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32 States Offer Online Voting, But Experts Warn It Isn't Secure (bostonglobe.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis writes: According to the Washington Post, 32 states have implemented some form of online voting for the 2016 U.S. presidential election -- even though multiple experts warn that internet voting is not secure. In many cases, the online voting options are for absentee ballots, overseas citizens or military members deployed overseas. According to Verified Voting, "voted ballots sent via Internet simply cannot be made secure and make easy and inviting targets for attackers ranging from lone hackers to foreign governments seeking to undermine US elections."
And yet 39% of this year's likely voters said they'd choose to vote online if given the option, according a new article in the Boston Globe, noting that "All 50 states and D.C. send ballots to overseas voters electronically," with Alabama even allowing them to actually cast their ballots through a special web site. "Security is exponentially increased over any other kind of voting because each ballot, as well as the electronic ballot box, has military-grade encryption," argues the founder of the software company that assures the site's security. "She also claims that Web voting is more accurate," reports the Boston Globe. "No more hanging chads or marks on a paper ballot that may be difficult to interpret. Web systems can also save money and can be upgraded or reconfigured as laws change..."
And yet 39% of this year's likely voters said they'd choose to vote online if given the option, according a new article in the Boston Globe, noting that "All 50 states and D.C. send ballots to overseas voters electronically," with Alabama even allowing them to actually cast their ballots through a special web site. "Security is exponentially increased over any other kind of voting because each ballot, as well as the electronic ballot box, has military-grade encryption," argues the founder of the software company that assures the site's security. "She also claims that Web voting is more accurate," reports the Boston Globe. "No more hanging chads or marks on a paper ballot that may be difficult to interpret. Web systems can also save money and can be upgraded or reconfigured as laws change..."
With online voting, it is impossible to prevent coercion.
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If this can be made to work, then we no longer need a congress. Everyone can vote directly on every issue.
just put up a Facebook page and see who gets the more Like. Problem solved.
It's not like it really matters anymore. Politicians are entertainers nowadays, not decision makers.
lucm, indeed.
This will result in pales in comparison to the amount of enfranchisement it will create. Every time I've seen someone railing against voter fraud it's always been a transparent attempt to keep some kind of "undesirables" from voting. Usually members of the working class.
Bullshit. I only want people voting who put some effort into it. We're continually throwing away our country by trying to turn elections into zero effort by the voter. In my opinion the two worst things in our elections are open primaries and early voting. Show up the day of the election, darken the oval next the candidate you want and feed it into the electronic counter - an unambiguous paper trail will remain. Save early voting to the true absentee and not leave it open to vote harvesting.
You can take a screen shot or a picture of the screen that shows your vote.
Still, nothing beats good old paper ballots. Too bad not enough people are demanding it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
From TFA: "But experts in computer security maintain that nothing sent over the Internet is secure."
While I agree with the point he's trying to make about the issues with existing online voting systems, this hyperbolic statement is clearly wrong.
It's certainly possible to make Internet voting at least as secure as paper ballots. Heck, it could be made significantly more secure than my state's vote by mail program (which is the only way to vote in Washington state). The problem is, making it secure would also make it extremely inconvenient for each voter, as well as expensive to the state in terms of both money and manpower... so that's not going to happen.
#DeleteChrome
Here we go again, with the "it isn't secure, and we're gonna hack the election" conspiracy. Funny how our entire banking system is online and secure enough, yet voting isn't. We're still forced to accept 1800's era paper trails. Even the multi-million LA County voting system (last designed in 1969) is being redone with a paper balloting process.http://vsap.lavote.net/
Sheesh!
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
The problem isn't so much that the ballot itself isn't secure, it's that the authentication of the voter isn't reliable so the identity of whoever cast the ballot isn't secure. The only ways to make that authentication reliable involve encoding the identity of the voter into the cast ballot, which blows away the whole idea of secret ballots so nobody can confirm how you voted.
It's possible to do it, but you'd need a) a state-issued smartcard with a unique key-pair assigned to that specific individual capable of encrypting and signing arbitrary blocks of data, and b) a front-end system that'd accept the voter-signed ballot, verify the signature and contents, strip the voter's signature and replace it with one from the election authority, and this system would have to be trusted not to record anything tying voter identities to ballots and verifiable so that anybody could confirm that not only was the system actually trustable but that the running software was generated from the verified code. That's a non-trivial system to set up.
What the fuck is up with this the term military grade encryption? This sounds like a term invented to justify multiple classes of encryption. One class than cannot be broken for the military and another class that can be for everyone else. That is not how this is supposed to work, encryption that worth using cannot be broken.
Want to end democracy in America once and for all? Then sure, go ahead and move all voting to electronic systems.
Doing so, you eliminate any real citizen oversight — you don't need all those election observers and volunteer pollsters anymore, so that's thousands of people who no longer count ballots, or supervise the machines that scan paper ballots now. Less oversight makes it easier to rig the system — something that's much less plausible now, because we have so many people involved.
