be able to swing a very close election with a small dedicated group, but it becomes exponentially more difficult the further apart the candidates are in valid votes.
Because using i := i + 1 or i++ operators are difficult.x
Seriously, how bloody hard is it to COUNT votes.
Isn't that something worth researching? Why can't there be a one-time-access key mailed to every registered voter? Mass produce a bunch of keys, don't record who gets what key, and don't record any data about the device that uses a specific key. I know the obvious problems with that kind of setup, but if I had all the answers I'd make a remote voting system and sell it, instead of arguing about it on /.
Surely we can't just say "It's impossible, so let's stop trying."
Isn't that something worth researching? Why can't there be a one-time-access key mailed to every registered voter?
You did not read my comment very well, because what you propose does not, in any way, deal with the issue I raised: if the system does not compel you to vote secretly, then it is not a secret ballot. Simply giving you a one-time key does absolutely nothing to compel you to vote secretly: you can still show your ballot to anyone you wish.
Surely we can't just say "It's impossible, so let's stop trying."
That is not what I said. I said I know of no way to do it. I welcome proposals that would, but any system that allows a voter to show his ballot to someone else during or after preparation of the ballot is definitionally not a secret ballot, and is still wide open to bribery and coercion. So you would need to find a way to enforce secrecy in the home. Maybe there's a way ... but the burden isn't on me to demonstrate it.
He wasn't talking about the USSR. He was talking about East Germany vs. WestGermany, not to mention North vs. South Korea.
In Germany, you had people of similar educational background, the same language, the same culture, and frankly all of the hallmarks of a properly controlled scientific study where the only real difference was the government which was administered over each one. Heck, in the middle of East Germany you even had a secondary experiment of East vs. West Berlin for comparison (where it could be argued that West Berlin had a whole bunch of things going against it and should have collapsed).
This isn't a red herring, but rather something on your part trying to redefine socialism as something not equal to communism in any way.
I suppose you could also use the examples of Hong Kong vs. Shanghai, although the Chinese government has screwed up Hong Kong so it isn't so much of a contrasting example not to mention that Shanghai is hardly all that socialist anymore either.
The argument could also be said more about liberty in general, as in the ability to do whatever you want without needing approval from the government. The more government regulation that somebody needs to deal with (and you must admit that the German Stasi were very controlling of the lives of people in East Germany), the less likely they are able to provide for themselves or others. Perhaps you can have a genuinely free society that also has a general socialist attitude towards its people, but the principle of general liberty for individuals is the point, not communism vs. capitalism.
MacDork: my goal is less to preserve the secret ballot than to point out the fact that we've lost the secret ballot. There's massive value in it, and we lost it without most people even realizing it. In my state, it is literally gone: WA has all-mail voting, even though our constitution requires "absolute secrecy in preparing and depositing" our ballots. And there was no debate or discussion about the fact that it clearly violated the constitution.
If we want to live with no secret ballot, fine, but we should understand what it is we're doing.
Also, I disagree with your conception of flash votes: I think recalls should be rare and deliberate and not taken in the heat of a moment. The idea that we can recall people on a whim undermines the point of representative government, which is not that we just elect people to think and act and vote on our behalf, but that we elect people for their judgment, and this would make representatives essentially beholden to polls, instead of exercising their judgment. The problem of officials violating our laws can be dealt with through more access to recalls and so on, perhaps, but without allowing this kind of immediate recall.
Smart does not equal intelligence. They are not the same things. Intelligence is the ability to learn new things and concepts and smart is the ability to use or apply what you already learned.
Actually, if you're trying to draw a distinction there between the prevailing synonymous English definitions and the uncommonly-used complementary definitions (which any smart person would have expressly stated), 'smart' even under that definition encompasses both intelligence (capacity and ease of learning) and cleverness (ability to use acquired knowledge quickly and effectively). In other words, smart equals intelligence plus education/knowledge plus creativity. Intelligence and education are a fair analog for "smart" even there, which any knowledgeable person would understand.
But nice try.
FWIW, the "Voter ID" proposed amendment to the Minnesota Constitution would have required IDs to be issued at no cost. (It also looked like a declaration of war on absentee ballots, which is why I used the quotes. This other feature was almost never discussed, and was not in the language on the ballot.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There is no way "home voting" can ever be at the same time respectful of privacy and ensure sincerity of the vote.
Either the "respected professor" hopes to make sure that "pater familias" can make sure that the "whole family votes right" ! ...
or he has no idea of the realitities and history of voting
Or under the pretence of "helping disabled people (and lazy people) to vote" he want's the make sure that he gets some funding in the great "electronic voting" con ...
Have you looked at social mobility stats? The US is pretty bad on this, compared to a lot of European countries. If success did depend on talent and hard work in the US, why would we have bad social mobility?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
This guy let's his true dumbass colors show through so much that I have bookmarked his posting page for quick reference. After a long evening of battling slashtards, trolls, and other dumbasses, if I still have mod points, I just mark all of his shit Troll that I can find. Use em or lose em! I modded you up for finally calling him out. No one cares when I do it.
This needed modding up so much and when I clicked the box to do so, I found out I blew all my points modding sumdumass's ridiculous statements troll and flamebait. That is what he said- smart (and old) people vote republican which couldn't be further from the truth.
