You're naive beyond your years. The turnout for a contest is based on total registered voters. It's almost impossible to calculate the registered to non-registered rate. Freedom of movement. Only the people who care even registered so in some strange way, you're right after all.
Massive voter fraud is handle by the day-to-day workings of the county elections departments in California. Every registration is cross referenced against first name, last name, date of birth, address and drivers license number. Big brother is actually a clerk called big sister and she checks and double checks where you live and where you were born and if you're driving or not. The Secretary of State is also wondering about you. Any of the above fields are also cross ref'd by them for the entire state. Frauds are usually stupid and easy to find. Huge fraud is pretty much impossible unless you can get the cemetary to get a couple thousand phones installed and everyone takes their driver's license test again. (The Elections Department is usually connected someway to the County Clerk/Recorder so that death certificate lists find their way down the hall pretty quick.)
I think maybe if you split up the ideas of the electoral process you can find some good things. I doubt if you're going to find any widespread internet ballot casting. There's just no reason for it.
Same-day registration happens. Some counties in California are there already and some are going to try it soon. It's expensive and in tight races will hold up the final count until all the voters have been inspected. When you fill out that registration card, it doesn't just get tossed into a pile and sorted by address so they can send you across a couple of streets to a far off polling place. You're being tabulated. Or didn't you know that?
You can't mean that the State takes everyone's word that they're legally enfranchised and haven't voted more than once? I'm not filled with confidence in that. I'm guessing that you've gotta sign SOMETHING.
The running of the country is what we, the voters, do. You may be cynical, or too busy, or naive or slept through those boring Civics classes to remember. The important thing of internet voting is not to inform the candidate but of informing the citizen. Informing the citizen that there is an election and what it's about and how it matters to that citizen and how that citizen can participate. If there's a question of actually casting ballots on the internet, that is going to be some years off in the State of California. Right now you can copy an Adobe file, fill in the blanks, mail it off and become registered. But there's just something about having something in the Election Official's hand to count, inspect, recount, archive and count again until everyone is satisfied with a valid election. It's all done out in the open. Every ballot is backed by the voter's signature on paper. Very hard to hack into looking like your Grandma and then forging her signature so you can vote for (Your Hairbrained, off-centered, opinionated, bought and paid for candidate here). They could accept digital watermarks or some form of electronic signature, but why? Most districts are just now getting used to Vote-by-Mail. It used to be absentee balloting was done only for Servicemen. Now it's standard for use by shut-ins and "the Busy People". There will probably be a limited internet voting someday. Most likely along the lines of a "National ID Card." Now, honestly, who's going to vote for that? YOU? ME? It doesn't matter what operating system on the server. It doesn't matter how big your hard drive or monitor is. The elections systems, at least the ones used in California, can't be hacked into and the results manipulated because we use a piece of paper and a closed network. I tend to recall somewhere in the Pacific Rim, a nation had their big-deal-new-fangled Election System hacked and busted open on an election night. There's enough fraud in the paper-trail method now in use. People registering by using their business address. People using the Vote-by-mail ballots of their family. People not legally enfranchised.(Not just illegal aliens but felons and the mentally incompetent) It's not glossy high profile elections that you run this country with, either. It's the sanitation district and the school district. It's the city council seat that represents a thousand registered voters. It's the choice for District Attorney. It's the old white lady who knows what's best for the less fortunate little brown babies. Those are why Hunter S. Thompson called politics the Great American Spectator Sport. To see the eyes of a supporter trying to put "crackheads away from the decent God-fearing people of this Great Land" about an hour after the polls close on a close 2500 voter contest to change the wording of a city charter is almost like a Denver football fan at the last Super Bowl. Right now, on the internet, you can do things in elections that were slow and tedious. Just like everything else out there we do. It's faster, easier and cheaper. You can check the local elections and figure out if it concerns you. You can read the statements of qualifications that the candidates give out. You can find your polling place. You can volunteer to help with the election. Because you, even if you don't want it, run the country in the United States. You'd like to believe in vast conspiracies and secret societies but they don't buy the lousy text books and approve low bids. Black helicopters don't let a couple hundred new houses get built in an area whose sewers can only handle fifty. It's not space invaders that make it hard to raise the tax base. It's not President Clinton's fault your roads suck or that the gang-bangers run the street at night or that if you get caught writing one more bad check it'll be a "Three-strike offence" and you'll do 5-8 in a State Pen. Try that civics class again if nothing other than trying to find your local government's website and send them some flame mail. Throw the bums out. Vote early and vote often.