Voting needs to happen on paper. Technology can improve our lives the other 363 or so days out of the year, but when it's an election at stake, I want a paper ballot for each and every person who votes. I want a tangible record, no matter how expensive it might be. A paper ballot is not entirely flawless and there are other kinds of fraud that can happen. But I'd prefer the startlingly low incidence of those kinds of issues because this is the only way we can be sure that other, more pernicious, less obvious or even provable types of fraud cannot and are not happening. Electronic voting should be illegal.
Trump Wins The Game Is Afoot!
I wonder, do those sites include ga.js? Probably they do.
Fuck you, you undemocratic piece of shit. The constitution says nothing about "putting in an effort" or any other such crap. You've proven the original poster's point - that people who complain about those that vote are usually wanting to clear out their notion of undesirable voters (in your case those undesirables that aren't putting in an effort). The question is whether we're going to have a democracy or not. So I reiterate - fuck you, you undemocratic piece of shit.
That is all.
I hate when people, usually on the left, fuss about voter identification laws. Requiring identification is definitely a good way to ensure that the person casting the vote is who they claim to be, and that people don't vote multiple times. I don't see how any honest person could oppose those goals.
The real problem is the ridiculous barriers sometimes put in place to make it difficult to obtain appropriate identification. It's definitely in our interests as a country to know is here, to be able to identify a person when needed, and to ensure that those people have access to basic services that require identification. The actual disenfranchisement is carried out by closing down DMV offices and making it very expensive and difficult to obtain prerequisite documentation like birth certificates. Those tactics harm people beyond their ability to vote. I support voter ID laws while addressing the underlying issues I just described.
The only way to nip this dreadful idea in the bud is for a serious hack to occur that proves it is insecure. Thus the system reporting a billion votes cast for Abraham Lincoln would probably do the job...
Because then you only get votes from people that are stupid enough to use Facebook.
Hey, dipshit...read the constitution and understand our federal form of government is a representative republic - it's not democratic. There, did calling names convince you of anything or does it just sound ignorant?
The problem is, people in the USA, take their rights & freedoms for granted. The (un)education system in this nation, over the last 40+ years, along with our short attention span, people don't have a clue how our system is SUPPOSE to work. People are deathly afraid of the IRS, afraid of the CIA, afraid of pretty much any government agency. THAT my friends, IS the problem. People are afraid of government, but, the government should be afraid of the people. We have become not a free nation, but a nation that is now is a soft tyranny, and we are quickly approaching a hard tyranny. Once "something" triggers a nationwide crisis, be it terrorism, a huge global pandemic, depression, war, whatever, the government will quickly suspend our rights and we will become a socialist dictatorship. I only hope it doesn't happen until my time on this Earth is finished. The Constitution EXPECTS its citizens to police those governing it, and, to throw out any such government that usurps the rights guaranteed in the constitution. Considering how we've allowed the government to get to this point, shame on us for not being good stewards of our country.
Voting in person on paper is the way to do it.
Voting in person requires the person show up and can be checked off a list. If they vote online, all it takes is a single person with their identifying information and possibly a proxy server to commit massive voter fraud voting for thousands or even millions of people without their knowledge.
Voting with a machine or having a machine tally the votes allows for the machine to be programmed to lie about the results and if the votes are cast digitally, they can have the record of the vote changed to match where they have no proof the rigging took place.
And if it was rigged, both systems can be done by the same set of people so all online voting can do is allow the votes to be stolen even easier. I already dislike mail in ballots for the same reason but at least that is more trackable than either of the previous two.
I agree with this. Every citizen has a right to vote whether they are stupid or lazy or whatever. If you don't like the constitution of the USA find a country that restricts voting rights and move there.
What's your point? The representitives are still elected democratically. In the US that means citizeship = vote, not some citizenship plus some random criteria that you made up.
We've been an oligarchy well... pretty much always. Then entire point of the electoral college, the Senate and our entire system of representative gov't was to protect the interests of wealthy landowners. We only bothered to form a Federal gov't in case the British attacked again. What little flirting with actual democracy we've done was the result of a member of the ruling class (FDR) breaking ranks with his peers and throwing in for the workers. That an WWII killing a huge number of working males requiring the ruling class to practically coddle the survivors (plus the cold war delaying global competition among wage earners).
We have not and are not a Democracy. Online voting might actually change that though. Disenfranchisement has been the best method used to keep up the ruse. Online voting would make voting possible for the working poor (who traditionally can't make it to the polls before they close around their 12-16/hr/day jobs; not by accident). Like mandatory voting the ruling class is scared shitless of this.
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And this is exactly why it will be strongly fought against.
To give a concrete example, in the last presidential elections in Austria the neonazi party FPÖ won in the polling booths, but lost in the postal votes. Their answer to that? Forbid postal voting, of course! Who uses it the most are university students that are away from their hometown, and have very little sympathy for the FPÖ.
entropy happens
Why are paper or electronic ballots so limiting?
