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How Bitcoin Could Be Key To Online Voting
blottsie (3618811) writes If implemented correctly, the proliferation of online voting could solve one of the biggest problems in American democracy: low voter turnout. The 2014 midterms, for example, boasted the lowest voter turnout in 72 years. Making it easier to vote by moving the action from a polling station to your pocket could only increase turnout, especially in the primaries. Making online voting work is infinitely harder than it initially seems. However, in the past few years, there's been a renewed effort to solve the conundrum of online voting using a most unexpected tool: Bitcoin. The key idea is this: The main job in online voting is ensuring that the election system records someone’s vote the way they intended. Running votes over the blockchain, which is public, creates an auditable trail linking a person and their vote. Bitcoin-enabled voters don’t have to place their trust in Florida ballot counters trying to discern the difference a hanging chad and a dimpled chad—nor in black box online voting systems from private companies where what’s happening inside is a mystery. The proof is right there on the blockchain.
You can't have an auditable trail and a secret ballot.
Isn't one of the key features of modern voting the ability not to have your vote connected to you? This is part of the reason why there's so much argument over "card check" voting systems for unionization, because it allows the union or the company to coerce workers into voting one way or the other, since their vote is not anonymous.
One can already vote with a minimum inconvenience by being a permanent absentee. I can't remember the last time I actually went anywhere to vote, and haven't missed a single election in decades. Those who are not voting will, for the most part, carry on not voting with or without bitcoin.
It's not a given that low voter turnout is a problem. We don't need more low-information voters (89% agree that DHMO should be banned) and we don't need to coerce those who do not vote to signal their non-consent to the system.
Blockchain technology could make voting more reliable, but that's a separate issue - don't confuse the two.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's not worth going out of our way to make voting MORE accessible than it already is. There are multiple polling places in every city of any size across the nation. People who are so uninterested in the process that they can't either go to their local poll or drop an absentee ballot in the mail are VERY likely to have a misinformed, useless opinion.
There are any number of areas regarding voting that I'd rather see time spent on instead of being able to claim "There's an app for that".
I'm sorry, but what idiot has decided that having your vote be a matter of public record is a good idea?
From all of the news stories I've heard over the last year or so, I don't trust Bitcoin at all.
So WTF would I want this tied to voting for?
This sounds like an incredibly stupid idea. Bitcoin seems like it's barely usable as a currency, it has no place trying to prop up democracy.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Just put the damn ballot on paper. Computers will never be trustworthy. It is impossible.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
There is no way that you can conduct online voting and ensure that the voter is not being intimidated. Offsite voting is a necessary evil for certain people (the handicapped and those who are unavoidably out of town on election day) but it does not need to be expanded to cover everyone. Here in New York we very specifically keep those most likely to intimidate you out of the voting booth, i.e., your employer and union official. The people that can hold a financial gun to your head if you don't vote the way they want. With online voting (or offsite voting on paper, i.e., absentee ballots) there is no way to actually ensure that the voter doesn't have a gun (real or proverbial) aimed at their head when they click 'submit.' For this reason alone I will always oppose it and other measures (vote by mail) that take people out of the polling place.
The summary also makes the assumption that low voter turnout is a big problem. This is an oft-repeated claim but there's zero evidence to suggest that increased participation rates equate to better results. People choose not to vote for many reasons; apathy likely being the biggest one, followed closely by a generalized disgust with the available options. "None of the above" is a perfectly valid option in an election, whether exercised via the write-in for "Mickey Mouse" or by staying home on Election Day.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"creates an auditable trail linking a person and their vote"
Being able to verify how someone voted defeats the whole point. You need ANONYMOUS, but verifiable voting, if that's at all possible. Otherwise, you get into the whole issue of vote buying, intimidation, public shaming, etc.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Would this amount to a poll tax?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Voting must be private. The blockchain and the transactions it contains are always public.
The causes of low voter turnout are many, and difficulty with the voting process itself is not one of them, except for one factor: waiting time in the big, popular elections. Waiting time is not a factor in most elections. I am an officer of election, and have worked the polls for nearly a decade.
Despite all the hullabaloo, it is not, in fact, difficult to register to vote. It is not, in fact, difficult to show up at a polling station, check in, and cast your vote. There are scores of organizations that exist merely to help people with the process.