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You're naive beyond your years. The turnout for a contest is based on total registered voters. It's almost impossible to calculate the registered to non-registered rate. Freedom of movement. Only the people who care even registered so in some strange way, you're right after all.
Massive voter fraud is handle by the day-to-day workings of the county elections departments in California. Every registration is cross referenced against first name, last name, date of birth, address and drivers license number. Big brother is actually a clerk called big sister and she checks and double checks where you live and where you were born and if you're driving or not. The Secretary of State is also wondering about you. Any of the above fields are also cross ref'd by them for the entire state. Frauds are usually stupid and easy to find. Huge fraud is pretty much impossible unless you can get the cemetary to get a couple thousand phones installed and everyone takes their driver's license test again. (The Elections Department is usually connected someway to the County Clerk/Recorder so that death certificate lists find their way down the hall pretty quick.)
I think maybe if you split up the ideas of the electoral process you can find some good things. I doubt if you're going to find any widespread internet ballot casting. There's just no reason for it.
Same-day registration happens. Some counties in California are there already and some are going to try it soon. It's expensive and in tight races will hold up the final count until all the voters have been inspected. When you fill out that registration card, it doesn't just get tossed into a pile and sorted by address so they can send you across a couple of streets to a far off polling place. You're being tabulated. Or didn't you know that?
You can't mean that the State takes everyone's word that they're legally enfranchised and haven't voted more than once? I'm not filled with confidence in that. I'm guessing that you've gotta sign SOMETHING.
The running of the country is what we, the voters, do. You may be cynical, or too busy, or naive or slept through those boring Civics classes to remember. The important thing of internet voting is not to inform the candidate but of informing the citizen. Informing the citizen that there is an election and what it's about and how it matters to that citizen and how that citizen can participate. If there's a question of actually casting ballots on the internet, that is going to be some years off in the State of California. Right now you can copy an Adobe file, fill in the blanks, mail it off and become registered. But there's just something about having something in the Election Official's hand to count, inspect, recount, archive and count again until everyone is satisfied with a valid election. It's all done out in the open. Every ballot is backed by the voter's signature on paper. Very hard to hack into looking like your Grandma and then forging her signature so you can vote for (Your Hairbrained, off-centered, opinionated, bought and paid for candidate here). They could accept digital watermarks or some form of electronic signature, but why? Most districts are just now getting used to Vote-by-Mail. It used to be absentee balloting was done only for Servicemen. Now it's standard for use by shut-ins and "the Busy People". There will probably be a limited internet voting someday. Most likely along the lines of a "National ID Card." Now, honestly, who's going to vote for that? YOU? ME? It doesn't matter what operating system on the server. It doesn't matter how big your hard drive or monitor is. The elections systems, at least the ones used in California, can't be hacked into and the results manipulated because we use a piece of paper and a closed network. I tend to recall somewhere in the Pacific Rim, a nation had their big-deal-new-fangled Election System hacked and busted open on an election night. There's enough fraud in the paper-trail method now in use. People registering by using their business address. People using the Vote-by-mail ballots of their family. People not legally enfranchised.(Not just illegal aliens but felons and the mentally incompetent) It's not glossy high profile elections that you run this country with, either. It's the sanitation district and the school district. It's the city council seat that represents a thousand registered voters. It's the choice for District Attorney. It's the old white lady who knows what's best for the less fortunate little brown babies. Those are why Hunter S. Thompson called politics the Great American Spectator Sport. To see the eyes of a supporter trying to put "crackheads away from the decent God-fearing people of this Great Land" about an hour after the polls close on a close 2500 voter contest to change the wording of a city charter is almost like a Denver football fan at the last Super Bowl. Right now, on the internet, you can do things in elections that were slow and tedious. Just like everything else out there we do. It's faster, easier and cheaper. You can check the local elections and figure out if it concerns you. You can read the statements of qualifications that the candidates give out. You can find your polling place. You can volunteer to help with the election. Because you, even if you don't want it, run the country in the United States. You'd like to believe in vast conspiracies and secret societies but they don't buy the lousy text books and approve low bids. Black helicopters don't let a couple hundred new houses get built in an area whose sewers can only handle fifty. It's not space invaders that make it hard to raise the tax base. It's not President Clinton's fault your roads suck or that the gang-bangers run the street at night or that if you get caught writing one more bad check it'll be a "Three-strike offence" and you'll do 5-8 in a State Pen. Try that civics class again if nothing other than trying to find your local government's website and send them some flame mail. Throw the bums out. Vote early and vote often.