I can only think that TPTB want it that way...
Why not let voters use order of preference.. 1st, 2nd, 3rd... Say you didn't like Hitlery or Trumpet but knew voting for J. would be taking a vote from the Trumpet candidate and you knew it would be far worse with Hitlery in charge...
So you can put #'s by names or more complicated check boxes to say
_1_ : Johnson
_2_ : Stein
_3_ : Trumpet
_4_ : Hitlery
I think a majority might well endup being a 3rd party if one didn't worry about throwing their vote to a candidate they fear. Yes it would take some more complicated tracking but, great..
Also one could provide a unique index code(or 2) with every vote; to the voter which could be looked up after totals in an unchanging (hash code/public list verifiable) where anonymous voters can check to see if their votes were counted properly... If they were not, by enough people, a formal stink could be made...
A :None of the above option that if 'won', would force all parities to present new candidates(heck, maybe ban existing from ever retrying) and another vote.
Here we go again, with the "it isn't secure, and we're gonna hack the election" conspiracy. Funny how our entire banking system is online and secure enough, yet voting isn't.
But it isn't. Bank fraud happens all the time. When it happens, you show the paper trail, and the bank verifies it and gives you your money back. They accept the loss as the cost of doing business. How do you get your vote back?
Here is David Pogue's comment in Scientific American (www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-will-we-be-able-to-vote-online/):
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The "effort" test unfairly favors retired seniors who have a lot more time to waste than someone working long hours. It's not a fair measure of actual interest in voting at all.
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All of the recent "election stealing" has been done by Hillary. BTW, Hillary is a Democrat.
Fuck you, you undemocratic piece of shit. The constitution says nothing about "putting in an effort" or any other such crap. You've proven the original poster's point - that people who complain about those that vote are usually wanting to clear out their notion of undesirable voters (in your case those undesirables that aren't putting in an effort).
Well, to be fair, "the Constitution says nothing about" the requirements for suffrage in general. In the early days of the U.S., states restricted voting rights to mostly white male landowners... by your standards, the original Constitution as interpreted by the states who decided who got to vote was profoundly "undemocratic." The phrase "right to vote" never even appeared until the Fourteenth Amendment was passed after the Civil War.
Gradually, over the years, we've added suffrage to other folks, and now it's pretty much universal for people over the age of 18 (excepting felons serving time and such edge cases). But twas not always thus, and citing the "Constitution" in this discussion brings in a host of problems... since that Constitution had to be amended at least SEVEN times SPECIFICALLY to enfranchise voters which had been previously excluded.
And Congress has had to pass other bills to extend voting rights to other random groups who would not necessarily otherwise have it under the Constitution (e.g., citizens overseas, some Native Americans, residents of D.C. in some elections, etc.).
Anyhow, I do NOT agree with GP's attitude here. But the Constitution is pretty much a terrible model for enfranchising people to vote -- the default position over the centuries has basically been "no, you don't really have the right to vote..." because the Constitution does such a poor job of granting it.
So naturally you are also in favor of requiring IDs in other critical or dangerous area, such as buying guns, right?
Oh, and by the way -- if you think that normal U.S. citizens have "the right to vote" today, that's really up to interpretation. For example, you really don't have the right to vote for President of the U.S. You have the right vote in an election, but it's up to your state legislature to decide in what manner the results of your state voting can be tallied to select members of the Electoral College to vote for President on your behalf.
Basically, the Constitution is profoundly undemocratic in sense of "direct democracy." It was designed to have many layers between the votes of the people and the actual officials and laws in the government.
For our "Representative" democracy, as many others are saying, electronic voting simply makes no sense. Too easy for coercion, too hard for identity confirmation, etc.
However, a "teledemocracy" system makes sense in the form of a national referendum, or maybe more like a national conversation about specific issues. It could pull some issues back into the realm of direct democracy. Probably not for everything, and probably not all at once, but having a serious system (unlike previous attempts which were largely ignored by our representatives) that could guide reps and congresspeople more directly than the current system(s) of "polling", which is again, all too-often ignored.
Such a system could be not unlike the one here on slashdot, with moderation, karma, etc., which though perhaps less than ideal, could lead to a system where the American People actually get to set (or at least nudge) the agenda, rather than the status quo, where lobbyists, and power-brokers get to not only set the agenda, but write the legislation.
I'm sure it wouldn't be perfect, any maybe not any better, but it's hard to see how it could be any worse than what we have now.
...I was so worried that the Democrats might have a harder time stealing this election than normal. It's good to know their hackers are on the ball.
You mean by voting?
You know, we don't have an opt-out system, right? Seriously, you can't out of most laws that are enforced upon citizens (and non-citizens) in the country, there's a few you can out out of (mostly entitlements), and a few you can opt in to (again, entitlements, security clearance, military enrollment, etc). Honestly, what you say is just absurd.