So, the whole rationale behind this BitCoin idea falls on its face.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
The author doesn't understand the requirements for elections. It should not be possible to bribe or coerce anyone for their vote. Anonymity is therefore an absolute requirement.
If votes were tied to identities you could have politicians bribing individuals for votes. Coercion could come in various forms, not just threat of violence, and it doesn't have to happen immediately. "I'm sorry you and your children are starving, Ms. Hudson. This is completely unrelated, but I see you voted against us during the last election. Ah, according to the computer, we're completely out of funds to help, sorry."
That is a horrible idea. There is a reason we have a secret ballot, and no receipts, to make sure now one is forced to vote a particular way. Was no thought given to this idea at all?
An overly-complex and ill-considered solution to a mostly non-problem. I was honestly surprised that the summary *didn't* end with "Read on to see what Bennett Hasselton has to say."
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
This sort of thing happens in the USA because many of us don't want the government to "get things done". We're mostly happy with the status quo (or not too unhappy, anyways), and figure, based on past experience, that most of what the government does when it gets the urge to "do something about xxx" will:
a) not produce the intended result
b) cost us more money
c) generally not get anything (good or bad) done till long after the problem its meant to solve has gone away on its own.
Do remember that we vote for a PERSON, not a PARTY, as most of you in Europe and elsewhere do. The question isn't "do we want more Democrats/Republicans?" but "do we want this particular bozo?"
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
In addition to selling your credit card and social security numbers, they can now offer to sell your vote for 10 cents apiece. Just harvest the private keys and it's a race to see which botnet can sign with the stolen key first! Sell them on TOR or I2P, I'm pretty sure Koch and Soros will bid big money to literally buy the election -- you can auction them against each other.
And if you say "we'll put the private key on a dedicated USB stick only for voting" then not only have you killed a lot of the convenience (for instance, you cannot do it from a phone but need a PC that can act as a USB host) but you've just moved the point of pwnage up a little bit to having to steal it right as you vote (or present a bogus voting interface!).
Really what you need is a set of physically separate machines that people can go to and plug their USB drive into a known secure environment. You could even put them in convenient nearby locations like schools and churches ...
It should be very clear by now that at least one party doesn't want more people to vote in general, only more of the people likely to vote in that party's favor. The establishment only accepted electronic voting so that they can game the outcome. They'll never take the next step to allow it to be widely exercized.
Frankly, if someone can't be arsed to vote in person, via mail in ballot, or via early voting, I'm not sure they really care enough about the process to put any real thought into their vote at all.
One of the big things I see with respect to U.S. elections is that there are far too many thing crammed onto the ballot every two years. Simplify it! Every 4 years you get your presidential vote, along with senate and house, and the off 2 years you get senate and house. Put anything else on other days. Federal elections could have a standardized ballot across the entire country, no dimpled cards or hanging chads.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
let's review the evidence. biggest Bitecon shop rifled and shut down broke a year ago. last week, the next biggest Bitecon shop was hit for something around $5 million in Bitecon. TV hosts wave around a new wallet on the air and it's emptied before the videotape rolls on the story.
and somebody wants to run VOTES over this leaky scam system? almost as bad at the Supreme Court allowing billionnaires to buy all the elections they want.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Personally I think non of the above should be on all ballots. He would win landslides every time. If he gets a majority the election needs to be Reheld and new candidates need to be chosen.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Very well put. I think there should be an actual "None of the above" choice on the ballot. If the count of that choice reaches a certain high percentage, say 50%, the elections should be considered null and void and new elections with new candidates should be run. This way we may have a chance at actually getting the rascals out of the government. Oh, and on topic, elections MUST be conducted in public place with privacy booths. Online voting as tempting as it may sound in this day and age of not getting off the couch for ANYTHING is a bad idea because of possible coercion and voter manipulation. Public polling place, with private voting booths and paper ballots. Count the ballots publicly. Also, voting should last 3-5 days covering a weekend and off hours to accommodate people working night shifts, etc. There are many improvements we can make to the current voting system, but taking it online is not a good one. Why do people think that anything technological is automatically superior to low-tech alternatives? Paper ballot is still the most reliable way to record votes.
the purpose of elections is to convince the public the election was fair. crytpography isn't transparent. worse in some forms of crytography it gains security from centralization of the key control making single point of attack more likely. It's much better when the public can see how the election works.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Why do we need all of this secrecy anyway? Because someone might retaliate if you don't vote for them?
