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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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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.
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.
That would be direct rule, as opposed to a representative democracy. Some may think that is better, I do not.
Our current system of representatives was intentionally chosen by the framers of the US constitution and many of the much-vaulted checks and balances in the US government require separate elected bodies with dissimilar election schedules and dissimilar constituents. They called direct democracy "the Tyranny of the majority"
Direct voting means that 51% of the electorate can vote for incredibly unfair laws targeting the 49%. Representative democracy means that representatives are elected who vye with each other to get laws passed. Compromises are usually necessary and passions of the moment fade before laws wind their way through the system.
Certain values of Gridlock and dysfunction are a feature of US democracy. We actually really don't want to change that.
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?