I'd agree with the former, but only in that we even have primaries. But, you know, that's not a part of the government per se* and really a hard point to argue about without just coming across at the same sort of jackass who decries reality TV. Boo hoo. As for early voting, why do you have a problem with defining voting to extend upon multiple days? Is there something magical about the first Tuesday in November that we must limit voting to a sub-24 hour stretch on that day? Uh, yea, no.
s/day/days/ and we make the process more reasonable. But then...
Yea, damn that vote harvesting! Why, we should try to prevent as much harvesting of votes as possible! Hell, why even have voting? Oh, right, because that's the whole point of an election. To harvest as many votes as possible to try to derive as much of a consensus of the people so the government better represents the people. Now, if you want to argue that voting does a poor job of that or elections do or a fixed term or having individuals elected instead of platforms, I'd agree. But to bitch about a very specific aspect of it as if THAT is the problem when it isn't is just stupid.
* Indirectly who appears on the ballet is controlled by this on almost all states, but you can still write in who you want. So, yea, it definitely is like a survey that pushes for a certain response. But in the end, you do have control of who you elect.
you just advocated voter disenfranchisement, right? And what, exactly, do you define as sufficient effort? Here in my neck of the woods voting for Bernie in the primaries was a 3 hour wait. That wasn't an accident, you know. Wasn't there some old saying about coming round for the socialists? I forget how it went, and evidently you did too.
Oh, and only 9% of voters turned out for the Primaries. That's why you get to choose between Fuckface von Clownstick and Wallstreet's Girl.
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Any fraud possible from electronic voting is nothing compared to the fraud possible with the current paper system. Paper votes can easily be lost or rendered unreadable. And many states don't require any sort of ID to vote, making it possible for the dead to vote.
Of course I am. Requiring an ID and a comprehensive background check to buy a gun is common sense. As for voting, reducing fraud with voter ID laws and enfranchising minorities are not mutually exclusive. I can't understand why there isn't a bigger push to simply make it easier for minorities to get proper identification. It would take away an avenue for disenfranchisement while making it far easier to do other things that require ID, including getting many types of jobs.
If you want to reduce the amount of uneducated voters, it's far more productive to work on educating voters. The media isn't especially effective since they focus more on appearance and things that don't matter than they do on the actual issues.
Democracies by definitinon allow anyone to vote. If anything, taking voting rights away from children and washington DC, and most US protectorates are bad enough.
The informed voter ideal is certainly something worth really looking into, but it is NOT democracy. Read Star-ship troopers and you'll see at least one image of tiered democracy. In at least a few EU countries, you can't vote without spending time in the armed services, even if it's treated more or less a 2 week summer camp.
Bye!
Off course they can be made secure :|
Bullshit. I only want people voting who put some effort into it. We're continually throwing away our country by trying to turn elections into zero effort by the voter. In my opinion the two worst things in our elections are open primaries and early voting. Show up the day of the election, darken the oval next the candidate you want and feed it into the electronic counter - an unambiguous paper trail will remain. Save early voting to the true absentee and not leave it open to vote harvesting.
Define "true absentee" and also, tell us exactly what kind of effort you want. I don't know about you, but standing in line outside a church? Not exactly the kind of sacrifice I consider important, let alone demonstrating inner virtue to a high degree of confidence. I could respect a desire to show true commitment, in an abstract sense, but you're not offering much in the way of what I would call valuable testing. That it lacks cohesiveness is yet another reason to doubt it. Not that I agree with you on the principle, but even giving you full credit for that, the method is defective.
I also disagree with you on the primary issue. We should get rid of closed primaries too, and instead go with a run-off system. California is reasonably close, but I'm not entirely satisfied with it. But I'd like to do a lot of electoral reform, even reshaping the legislatures.
That would perhaps be a digression though. I'd really like to know why you think the "effort" as you state you wanted, but as ultimately will be manifested, is meaningful. Did you just go with your gut, without really thinking about it much?
I've also personally watched the ballots being thrown in the garbage by the administrators (usually little old ladies). I'm all for electronic voting. It is the ONLY say to make voting secure.
Are these the same experts who warned us of Y2K?
your boss can make you vote at work their way with on line voteing!
It's the old problem of confusing complicated with secure. It's not the same, no matter how long they argue.
> The question is whether we're going to have a democracy or not.
The answer is no, the US is not a Democracy.
I look forward to discussing with you more after you finish the fifth grade.
In what State can you buy a gun from a dealer without an ID form? And you do know, that it's actually a GSA rule that you MUST show a Government-issued ID to enter Federal Government buildings...
> It's certainly possible to make Internet voting at least as secure as paper ballots.
I've been involved in computer security for 20 years. Before that, I did physical security, lockingsmith work. Before that, I was a professional magician. I could cheat a paper ballot. Might use a bit of sleight of hand.
