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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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.