Online Voting & Direct Democracy
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Online Voting?
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· Score: 2
Online voting has more potential than just replacing the existing voting system. Online voting is a perfect fit with direct democracy, through online referenda. Votes could be held not just once every 4 years to choose which politicians to elect, but also for any important issues that come up during the term. Online referenda could be citizen-initiated, requiring a certain percentage of the population to digitally sign a petition to hold one on a given issue. This would put power back into the average person and make them part of the country's decision making process again, rather than have just one vote every four years, with dubious likelihood that the person you vote for will actually represent you the way you want.
Once the initial overhead of setting up online voting was through, the cost to hold elections/referendums would be low. We may not be ready for this yet (many people don't have access to the internet, and we need to iron out the security detials..) but in the coming years, this could become more and more possibile. This is the reason that I think online voting is an exciting prospect.
Slashdot Mirror
Online voting has more potential than just replacing the existing voting system. Online voting is a perfect fit with direct democracy, through online referenda. Votes could be held not just once every 4 years to choose which politicians to elect, but also for any important issues that come up during the term. Online referenda could be citizen-initiated, requiring a certain percentage of the population to digitally sign a petition to hold one on a given issue. This would put power back into the average person and make them part of the country's decision making process again, rather than have just one vote every four years, with dubious likelihood that the person you vote for will actually represent you the way you want.
Once the initial overhead of setting up online voting was through, the cost to hold elections/referendums would be low. We may not be ready for this yet (many people don't have access to the internet, and we need to iron out the security detials..) but in the coming years, this could become more and more possibile. This is the reason that I think online voting is an exciting prospect.