I could also cheat an internet ballot, and very easily put a FOR loop around to run the cheat a million times. That's the big difference with networked computer systems vs physical systems. You can rob someone in person once; you rob EVERYBODY in the entire database via computer.
Electronic systems that serve many people are fundamentally less secure because nobody can ever physically do anything a million times; computers routinely do things a million times per second. One improper ballot is less than the noise floor; a million improper ballots will swing the election.
The constitution also says that only citizens can vote. Whereas the true goal of most people arguing about "disenfranchisement" is to enable non-citizens to vote fraudulently, because they believe the fraud will help their side, while also claiming that the amount of fraud is negligible.
Go away. We all get a vote, they are all equal. Or are you not talking about the land of the free?
Oh really? Explain to me your process for script automating paper vote fraud.
Federal purchasing, including DoD (military) is done through an open bid process. The acquiring agency publishes a very detailed requirements document. The encryption requirement normally refers to FIPS 140-2 (FIPS: Federal Information Processing Standard). The standard specifies not only which algorithms, but which implementations are acceptable, so you use a FIPS-certified library. FIPS-140-2 can be found here:
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST...
Because most companies and standards bodies aren't run by security specialists, they too often refer to FIPS-140-2. "Must meet DoD security requirements" is a lot easier to specify in a contract than figuring out all the details yourself.
each polling location is provided with a set number of boxes that are sealed and rigged so that once a ballot is inserted (by the polling machine) it can't be removed.
number of ballot forms is a logged number (number of registered voters+ a reserve to recover from spoiled ballots with one brick being opened at a time and spoiled ballots kept)
when you vote you place your marks and then feed the ballot into a polling machine and it then spits out a ticket with a set of random numbers from a pool (each number is used once )
checks in place
1 they inventory the boxes afterwards "Missing" boxes or evidence of tampering results in a redo (and criminal charges for the staff)
2 they also inventory the ballots (again missing ballots result in a redo if it is large enough to effect the election FOR THAT LOCATION)
3 a voter can input any number they want to check what a given vote was (may be their vote may be somebody elses)
Rigged election much?
That was 129 votes, a bit more than "ones and two's".
So, yes-- a gubernatorial election twelve years ago was decided by a little more than 100 votes, and it's "among the closest political races in United States election history." I think that pretty much demonstrates my case: even here, voting fraud at the ones and two at a time level isn't what we need to worry about; it takes voting fraud on a much larger scale to swing an election. And you can count on most elections not being that close.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'm not sure how "open primaries" require less work from voters. I'd argue they're more cognitive work for voters, and they're certainly more practical work for parties.
Frankly I'm not sure why we ever got into the business of letting parties decide who appears on the ballot, and I'm even less sure why we keep putting up with it. If the RNC/DNC want to endorse candidates and have conventions and whatnot they're welcome to do so. But candidates should only appear on the ballot because they got enough signatures on a petition to appear in the open primary and got enough votes in the primary to appear on the final ballot.
I'm also not sure why you think "more work" equates to "better management". In business we typically find exactly the opposite -- that processes which require a lot of manual work from unsupervised individuals are often slower, more expensive, and less reliable. Why do you think it works differently when we're managing the government?
Difference is owning a gun is a right for everyone in the US, while voting is only a right for citizens.
In 39 states both hillary and trump gets over 100 million votes, and third party candidates wins by over bilion votes.
©God
...but to my original point. It's simply my opinion that people who vote should put some effort into it - if that means lazy, ignorant people don't make it to vote so be it. You can disagree and provide reasons as to why you really want lazy, ignorant people to vote but calling me names doesn't make your case.
This will result in pales in comparison to the amount of enfranchisement it will create. Every time I've seen someone railing against voter fraud it's always been a transparent attempt to keep some kind of "undesirables" from voting. Usually members of the working class.
Here's the thing; who are the citizens.
There are about 30-40 millions non-citizens (US Census says 30, others 40) in the USA of which about 10-12 million are here illegally.
Non-citizens are not supposed to vote.
Non-citizens tend to live clustered so that local county elections are at a huge risk of being affected by non-citizen voting. In states with large immigrant populations (California, Texas, Florida, Georgia), it's a very real risk for local elections as well as district based elections such as the House of Representatives.
You tell me how, without identification, we can filter out the votes of non-citizens and still have a secret ballot.
OTOH, I'm 99% certain that the extreme requirements that a few states have put in place for voter identification was done solely to make it difficult for the lower classes (Blacks and Hispanics) to vote. They're being assholes.
This is one of those issues where the question should be "where do we draw the line".
I am as suspicious of the motives of the "anybody can vote" left wing as I am of the right-wing's "show a photo ID, a birth certificate, and a notarized family tree going back to the Mayflower". or Robert E Lee, depending on where you're from.
