Iowa to test forms of Internet voting

dwh wrote to us about The Boston Globe reporting on Iowa's first steps towards Internet voting. It's tenative, with just putting computers by the boothes, but it's a first step. The article does a good job of addressing the pros and cons while talking about the first states, WA and VA which have tried it already. What do you folks think? Good or bad?

Comments

How do you know it hasn't been hacked already?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Most of the current votes are counted by computer. By a private organization. With closed-source software. And if you ask for a recount the same people shove the same data through the same computers.

How do you know it hasn't been hacked already?

Think about how many people YOU know voted for the winner of the last election - or any election since about 1968.

Think about the political machines of distant history. Then think about the political machines of today.

Remember how Kennedy beat Nixon by less than one vote per precinct in (Richard Daily the First's) Chicago?

Remember how Willie Brown in San Francisco got his stadium ballot measure approved in a stunning upset turnaround when the last precincts were counted? (Remember him sticking out his tongue at the camera as he celebrated?)

Doing it on the internet doesn't stop machine politics. It just lets everybody play with the machinery.

Voter participation

[Zico]

To me, if you (the general you, not you personally) can't take 30 minutes out of one day each year to vote, then you obviously aren't very committed to a particular candidate.

When you consider that 49 percent of Americans are unable to name any one of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment*, I'm all for making voting something into which you actually have to put some effort.

[*] Source: First Amendment Center; The Center for Survey Research and Analysis, University of Connecticut.

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

Internet voting misses the point

[libertas]

People don't vote because they don't care about the outcome. They don't care about the outcome because they don't see any difference between the two parties that are built into the system or between the carefully coiffed career politicians.

Occasionally someone breaks through and excites interest (like Jesse Ventura), showing what might happen if there were a connection between government and the people.

The system is broken. The Internet won't fix it.

Reducing apathy

[Rayban]

I think the best part of internet-based voting is the reduction in voter apathy. Personally, I think this is one of the biggest problems we have nowadays. If everyone came out to vote, we could ensure that the likelihood of a stupid candidate being elected would drop.

As well, we could vote on many more small issues. The government could always "put an issue to the people" and not inconvenience us.

Assign IP addresses at birth?

[rnturn]

I supposed this would be workable once the security aspects (spoofing, etc.) have been addressed. It'd be a problem for our household since our net access only allows a single IP address assigned via DHCP. If we all got IP addresses assigned at birth then we'd all have a unique ID that could be used for things like voting, email, IP telephony, etc.

But, on the other hand, that pretty much does away with Anonymous Cowards, doesn't it? The personal privacy freaks would excrete masonry if this happened.

Re:Great

[Tau Zero]

If you don't think that it costs you anything to keep track of the issues, you're dreaming! If the public voted on every issue, everything would be decided by the activist fringes who actually cared enough about the issue to get out and vote for it. You think things are determined by extremists now... just watch.
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