There are many more problems with corruption and secret voting systems.
If you truly support someone, then why not just say it out loud?
Voting should be done out of love, not fear.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Which is easy to do when the small town is dominated by the local chieftain.
Which is certainly doable by a well-coordinated syndicate of local chieftains with a shared interest in a pro-local-chieftain candidate.
This is why vote anonymity is essential. If a ruler is powerful enough to impose the votes on a whole community, no one would be silly enough to risk their neck by openly testifying against them. This may look hypothetical today, but if you open the possibility for coercion in elections, its only a matter of time that it gets abused on a wide scale.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
As your employer, I'd like to see your randomly drawn ID, you know, to verify that you really voted during the two hours you were off.
Here's the public part of a randomly drawn ID, plus a certificate signed by the election office. With the public part, you can verify that I voted but not for whom. For all you can tell, I voted for Mickey Mouse.
The premise of this article is flawed. The biggest problem with the current electorate is low voter turn out? No, the problem is uneducated voters voting. If anything we have too many idiots casting ballots on issues they've learned about through entertainment tonight or TMZ.
The secret ballot has two purposes. one is it maintains your privacy and that's good for you. The other is it prevents selling your vote and that's good for the public. If I have a bitcoin ballot then I can easily transfer that coin to someone else to vote. thus I can sell my vote and the buyer knows for sure how it will be cast.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The people that can hold a financial gun to your head if you don't vote the way they want.
Worse than the gun to the head, the free voting app from your party / union / special interest group / chamber of commerce that makes casting your vote simple! Just type in your ID, press the big red "Vote!" button, and we fill out the virtual ballot for you! No getting bogged down in details like names or offices or having to read those boring ballot initiatives!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Low voter turnout is NOT in and of itself a problem. Only people who care enough to inform themselves and are concerned should vote.
Low voter turnout means people who don't give a hoot and have no idea have not participated. This is a good thing. The real problem is: How to turn them into people who give a hoot and have informed ideas of the issues.
Furthermore, whether they've informed themselves they way the way you do or are concerned about what you're concerned about is a feature of democracy, not a problem.
89% agree that DHMO should be banned
If you breathe it you'll DIE!
Everyone will die. In fact, if there's not enough DHMO in the air you breathe, you'll die sooner. It's not about avoiding DHMO but about having the amount that the human body expects.
Electronic voting machines in use in my county still have "fill in all Democrats", "fill in all Republicans", and "fill in all Libertarians" buttons on the first screen.
how is this in the same sentence as Bitcoin?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Republicans are fighting hard to decrease voter turnout. Low voter turn out is exactly what they want. They will never vote for something that increases voter turnout.
"one of the biggest problems in American democracy: low voter turnout." which is translated in the post to it is too hard to vote so people don't vote. However, this is a misconception. People don't vote because it has no purpose for them. They do not think that they are participating in a process which has any effect on politics. Therefore, the key problem is to ensure that every vote counts in a sense that it has effect on public policies.
Furthermore, the key problem is not only to guarantee that every vote is counted as intended, but also to be able to verify this vote and vote counting by everyone. Every time where a computer is the only thing that counts, the count can be corrupted. To do the same with paper and crosses on papers is much harder and easier to figure out.
And the opposition majority congress thing swings in every modern-era mid-term election except one.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I've seen his surname misspelled in comments as both "Hazelton" and "Hasselton". How is it supposed to be pronounced anyway?
The proposal of voting with Bitcoins has a flaw of trying to solve a problem that has not been posited. People who do not vote often choose not to. Most people vote for peer pressure, or by a sense of civic duty, which washes away if one doesn't need to get out of one's basement and meet the neighborhood, family and friends, to cast a vote. Voting online has already been tried in Switzerland and it did cause the turnout to decrease(http://www.nytimes.com/...).
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
The key to increasing voter turnout is not about making it easier to vote.
The key to increasing voter turnout is allowing someone to run that's worth voting for.
"None of the above" is a perfectly valid option in an election, whether exercised via the write-in for "Mickey Mouse"
Isn't voting for Mickey Mouse what got into this Copyright Term Extension Act mess in the first place?
or by staying home on Election Day.
Some countries make "staying home on Election Day" a crime for eligible voters.
Blockchain-based voting doesn't require users to be remote. Physical voting booths could run the software.
What exactly does Bitcoin do to help in reliable voting? If all you're interested in is a searchable public voting track record (and, others here have already given lots of reasons why you should NOT do that...) - then an old-fashioned relational database will do that job just fine - in fact, they are GREAT for this kind of stuff. If you are worried about the integrity of such database - how about the integrity of your blockchain? It depends on no one having a majority of the processing power, doesn't it? Processing power can be bought - and given the importance of the elections, it will.
We should put our trust in cryptography, yes.
And now you don't have an audible trail: I can't be sure my ballot was counted correctly. The first comment above still holds.
Make owning some property be a requirement to vote, the KKK would be proud
Reminds me of the episode collecting signatures for a petition to stop women's suffrage. Needless to say, the petition drive was very successful.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
The republicans would never allow a change that would bring so many young people to the polls.
Why do we need all of this secrecy anyway? Because someone might retaliate if you don't vote for them?
That is exactly why we have secret ballots. Intimidation used to be a routine occurrence in the US voting process prior to the secret ballot being introduced.
There are many more problems with corruption and secret voting systems.
I assure you that open ballots have worse problems in most cases when it comes to elections.
If you truly support someone, then why not just say it out loud?
Because some people will beat you or even try to kill you if you do not support their candidate. It's trivial to find examples. No one should have to fear for their safety due to a ballot.
I'm American, so my opinion on this matter does count. We live in what is generally considered to be a free society. There is no legal requirement to vote. That's part of what being in a free society means. If you choose not to vote for any reason, good or bad, you have the right to do so. Frankly, a lot of governments that have no freedom at all require mandatory voting. Yes, I know that Australia does too. That is their problem, not ours. I vote regularly but I feel very strongly that anybody who doesn't want to vote should have that right too. That just makes my vote more valuable.
This is a complicated topic, but one I wrote about six months ago here, http://www.digitalsuffrage.com...
There are many countries that are trying to adopt digital voting technologies, and there are ways to preserve both anonymity and integrity for digital votes. Since the vote is individually auditable, it would be possible to physically retract misappropriated votes for example, which could guard against identity theft or other computer breach.
I've said it before with respect to Bitcoin. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. A universal ledger of fact-in-time information is a powerful tool for building applications such as electronic voting systems.
many of us don't want the government to "get things done"
Most people are libertarians, and see government intruding every chance they get. The fact that they continue to vote for the two parties marching us down the same path to tyranny is beyond me. The problem is, most of these same people also say "there ought to be a law" without considering how these will impact everyone's liberties. Politicians love to stir up the passions of the people with "assault rifle" or "Terrorist" language and impose new restrictions on liberty in the name of security.
And we all know how that works out in the end.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
AFAIK, none of those issues had anything to do with Bitcoins itself but a number of exchange sites which went belly up. BT might be a lousy currency (or not) but the protocol and its implementation is surprisingly well though out.
We vote by mail here in Oregon. I like it. It give you a chance to sit down and research each issue (voter guide, google, etc). Compared to having to go to a polling place ONLY on a Tuesday I really prefer it. I just wish it was postage paid, or was mailable with just 1 Forever stamp.
I know I will annoy some naysayers here, but I really would like to see the polls open from Saturday through Tuesday for non vote by mail states. I hated having to track down a polling place when I used to live in California. It had to be in the evening after work, and usually had a long line thanks to everyone else having similar schedules. Kind of a hassle.
Basically, we have a tradeoff in advantages and disadvantages between the choice of leaving a vote accountable or secret. If the vote is accountable, then there's a means to force the voter to vote a certain way. If the voter is not accountable, then one can assault the vote counting mechanism itself.
In the US, I gather we started with mostly public voting. That turned out to cause considerable problems due to widespread extortion, bribing voters, etc. That's the main impetus behind the argument to keep voting secret. OTOH, you don't have to worry as much about accountability for the same reason.
Over time, the present physical-based vote counting systems have evolved to keep votes secret. The problem with them is that they're klunky and slow with plenty of opportunity for miscounts and other honest mistakes. But not so much reason to care about accountability due to the considerable overhead of gaming these system without getting caught.
What has changed in recent decades is a move to electronic voting systems. While these have considerable advantages, they also have the huge disadvantage that they're easy to game by someone with sufficient access to just simply edit votes and vote tallies.
My view is that has already been done in the 2012 Republican primaries (in a considerable number of states, including all the early primaries, Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina) to select Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee for president and a different sort of electronic vote manipulation might have helped elect Bush in Ohio in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
This sort of suspected vote manipulation is what I think drives the current push towards accountability. Did your vote really count or did someone just replace your vote?
My take on it is that being able to audit your vote does weaken vote secrecy, but it requires a lot more work to manipulate the vote this way than in the good old days of public voting. But what does concern me is that this might not actually do all that much to eliminate vote manipulation. If the computer says 80 people voted for candidate A and 100 for candiate B, then you'll need to come up with 81 people voting for candidate A or 101 people voting for candidate B to show that the tally doesn't match the vote.
FFS, doesn't anyone do any research before posting stories? 60 seconds of research would turn up the Wikipedia entry on End-to-end audible voting systems. The problem of being able to verify that your vote is recorded as you intended without revealing the actual content of your vote has been solved by several teams. The ones that seem to have the best handle on things are Scantegrity, Pret-a-Voter, and Punchscan (the predecessor of Scantegrity) .
Using Bitcoin (which in fact has anti-anonymity properties) as an engine for voting is like attaching a tractor to a horse carriage. It may get you where you want to go, but it's nothing like a proper motor vehicle.
--Paul
The summary also makes the assumption that low voter turnout is a big problem. This is an oft-repeated claim but there's zero evidence to suggest that increased participation rates equate to better results.
Low voter turnout breaks Democracy.
There are parts of the country with 1% or less voter turnout for primary elections.
This effectively means that only the most partisan candidates get onto the ballots.
If you don't see how that's a problem, you probably haven't been paying attention.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The machine should also issue a signed receipt: 'This (lottery/random) ID voted for X'
The voter is free to choose to keep this receipt or destroy it. If he keeps the receipt he risks being harassed by the thug but he can also prove it if his vote was registered incorrectly at the official registry.
The important point here is that as long as a fraction of the voters keep their receipt, any systematic fraud may be noticed. If a random 1/10 of the population keep their receipt then only ten(!) single votes can be me messed with in the election before someone is likely to step forward with a receipt pointing out the fraud: 'This receipt says ID12345 voted for X, but the official registry says ID12345 voted for Y. How come??'
Because every candidate in the House is up for re-election every two years, accounting for 435 discrete elections, the Senate has 1/3rd of it's members up for re-election every two years, resulting in 33 discrete elections, and the Presidency is up for re-election every four years.
Why would you imagine such a process would result in all three having their majority be the same party?
Ken
A low voter turnout is preferable to a vote that cannot be trusted. See http://www.velvetrevolution.us... Regards, Dave Hodgins
We are constantly told that millions of poor, minority, and women voters are incapable of securing and retaining photo ID to allow them to vote in an election that requires state-issued ID, how in the world will these same voters wrestle up the where-with-all to set up a secure Bitcoin identity, and be able to successfully vote by holding on to said Bitcoin identity?
Will setting up your required Bitcoin identity require voters to prove their identity? That's RACIST!
Ken
Well at least I can directly profit from my vote instead of giving it to an R or D to sell to the highest bidder.
Consider what low voter turnout does to the election process. If everyone voted the only thing that would matter is convincing 50% of the voters, no matter how little they care, that some issue (candidate, referendum etc..) was every so slightly more desirable. How much they care, the fact that 49% of the population might care intensely that something not happen while 51% only very mildly approve wouldn't matter.
On the other hand, because people often don't bother to vote, not only how many people want something to happen but also how much they want it matters. For instance (hypothetically) imagine a state initiative legalizing same sex marriage where a minority cares very strongly about gays having the right to marry while a slight majority finds the idea unpleasant and sees no reason to change things but doesn't care very much. Currently, the fact that that minority would turn out in greater numbers when the issue is on the ballot (or candidates who support/oppose gay marriage are running) means that their greater concern matters.
Isn't it better that, while everyone retains the right to vote whenever they want, a minority who cares greatly wields more weight on that issue than the indifferent majority?
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I've contributed to the secure voting platform Agora Voting and from what I know they have already thought about using the blockchain, in part because bitcoin is sexy these days (as you can see from this article being in the frontpage of /.), but the problem is the blockchain can only process a limited number of transactions per second, it's messy. It's still a good idea, but it's not the end-all solution: for example a big problem is the census, you need a reliable list of secured voters.
Please sit down, it might come as a big shock to you.
It is not a bug, it is the feature. Politicians do not want high voter turn out, they don't want informed voters either. The system is working as designed (by the politicians). How else can you square less than 20% approval ratings for congress with higher than 90% reelection rates for the incumbents?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The problem is apathy, not voter turn out. The media are shills for powerful candidates and people don't take the time to do the research required to vote intelligently. Making it easier to vote jsut means that more sheeple are going to vote for whoever their church, employer, or biased news channel told them to vote for.
I'd prefer if it was actually harder to vote so less sheeple who don't really care won't make it to the polls and vote for another giant douche or turd sandwich. The less people that vote, the higher the chances of a third party candidate or someone who actually fights (vs paying lip service) for the underrepresented (IMO the middle class) gets into office.
ghash.io has secured the presidency for [insert whomever paid the most].
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
BUT I devised a receipt that is traceable back to the ballot and the voter. It serves the function to ensure that every voter votes ONLY once and enables the voter to validate that his vote was included in the vote tally and counted.
SO Bitcoin is just a ticket that makes the receipt service possible.
BUT the ballot embodies the vote itself is blinded by a one way hash function irreversible is sent on to the tally count.
For their solution!
I'm not saying that low voter turnout isn't a problem.
But it's a problem of laziness, apathy and misinformation.
Bitcoin is just flat-out NOT equipped for solving those problems.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Making it easier to vote by moving the action from a polling station to your pocket could only increase turnout, especially in the primaries.
There are many professional elections that have switched to online voting in France and every time the E-Voting proponents trumpeted the turnout boost this would no doubt bring. Unfortunately they have essentially been wrong every time.
I have dwelled on and architected a pair of solutions that leverage the blockchain and other crypto-currency ideas into an electronic voting platform -- and there's still work to be done on my part.
From my research and analysis, the only pathway to success in the electronic voting space is to synthesize a core technology platform that is compatible across various political systems' core electoral rules. Then, apply the nuances of regional election laws and regulations to the adaptation of the core technology.
The core technology would contain some form of blockchain, but only to cover the span of an individual round of elections among a finite set of candidates and voters. The encryption keys and underlying one-way salts should be in the possession of the institution staging the election (i.e. authority who would declare the winners) while the entire encryption scheme should be public knowledge as to develop trust among the voters that the tech is trustworthy.
My proof of concept is already in the works at home... on my PC... which is turned off today... because I'm busy with my full-time job... sigh.
I don't really expect voters to be "experts" on the topics they're voting for. And at least in my own case, I often feel I'm vastly under-informed on what I'm about to vote on. (In reality, some of the people I'm asked to vote for haven't made any effort to publicize their views at all. This tends to happen with judges or folks in charge of treasuries or school-related positions pretty often. You'll often find someone standing near the polling place handing out a list of recommendations of who to vote for, for these things -- but that just tells you who wants to give the most money to the school or organization who made the flier.)
Regardless, I usually feel relatively informed on at least a few of the issues up for vote that I'm most interested in. Therefore, I go to cast votes on those issues, and I may just skip over the ones I have no real opinion on.
The problem I have is with apathetic voters who vote simply due to peer pressure. You can say all you want about them cancelling each other out (thanks to equal numbers voting for both sides of an issue) -- but I feel that every vote counted acts as evidence an individual supports the candidate the vote was cast for. When all of the candidates are lackluster or even guilty of previous corruption - I'd rather see them get very few votes on either side, then large numbers from all the disinterested and uninformed who just "pick one" at the polls.
... electronic systems that let people track their own votes can be used by others to track those votes.
The real point, and why it's illegal (in many jurisdictions) to show you how your vote was counted:
If you can prove to yourself your vote was counted for candidate Foo, you can prove to candidate Foo's campaign machine that your vote was counted for Foo, and collect the vote-buying money or other rewards. (Also: Strong-arm operations, like crooked unions, organized crime, and/or political machines, could get you to divulge your vote with various threats.)
But maybe it is time to ditch the secret ballot... at least for some things.
Absolutely not. The point of voting being secret is to keep people from intimidating voters into voting for someone other than their personal choice.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That is the selling point, but the reality has been that the secret ballot has facilitated stolen elections and does very little to prevent voter intimidation. It may not be worth the trade in every circumstance.
Democratic and Repubican forms of government are NOT based on such a premise.
The entire point of such forms is to avoid civil war. They do this by modelling the war - well enough that the faction that loses the election is convinced that, if they try to reverse the result by force of arms, they will lose that, too.
Low voter turnout is . If people don't care enough about an issue to fight for one side or the other, (let alone not caring enough to even examine the sides), not voting for a side picked randomly, or on the basis of name recognition or the like, does no harm.
Voting in such a circumstance may cause a lot of harm. Just like visibly corrupt elections, a visibly frivolous electorate reduces the ability of the election to convince the losers they've really lost. Further, it gives them the idea that they were cheated out of what they "deserved" and could win - giving them an opportunity to start a war AND claim the moral high ground in doing so.
Conversely, not voting when you would fight is a vo
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The third paragraph should begin:
Low voter turnout is not a problem.
And that last should be:
Conversely, if you would fight you should vote. Withholding your vote in such a circumstance also makes the election less convincing, increasing the destabilization of the government. An election boycott is a vote for genuine war.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...the biggest problems in American democracy: low voter turnout...
Yes, I know, the subject is rather trite, but I think it sums up what the real problem in democracy is. For democracy to work, it isn't enough to get voters to vote; they have to understand what it is all about. You really need to educate yourself about what the different options are in an election, you need to understand - and agree with - the rules. How often do people actually know or care about what they are voting for or against? The way it works in America, most people prefer to vote with their 'gut-instinct', which is no more than the sum of vague prejudices, misunderstandings combined with passing whims and fads; those in power like it that way, because it means they have an easier time of it than the likes of mr Putin or the Chinese government. Power brokers fear nothing more than intelligent, well-educated people.
Here in Colorado we just held an all mail in election. Every voter is mailed a ballot. You had roughly 3 weeks to do research and vote. I believe voter turnout was just over 70%. Certainly fewer excuses for not voting. Would also help fight voter fraud, if and when there is ever any evidence of this right-wing ruse designed to suppress voter turnout.
This got me to thinking: if we can invent a "good enough" electronic voting system, and in an age where communication is cheap and easy, why not go farther and consider a democratic system where every citizen is allowed to vote on any issue directly, if they choose, or a person could elect their own personal representative. So there would still be room for professional politicians. But some people would prefer to read blogs containing oppinions on issues, or decide on a per-issue basis to cast their vote independently from their chosen representative. Representatives would probably have a maximum limit of representees to avoid over-concentration of personal power. Political parties would either have no legal support or might even be legislated against. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud so to speak.
For me, the two biggest problems with US politics are (1) lobbying and campaign finances and (2) the effectiveness of propaganda. The power of lobbying would be weaker if citizens retained their right to vote directly and independently on any issue they choose to. That would also encourage legislators to blog about what they are supporting and why. This might help them gain representees as well as swinging independent votes. The effectiveness of propaganda is a much tougher issue to deal with, but I believe that disrupting a two-party system would help, as would the teaching of propaganda analysis as part of the standard curriculum at the high school level. Hopefully others have better ideas.
And before you say "That'll never happen!" let me agree on that point but then refuse to let that stop me from dreaming. In modern times, what would a more effective democracy look like? The foundation of democracy is that people are intelligent and capable of self-government. Is that even a valid principle? If so, how could we implement it better?
Voting in elections is NOT democracy;
Casteism
There's a reason why people don't vote, and it's not because the choices on the ballot are all so wonderful it hardly matters.
Reasons, actually.
One that doesn't get much attention is the pre-printed ballot, where the government decides who is a "first-class" candidate and who can only be elected as a write-in (where not prohibited by law).
This comes from a series of election "reform" laws enacted in the late 19th century, designed to make it harder for immigrants and their offspring, and other undesirables, to vote.
Voter turnout and election competitiveness declined to our current low levels over the next several decades as engaged voters left the electorate through attrition.
Details in "Why America Stopped Voting", by Mark L. Kornbluh. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/inde...
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Politics as a sublimated, ritualised substitute for war. Not sure I agree 100% (Clausewitz probably wouldn't) but worth thinking about nonetheless. Would mod you up if I could.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."