Personally, I support requiring people to register to vote ahead of time with reasonable requirements for identification. Requiring all of Driver's License, birth certificate, social security card, and utility bill is absurd. I'm looking at North Carolina.
I don't support that anyone can show up and have their vote counted without registering and no ID.
I support the option of freely providing provisional ballots for those who say they cannot obtain such an ID for one reason or another or cannot register in time.
if it's a close election, then the provisional ballots can be counted and audited. In case you don't know, absentee and provisional ballots are usually not counted if the number of such cast is significantly less than the winning margin.
People who care can use the mail in or go to a polling place. The problem is that state government are responsible for voting. That means they will each be attempting to put their own voting systems into place, potentially all different designs. Feds can't regulate voting much because it's voting and has to be done by states. Russian hackers seem very interested in our election and so far they've seem to only attack Democrats. I don't trust non tested opensource voting platforms. I want online voting, but I want it to be highly tested. I don't see how this is tested enough to go live. Government IT departments are notoriously bad. This solution should be tested and shared among the states for the sake of costs and security. The last time we rapidly switched to electronic voting we wound up with Bush.
That is why there should be international poll observers, however the US kicked them out in the last election.
Well done! Now you only need to show that democratic means "early voting" and representative republic means "show up on Election Day and stand in line", and you will have formed a coherent argument.
Actually, states determine the right to vote and citizenship is not a requirement by the constitution. The constitution has only been amended to prevent states from prohibiting certain voters, it still does not completely define how states determine who can vote. The president is selected by electoral college, of which you vote your opinion but the electoral are not bound to that opinion. I doubt most know who all their electoral folks are...I sure don't...and by the constitution they cannot be a senator or representative - so not someone you democratically elected.
Yes, yes, the Constitution is flawed, and the Electoral College is the biggest joke of them all, but let's not digress into that technical argument here, you're really not approaching that subject very well.
...but to my original point. It's simply my opinion that people who vote should put some effort into it - if that means lazy, ignorant people don't make it to vote so be it. You can disagree and provide reasons as to why you really want lazy, ignorant people to vote but calling me names doesn't make your case.
Your point is flawed, because you aren't suggesting any effort that would be impacted by laziness or ignorance, the only quality that directly arises from your presented objections (to absentee ballots and early voting) is the stubbornness to stand around on one given day if there's a crowd. Which speaks to poor planning on the elections staff's part, not a real trial. Open primaries don't even do that much.
So far, your opinion seems to be based on a irascible temperament of your own. I'm not sure I want *you* voting with that attitude. Then again, your complaints aren't helping your case either. You're being subjected to obscenities, not name-calling, the descriptions may be pejorative, but you really need to pay attention to the criticisms rather than brush them off so blithely. Or rather, use the excuse of vulgar language to conceal your lack of ability to approach the substance of the complaints against you. I'd recommend you just let the vituperative language go, rather than be distracted by it.
If you want to consider why people have the right to vote, regardless of their ignorance, laziness, or other qualities, it's because the government is legitimized by such an action. Giving all people influence over the decisions and conduct of the government is important because said government has authority over those individuals. That's why instead of barriers to vote, the government should act in the opposite direction when it comes to voting. Now when it comes to acting under the authority of government, there you have a good case for selections of character and virtue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
Show up the day of the election, darken the oval next the candidate you want and feed it into the electronic counter - an unambiguous paper trail will remain.
What about ranked choice voting? How does that fit into the 'darken the oval' method? Ranked choice is a much fairer way of conducting elections
Rights: Now only for those deemed worthy by ChickenFat.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Because at the time of the founders the word democracy referred primarily to what we now call "direct democracy". the phrase "representative democracy" didn't exist yet, even though it means the same thing as "representative republic".
the founders used a lot of words that refer to the democratic selection of government. words like: self-rule, self-governed, voting, election, etc.
what you are essentially doing is talking about your new car, but refusing to call it a car, saying instead that it is a "motorized conveyance device".
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Here's the thing; who are the citizens.
There are about 30-40 millions non-citizens (US Census says 30, others 40) in the USA of which about 10-12 million are here illegally.
Non-citizens are not supposed to vote.
And generally speaking, they don't. Of course, going by recent turnout, neither do most Americans.
Non-citizens tend to live clustered so that local county elections are at a huge risk of being affected by non-citizen voting. In states with large immigrant populations (California, Texas, Florida, Georgia), it's a very real risk for local elections as well as district based elections such as the House of Representatives.
Ok, let's go with your concern, risk of what? What's the actual risk of harm involved? Is it more or less than say, the current gerrymandering of House districts anyway?
That's been harming the country, due to a lack of accurate representation of the preferences of the electorate.
You tell me how, without identification, we can filter out the votes of non-citizens and still have a secret ballot.
You're confusing opposing "voter ID" with "no identification" which is not the same thing. Of course, the whole business of citizenship is problematic anyway, but that's a deeper issue.