East Germany was a hard-line communist state. West Germany was moderately socialist. All that proves is that moderate socialism works really well.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'm not familiar with minor US parties (my excuse: not living in the US) but surely there are other parties that they could be voting for, like a socialist party that would at least seem like a better option for poor voters?
In the US, first-past-the-post voting and gerrymandered single-member legislative districts make minor parties almost irrelevant.
Since the empirical evidence shows that the kind of voter fraud that requiring an ID would prevent is (practically) nonexistent the requirement is an unnecessary burden on the voter. A persons eligibility to vote should be determined at the time they register to vote and the only ID necessary to vote should be the card they receive after registering. If there was any evidence that impersonation of another voter was anything more than a trivial problem I'd be more sympathetic to ID laws but as I said the empirical evidence shows otherwise. I thought conservatives were against excessive and unnecessary regulations.
hmm... So one encompasses the other therefore the other is equal to the one. I think you lost yourself. If smart is more then intelligence, then intelligence alone would fall short of smart.
Read what you wrote and think about it. You are saying X+1=y therefore y=X.
Well, isn't that conveinient- especially when it is free to join..lol
Anyways, I do not believe I said anyone is not smart, I said something starts happening when they get smarter. What happens if they often start using the logic of tried and true instead of emotion to validate their positions. That is the key different between liberal conservative. Or should I have put that progressive verses conservative as most political labels seem to cross now. Almost all left political positions stem from emotion.
I want to see data on that. Or more specifically, the data you claim established that fact. Anyways, you are right, you didn't say anything about racism, it just seems to be the entire mem when voter ID comes about and I did post that is what the republicans are afraid of.
Incorrect and completely twisted. I guess if you say it enough though, you will start believing it yourself right?
Bullshit..lol. As I said, neither study you linked to is relevant to what I posted. And talk about intellectually dishonest and devoid of evidence for your claims, you are making a lot more out of what the articles you linked to actually say.
Ok, listen, words have meaning. Smart is one word with a specific meaning, smarter is another word with a specific meaning. While smarter lines up with smart, the er portion makes it more then just smart. Now, if you ask who is smart, then we have to look at the original sentence, "the smarter a person gets". So if we look at a person getting smarter, we are actually looking at a person competing with themselves. Lets through a wild ball here and assume it is over time too. I mean that would only be logical because someone cannot be smart and smarter then themselves at the same time can they? So we look at what happens when someone ages and gets smarter then they used to be, well, we see the old white man party AKA the republicans.
But hey, feel free to take crap out of context and make it sound however you want. It really isn't that important.
Lol.. It doesn't matter if voter fraud is non-existant or not. The claim that it disenfranchises minorities still hasn't been answered to how or why it does that.
As for voter ID, if the voter registration process accurately validated addresses and other information and was checked between districts or states, I could agree with you. But it doesn't and I don't really care about any empirical evidence you think you need to see first. There is a case for it, there might be a case against it. So far your position seems to be it's a hassle but it is no more of a hassle (actually quite less of one) then opening a bank account, applying for government assistance, buying fingernail polish remover in some states, even the Obamacare will require an ID in order to get coverage and treatment which nullifies the entire racist arguments.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/15/obamacares-id-restrictions-and-liberal-voting-rights-hypocrisy/
I guess the PPACA is too then right? You are seeming like you are inventing things and treating them as if they were real. Have you seen a doctor or anything for this condition? I know it will require an ID, but I hear this Obamacare stuff is supposed to be affordable- if that helps.
Since you want to invoke math, dumbass, then =/= than
And as usual, being a dumbass, you just kept peppering that mistake in this whole thread. It's not surprising that you want to constantly correct others mistakes yet don't attend to your own. It is a very common trait of conservative dumbasses.
Did I say anything about disenfranchising minorities? What I would say is that it places a disproportionate burden on low income and poor citizens regardless of race. The time and money some of them have to spend to get ID amounts to a poll tax. For instance some Texas counties don't have DMV offices and a person may have to travel more than 100 miles to get to one. Not easy for someone who has no access to a vehicle. A 90+ year old (white) woman in Pennsylvania who has been voting for decades was unable to get an ID because she didn't have a birth certificate. A bunch of nuns in Indiana who had been voting for decades were turned back at the polls because they didn't have the necessary ID's.
Last time I opened a bank account it wasn't any more hassle than registering to vote and the only ID I've ever been required to present for medical care is my insurance card.
There could be improvements to the voter registration system but as I said, in the absence of any significant proof of in person voter fraud your voter registration card should be all the ID you need to vote with.
Well, you are in for a treat because the PPACA specifically requires ID to be shown when it takes full effect. It's a federal regulation when opening a bank account after 911 too. So if you get medical treatment, change plans, or need another bank account, Or even get a job after 1986, you have to show ID.
As for Texas, I guess you're stuck voting by mail if you have no form of acceptable photo ID and are too bothered going and getting one. You can also get a voter ID card at the drivers license place free of charge. So it doesn't amount to a poll tax as you are capable of still voting- even if there is no DMV in your county and you choose not to have a car.