I am as suspicious of the motives of the "anybody can vote" left wing as I am of the right-wing's "show a photo ID, a birth certificate, and a notarized family tree going back to the Mayflower". or Robert E Lee, depending on where you're from.
The left in the US has hardly pursued this "anybody can vote" policy, so I'm not sure you're being effective in your suspicions here. The left isn't even pushing that hard against felon disenfranchisement.
Personally, I support requiring people to register to vote ahead of time with reasonable requirements for identification. Requiring all of Driver's License, birth certificate, social security card, and utility bill is absurd. I'm looking at North Carolina.
I don't support that anyone can show up and have their vote counted without registering and no ID.
Ah, the trick is reasonable, and the trick is what happens when the government is responsible for something like say, erroneously mistaking you for another person and removing you from the voter rolls, or even doing it by accident.
I support the option of freely providing provisional ballots for those who say they cannot obtain such an ID for one reason or another or cannot register in time.
if it's a close election, then the provisional ballots can be counted and audited. In case you don't know, absentee and provisional ballots are usually not counted if the number of such cast is significantly less than the winning margin.
Oh, they are, they're just not terribly important, so they're not verified or accounted. Then again, such error-checking is generally the case for most elections, it's not worth the bother to verify and test.
Security is not the current political attack point. Instead, it is voter disqualification
Voter disqualification may be the current attack point, but it's not a good idea to open up new attack points.
what you are essentially doing is talking about your new car, but refusing to call it a car, saying instead that it is a "motorized conveyance device".
<Pedantic>I think a better analogy would be: You got a new "motorized conveyance device", which is what they are called now. But you continue to call it a "car" even though the definition of "car" has changed to mean something slightly different.</Pedantic>
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
That's true for in-person voting at the polling place, but all the states allow absentee ballots, which are sent in by mail. Absentee ballots are not protected by the safeguards you mention. In most states, you don't need a reason to vote by mail; in many states (including mine), people are actually encouraged to vote by mail. But voting by mail has no safeguards to protect anonymity.
As always, security and convenience are a trade-off. My personal preference would be to slide that trade-off toward security, even if it makes voting slightly less convenient. I'd like to see absentee ballots allowed only for voters with a valid reason that they cannot vote in person. There have been some companies that, in the past, have demanded "vote the way we select or you will be fired." Secret ballots are secret for a good reason. But I do understand the argument for convenience.
Overall, I'm more worried by the prospect of wholesale election fraud-- altering vote counts-- and less by the prospect of one-by-one vote buying.
A distinction without a difference. Our president is elected by an electoral influenced by a democratic voting process by which each state defines qualification and only with recent amendments to the constitution, has been further defined but still not specific. The founders put in place the electoral in just such as case as democracy would become idiocracy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... - at least for the president. The house originally was our democratically elected branch, with the senate selected by the state's legislatures. That's all been changed by the 17th amendment. I don't know which would be better but I do know I have much better access to my federal and state house representatives than my senators or the president.
Sorry, my quick "not democratic" response to mr "fuck you" was not well defined. Frankly, I'm disappointed in the overall lack of understanding of the constitution and its history found here on slashdot; although, I'm not surprised as I wasn't taught much in high school either and had to take a full semester in college on the "right to vote." Slashdot used to be a place were people defended their ideas with information and reason...now it's just "f-you" and "move if you don't like it" - the same useless drivel found all over the internet.
I only want people voting who put some effort into it.
And whomever gets to define "some effort" wins the elections.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Rights: Now only for those deemed worthy by ChickenFat.
Actually, as defined by the constitution, which does not provide for nor exclude early voting or absentee voting. That's left to the states to define and that's where my opinion should count with my elected representatives.
What's your opinion about felons or foreigners being excluded from voting by most states? The constitution does not expressly forbid felons or foreigners. Who deemed them worthy to be excluded? It wasn't me.
I really like the second video you linked to, where you count the number of times the players pass the ball. I saw that for the first time a few months ago - maybe you linked it from another post, or maybe I encountered it elsewhere.
> As a professional magician, were you more amazed by how the tricks worked mechanically, or by the very fact that people are too stupid to live and will simply not notice what they're looking *right* *at* if it's out of the ordinary?
As you may know, the mechanical working of most effects are quite simple and boring. It's mostly about the psychology - directing people's attention (though *some* tricks involve interesting mechanisms).
However, I have a different viewpoint on this than "people are too stupid .. not notice". I tested off-the-charts ADD. One of the tests for ADD was somewhat similar to the "count the passes" video - I was to click the button every time the number 5 showed on the screen. I thought I had done very well, that I hadn't missed any or clicked when there was no 5, but the results showed different - I did actually miss the giant 5 on the screen several times as I was noticing the adjustable feet on the stand for the screen, the knot in the wiring, the stains on the ceiling. The results DID match up with my experience in daily life - I often have to ask people to repeat what they just said, because I was noticing the imperfections in the wall finish or some other irrelevant thing about the background of the room. Most of the time, that's NOT good. Most of time, paying attention to the important part is better. When you ask people to count the passes, most people can do that rather than be distracted by bug in the light fixture or whatever else is going on in the room - they pay attention to what they trying to watch. Being easily distracted by unimportant details of the room isn't normally a good thing.
Yes, that *can* be manipulated, but that doesn't make it a bad thing. Magicians do it constantly. Hillary's friends got a whole bunch of people looking at "who released the Democrats' emails?", ignoring the truly much more important issue of what what said in those emails. Still, on balance a driver *should* be looking at the road ahead of them, not how many LEDs burned out in the green light, or the color of the buildings they are driving by.
And whomever gets to define "some effort" wins the elections.
Yes, I realize "effort" is subjective, but dang, the path we're on right now is what has us voting for the worst possible people to hold office. The only effort I'm suggesting is showing up on election day...presumably only those that care enough would make the sacrifice. It would also severely limit the ability to vote harvest over weeks - and by that I mean individuals or groups that round up what can only be called "useful idiots" to cast votes in return for whatever - food, money, a ride, something to do, nothing, etc.
** Voting Machines Elect One Of Their Own ** ;)
In districts where electronic voting machines are used, a computer gets 100% of the votes. Where paper ballots are used, it gets none and human candidates receive the votes. Are backwards districts actually prejudice against inexperienced computer candidates? Watch it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSEOXRLSpVc
_
There are updates to FIPS 140-2 every few months, as you can see here:
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST...
Therefore you can easily be *compliant* and up-to-date, no problem.
If you want to be *certified* and up-to-date, the low cost option is to use something like the OpenSSL FIPS Object Module, which is recertified every six months or so. (This is a very restricted subset of OpenSSL). That provides the latest certified encryption.
If you want to also certify the product as a whole, you can do that and batch any security-sensitive changes into new versions, then recertify new versions only infrequently.
The Scott Adams thing reminds me of what I do sometimes. Something I can't quite describe about giving off the vibe that you belong there. I used to do lighting and sound for bands on the weekends, and sometimes I DJ. I've made it a bit of a game to just walk right past the bouncer without *telling* them that I'm with the band. Everybody else is paying the cover charge, I just walk right by like it doesn't apply to me (because it doesn't). 95% of the time the bouncer doesn't challenge me. If they make eye contact, I nod as I continue walking. It would be interesting to do or read some experiments about the psychology of that.
A note about magic tricks - very often, the tricky bit is done BEFORE the audience thinks the trick has really started, and certainly before they know that the deck will change color or whatever. The first time you see a trick, you CAN'T be paying attention to how the magician makes the color change because you don't yet know that he's going to make the color change. If you watch a trick twice you're much more likely to see the secret because the second time you know you're watching to see how he causes it to change color.
> I'm going to try to get a Modafinil prescription from a doctor now, and uh. Patient walks in asking for drugs, seems well-informed. Spinning a line of bullshit or nah?
What worked for me was to very humbly ASK the doctor about my preferred medication, to not seem overly confident that I wanted that specific medication. "I was reading about ABC and sounded interesting because XYZ. Would it be worth trying ABC, do you think?"
Exactly this.
Having to take unpaid time off from work (if your employer even lets you) to go vote pretty much guarantees that a certain portion (working poor) of the electorate will not vote.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Okay, darken the ovals next to the candidates you want, in order of preference. Works just fine around here.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Billions of dollars/euros/yuan cross the internet daily without much difficulty.
Why would voting be less secure?
Just as some voters are disenfranchised by ID requirements, etc, some are disenfranchised by physically having to go somewhere to vote. Students, for instance, aren't interested in standing in line with a bunch of old people. Old people who aren't able to stand for long. Moms & executives who are too busy... If they could sit at their computer and do it conveniently, the balance of demographics would change. That could mean an advantage for conservatives or for progressives. This is why authorities hesitate. Until they can be sure who benefits from online voting, they will delay.
...omphaloskepsis often...
the path we're on right now is what has us voting for the worst possible people to hold office. The only effort I'm suggesting is showing up on election day...presumably only those that care enough would make the sacrifice. It would also severely limit the ability to vote harvest over weeks - and by that I mean individuals or groups that round up what can only be called "useful idiots" to cast votes in return for whatever - food, money, a ride, something to do, nothing, etc.
If the goal is improving vote quality, then it's much safer to improve the media and education apparatus, than to come up with artificial hurdles for voters. While it would be nice if there was a philosopher king that could choose voters based on education, intelligence, effort, etc., it's just too much power to give any one person or government entity. It's better to make voting incredibly easy, and develop strong first amendment rights (free flow of information) and quality institutions that utilize those rights. This way, the power to influence voting is spread among many instead of the few. It's not ideal, but it much less prone to developing too much power in too few.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates