but apparently i can think about the possibility of tampering, while you won't think about it all... at the same time, confronting me with the problem of accuracy
the situation for the guy who is in a coma versus a month old ball of cells is completely different as too potential. figure it out
as for your cow. yes, it was brought into this world to be treated as a future hamburger, and is treated as such. but even if she planned on it, she can still expel it. i mean exactly what is your point? if the future-hamburger cow is instead turned into a holy hindu icon, this is wrong, because it is not what was planned? huh? what's your point?
before 3 months, the mother can, without any moral qualms, expel the bag of cells. she has not killed a human life. she has destroyed a biological ball that might one day be a human life. which is not the same as human life. it's simple not the same moral equivalent
do you understand that very simple straightforward observation or not?:
potential to be human life != actual human life
what is difficult about this concept to you exactly?
"no real brain activity but IN THE FUTURE he might"
the hamburger on my plate. i will eat it. it will become my organs and my bones. so the hamburger on my plate will become at some point in the future, genuine human life. therefore, it is worthy of the spiritual and moral reverence of human life
no
something that potentially will be human is not in any moral or intellectually valid argument to be treated the same as human life
who came out of a coma after 20 years, if i remember correcty, story last year i think
i would definitely say that someone who had their brain excised from their skull in a car accident, who is now otherwise fully alive biologically on a respirator, is worthy of disposal, as they are already dead in terms of brain activity
but your vegetative state question is loaded. it's the same as asking about a 3 or 4 month old fetus. 2 months, definitely not human life. 5 months, definitely human life. and in between you have a grey area
and with people in a persistent vegetative state you have your grey area. a doctor could point to a brain scan and say this person will never be alive in terms of brain activity ever again, and he could bet his medical carteer on it. is he right? what about the guy who woke up after 20 years from a coma?
guess what: welcome to the real world. no simple answers. it's a grey area. you could go either way. i would probably err on the side of caution, and keep the person alive in a vegetative state. but i certainly wouldn't be ready to howl with high holy moral judgment calls if the family said the person should be taken off a respirator
because if you have any intellectual or moral honesty about you, you know its a grey area, which means you can't judge with fire and brimstone. you simply don't know the answer
"The issue here is that YOU (not me) are writing off e-voting because it is easier to compromise. Easier, sure, but only *easier* (not possible as opposed to impossible)."
no voting mecahnism is immune to tampering. but you admit paper ballots are harder to tamper with meaningfully. therefore, you will choose the method that is easier to tamper with (by your own admission)
because you're interested in... drum roll please... better accuracy
who speaks of god touching into a woman's womb and doing work needs to take a college freshman course in developmental biology. it's a serious of biological processes, not magic form the invisble skyman
the abrahamic/ christian point of view is simply unworthy of respect or authority, for being simpleminded and childish on the subject
at 5 months, i say you have a human life, unerringly determined
at 2 months, i say you have human life, unerringly determined
by the most sober tenets of scientific determination fo the formation of the human brain
meaning after 5 months, you can talk murder, and bfore 2 months, you can talk of nothing but unliving blob, hamburger patties if you will
and my authority is cold hard sober scientific fact
the real problem with the abortion debate is not that there are people who want to kill babies ready to be born so they can go to the disco, nor that there are people ready to charge women with murder who take the day after pill. both of these positions are extreme lunatic fringe positions
in reality, your average prolifer is willing to accept abortion in the first month or two, and the average prochoicer is disgusted at the idea of killing a baby at 6 or 7 months
and the rabble rousing demagogues paint one side or the other as if they were the baby killing or mother crucifying extremists, and people kneejerk in emotional disgust at these stereotypes rather than agreeing to be moderate
when the reality is, most everyone can appreciate the nuance like you. they just can't work their way through the proganda and drama from either side of the debate. and not to paint this as a sad commentary on humanity, because it is a subject matter fraught with emotional pain and loaded landmines of symbolism
was in a emotional or financial situation where bringing a baby to term would cause her undue stress, resulting in a child she did not love, and all the psychological f***ups that accompany that, i would prefer that my mother not continue her pregnancy past the 3 month old part, and she would have done nothing wrong by my judgment
because before 3 months, what i was inside my mother was not me, and was not alive in any human sense
there is hamburger on my plate. i will eat it, and it will become the stuff of my organs and bones, it will become human life. so i should look at the hamburger on my plate with the spiritual and legal reverence of a human life?
pfffffffft
same observation applies to the blob inside a woman before 3 months
it's POTENTIAL human life. NOT human life. in any spiritual, intellectual, logical, moral, or legal consideration you can devise
a guy who in povery and desperation forces himself against his better senses to steal a loaf of bread to feed his family isn't really a criminal
if that same man continues stealing, to the point that he enjoys it, and winds up killing a homeowner while in the process of robbing jewelry, that man is now certainly a criminal
the question is: exactly when did he become a criminal?
i don't know, you don't know
but he most certainly is a criminal now, and wasn't a criminal before
what we can't do is say "because we don't know exactly where to draw the line, we cannot call this man a criminal. because we don't know where to the draw the line, we cannot draw the line at all"
oh yes we can! and we should, out of moral necessity
so it is the same observation with blobs, fetuses, and babies
does not apply to a one month old blob in a human woman, whose human dignity in turn is imperiled by those who consider the blob inside her the equal of a full human child
no, it simply isn't
the cause human dignity is not served by applying the concept of human dignity to things that aren't human
to declare a month old blob inside a woman as the equal of a human child in human dignity
thereby impoverishing the human dignity of the woman who is carrying the blob
after 3, 4 months, ok, fine. but before that, it simply is not a human being and has no need for the talk of human dignity in any way whatsoever. and to do so threatens the human dignity of the woman carrying the not-yet-human blob
human life is not a fungal growth. before the second trimester, life is very much nothing but a blob, and completely undeserving of equal protection as a human being. before 3 months, what is growing in a woman after conception is worthy of the same level of consideration you would give to your next hamburger patty, and nothing more
where do we draw the line exactly? i don't know. beware anyone who does. all i know is that one month after conception as compared to 6 months after conception really are completely different measures, vastly different
the important thing is that because we don't know where to draw the line exactly does not mean we can't draw a line at all. and anyone who thinks that when a sperm meets an egg we get something that is equivalent to a human child is flat out lunatic religious fanatic
it was a joke. why did we spend $7 million on some permafrost again?
same with anyone who doubts the value of this auction
i can't see why a monopoly on a prime band of communication spectrum can't be anything but pure gold. there's only so much spectrum, but more and more people and more need for communication tech every day
has orders of magnitude more attack vectors than paper voting
you can tamper with paper votes, but it is cumbersome, slow, small in scale, and hard to hide, and requires the coordination of a conspiracy
on the other hand with electronic voting (and to a lesser extent mechanical voting), you have an order of magnitude more attack vectors. you can also do a lot more damage with the slightest of effort, quickly, with a lot of volatility and potential for permanent obfuscation, destruction, or scrambling and outright manipulation. you can cover your tracks well too, and you can quickly survey the landscape and tweak votes in ways that are hard to sniff out later. and all you need is one guy in the right place with the right skillset and 3 seconds of time
with paper ballots, with enough pressure, you could force a recount. but with electornic voting, no one knows what is real, and what is not. the process is opaque. it's electronic, it's quicksilver. ok, someone messed with the paper ballots. did they hide them in storage? burn them? letss look at hanging chads. ok, someone messed with the elctornic votes. what is real? what isn't? smoke and mirrors. you build me an ironclad system of trust and verification in eletronic voting, and i'll show you the smart teenager who can outwit it, mess with it, and completely cover his tracks
you need an army of conspirators working hard and long to mess with paper ballots to a large degree. you need one asshole in the right spot for 3 seconds to completely alter the results in any way you can imagine, including recreating plausible degrees of randomness, and you can cover your tracks completely
you're so worried about people and close votes, but you want to put your faith in a system that can be messed with in so many more powerful ways than paper ballots
when the next bush versus gore extremely close imbroglio occurs in another election, there won't be any hanging chads to look at. just some assholes in suits from some private company with questionable political connections telling us over and over that everything is ok and everything is verified and everything is squeaky clean. oh really? what you get after that is instant chaos, instant zero legitimacy in the government in the eyes of the public. out of the woodwork come all of the demagogues, spreading all of their lies, and public trust gets placed in the wrong hands
incredibly stupid of you if the thing you are worried about most leads you to choose a system which gives you the least protection from what you worry about
i actually do believe that people are better and worse than other people, on a whole number of judgment calls
however, there is no one out there who can accurately measure those qualities in any trustworthy way
therefore, you have no choice other than to start looking at people as equals, and let things fall as they may. proof by outcome of life. no test can test for the qualities that are important in leading, for example. the only honest way to look at your fellow human being is as an equal. there is no magic test or projected characteristic that is a shortcut for making a determination of a complicated quality of that person. race for example. income another example. all failures at judging someone's true value
take a test for intelligence
can you even define intelligence? how incredibly complex a topic are we dealing with? do you honestly think it can be measured in such a way as to find the best leader out there?
your standard iq test has things for example that put value in manipulating 3D shapes in your head. there are autistic people who can do that. meanwhile, some guy fails miserably on an iq test for manipulating 3D objects in your head. ok. that same guy is extremely gifted in many leadership qualities: persuasion, instilling trust, etc. so what is the point of this stupid iq test again in determining worthiness in life? zero
so the idea of drawing people into classes in terms of good potential to lead or not lead, vote or not vote, is completely a nonstarter
it's not that people aren't better or worse than another. i believe in fact they are. it's just that there is no way to determine that objectively, so you can't go down that path in any moral or intellectually honest fashion
"I don't think electronic voting necessarily means opacity"
oh but it does, by definition. inseparably
anything on a computer is opaque. a disk drive has to be read, a processor has to cycle, a monitor has to project. something on paper meanwhile, requires nothing but a human being to understand what is written on it
eletronic voting is most definitely opaque. all of interaction with computers is an opaque process as compared to paper based media. paper is obviously inferior in many more important ways than electronics, but not when it comes to something stone cold simple as voting
this is where distrust can grow. in the sapce between who you vote for and who winds up in thw hite house: based on paper, i can trail, and trust, and verify. with electronics, so much can be hidden and quickly changed. trust evaporates
because if i identify islamofascism, which is a real trend, i must automatically be a fascist myself. it's impossible of course to hate both zionists and islamofascists, which i do. in your mind, i have to be one extreme or the other, i can't be a moderate on the issue
by your thinking, german nazism was created by poverty. by your thinking, japanese nationalism before world war ii was created by povery
ethnocentrism is an evil endemic to all ethnicities in the world. and if you have a fascist movement based on that, you have fascism defined, and there is nothing about poverty that created islamofascism
Making citizens a part of the process only "instills legitimacy" when those citizens are fully competent, and the majority simply aren't.
i want you to look at and consider you fellow citizens, your fellow human beings. if, when you look at those people, you find something lacking, something untrustworthy, this is an antidemocratic instinct
the full inference of the comment of the man above is that there is the unworthy, a magical cut off line (which no one can determine, but that's besides the point), and then a special higher class of worthy people
this is a story as old as time. it's called aristocracy. it's called classism. it can be based on an arbitrary test for intelligence, a certain amount of money in your bank account, a certain genetic makeup
but the end results of aristocracy and classism is all the same: the french revolution
if you find yourself with antidemocratic instincts like the poster above, take a deep breath, step back, and fix yourself. you are broken in a dangerous, authoritarian, fascist way
you fellow human beings are your fellow human beings. beginning and end of story. you are no better than them. if you think you are, and there is a special class of people who share this superiority with you, you are a danger to society. YOU and your thinking is the seed to the downfall of democracy. and it is the same fear based pap that you often howl about coming from the right
democracy has plenty of problems, but one of democracy's greatest strengths is that by making the citizens it rules a part of the process, it inspires confidence in the government, it instills legitimacy
if you make the voting process opaque, you destroy confidence, you destroy legitimacy, you weaken people's faith in their democratically elected government, out of bad perception that their part in the process has been messed with, hidden
electronic voting must be universally rejected in all ways and all levels of government, asap
Slashdot Mirror
but apparently i can think about the possibility of tampering, while you won't think about it all... at the same time, confronting me with the problem of accuracy
(brain explodes in logic contradiction)
the situation for the guy who is in a coma versus a month old ball of cells is completely different as too potential. figure it out
as for your cow. yes, it was brought into this world to be treated as a future hamburger, and is treated as such. but even if she planned on it, she can still expel it. i mean exactly what is your point? if the future-hamburger cow is instead turned into a holy hindu icon, this is wrong, because it is not what was planned? huh? what's your point?
before 3 months, the mother can, without any moral qualms, expel the bag of cells. she has not killed a human life. she has destroyed a biological ball that might one day be a human life. which is not the same as human life. it's simple not the same moral equivalent
do you understand that very simple straightforward observation or not?:
potential to be human life != actual human life
what is difficult about this concept to you exactly?
"no real brain activity but IN THE FUTURE he might"
the hamburger on my plate. i will eat it. it will become my organs and my bones. so the hamburger on my plate will become at some point in the future, genuine human life. therefore, it is worthy of the spiritual and moral reverence of human life
no
something that potentially will be human is not in any moral or intellectually valid argument to be treated the same as human life
your argument is flat out logically invalid
who came out of a coma after 20 years, if i remember correcty, story last year i think
i would definitely say that someone who had their brain excised from their skull in a car accident, who is now otherwise fully alive biologically on a respirator, is worthy of disposal, as they are already dead in terms of brain activity
but your vegetative state question is loaded. it's the same as asking about a 3 or 4 month old fetus. 2 months, definitely not human life. 5 months, definitely human life. and in between you have a grey area
and with people in a persistent vegetative state you have your grey area. a doctor could point to a brain scan and say this person will never be alive in terms of brain activity ever again, and he could bet his medical carteer on it. is he right? what about the guy who woke up after 20 years from a coma?
guess what: welcome to the real world. no simple answers. it's a grey area. you could go either way. i would probably err on the side of caution, and keep the person alive in a vegetative state. but i certainly wouldn't be ready to howl with high holy moral judgment calls if the family said the person should be taken off a respirator
because if you have any intellectual or moral honesty about you, you know its a grey area, which means you can't judge with fire and brimstone. you simply don't know the answer
"The issue here is that YOU (not me) are writing off e-voting because it is easier to compromise. Easier, sure, but only *easier* (not possible as opposed to impossible)."
no voting mecahnism is immune to tampering. but you admit paper ballots are harder to tamper with meaningfully. therefore, you will choose the method that is easier to tamper with (by your own admission)
because you're interested in... drum roll please... better accuracy
wtf?!
who speaks of god touching into a woman's womb and doing work needs to take a college freshman course in developmental biology. it's a serious of biological processes, not magic form the invisble skyman
the abrahamic/ christian point of view is simply unworthy of respect or authority, for being simpleminded and childish on the subject
at 5 months, i say you have a human life, unerringly determined
at 2 months, i say you have human life, unerringly determined
by the most sober tenets of scientific determination fo the formation of the human brain
meaning after 5 months, you can talk murder, and bfore 2 months, you can talk of nothing but unliving blob, hamburger patties if you will
and my authority is cold hard sober scientific fact
sorry this counters your old dusty books
but you're simply factually wrong
but you can point at 2 months and say "not human life, with certainty" and you can point at 5 months and say "human life, with certainty"
does that answer your questions?
and as for your other question: a fully developed human being in all ways but one: without a functional brain, is not a human being
but nice try with the missing organs the fat people, but you fail it in terms viable analogy
your moderation is a credit to you
the real problem with the abortion debate is not that there are people who want to kill babies ready to be born so they can go to the disco, nor that there are people ready to charge women with murder who take the day after pill. both of these positions are extreme lunatic fringe positions
in reality, your average prolifer is willing to accept abortion in the first month or two, and the average prochoicer is disgusted at the idea of killing a baby at 6 or 7 months
and the rabble rousing demagogues paint one side or the other as if they were the baby killing or mother crucifying extremists, and people kneejerk in emotional disgust at these stereotypes rather than agreeing to be moderate
when the reality is, most everyone can appreciate the nuance like you. they just can't work their way through the proganda and drama from either side of the debate. and not to paint this as a sad commentary on humanity, because it is a subject matter fraught with emotional pain and loaded landmines of symbolism
was in a emotional or financial situation where bringing a baby to term would cause her undue stress, resulting in a child she did not love, and all the psychological f***ups that accompany that, i would prefer that my mother not continue her pregnancy past the 3 month old part, and she would have done nothing wrong by my judgment
because before 3 months, what i was inside my mother was not me, and was not alive in any human sense
there is hamburger on my plate. i will eat it, and it will become the stuff of my organs and bones, it will become human life. so i should look at the hamburger on my plate with the spiritual and legal reverence of a human life?
pfffffffft
same observation applies to the blob inside a woman before 3 months
it's POTENTIAL human life. NOT human life. in any spiritual, intellectual, logical, moral, or legal consideration you can devise
doesn't mean there is no line
a guy who in povery and desperation forces himself against his better senses to steal a loaf of bread to feed his family isn't really a criminal
if that same man continues stealing, to the point that he enjoys it, and winds up killing a homeowner while in the process of robbing jewelry, that man is now certainly a criminal
the question is: exactly when did he become a criminal?
i don't know, you don't know
but he most certainly is a criminal now, and wasn't a criminal before
what we can't do is say "because we don't know exactly where to draw the line, we cannot call this man a criminal. because we don't know where to the draw the line, we cannot draw the line at all"
oh yes we can! and we should, out of moral necessity
so it is the same observation with blobs, fetuses, and babies
does not apply to a one month old blob in a human woman, whose human dignity in turn is imperiled by those who consider the blob inside her the equal of a full human child
no, it simply isn't
the cause human dignity is not served by applying the concept of human dignity to things that aren't human
to declare a month old blob inside a woman as the equal of a human child in human dignity
thereby impoverishing the human dignity of the woman who is carrying the blob
after 3, 4 months, ok, fine. but before that, it simply is not a human being and has no need for the talk of human dignity in any way whatsoever. and to do so threatens the human dignity of the woman carrying the not-yet-human blob
human life is not a fungal growth. before the second trimester, life is very much nothing but a blob, and completely undeserving of equal protection as a human being. before 3 months, what is growing in a woman after conception is worthy of the same level of consideration you would give to your next hamburger patty, and nothing more
where do we draw the line exactly? i don't know. beware anyone who does. all i know is that one month after conception as compared to 6 months after conception really are completely different measures, vastly different
the important thing is that because we don't know where to draw the line exactly does not mean we can't draw a line at all. and anyone who thinks that when a sperm meets an egg we get something that is equivalent to a human child is flat out lunatic religious fanatic
that's how rain making works with silver iodide
with that effect in mind, china has a surefire way to stop the rain: stop producing so much particulate matter
turn off the coal plants in may
by 8/8/8, you're good to go
they called it "seward's folly"
it was a joke. why did we spend $7 million on some permafrost again?
same with anyone who doubts the value of this auction
i can't see why a monopoly on a prime band of communication spectrum can't be anything but pure gold. there's only so much spectrum, but more and more people and more need for communication tech every day
has orders of magnitude more attack vectors than paper voting
you can tamper with paper votes, but it is cumbersome, slow, small in scale, and hard to hide, and requires the coordination of a conspiracy
on the other hand with electronic voting (and to a lesser extent mechanical voting), you have an order of magnitude more attack vectors. you can also do a lot more damage with the slightest of effort, quickly, with a lot of volatility and potential for permanent obfuscation, destruction, or scrambling and outright manipulation. you can cover your tracks well too, and you can quickly survey the landscape and tweak votes in ways that are hard to sniff out later. and all you need is one guy in the right place with the right skillset and 3 seconds of time
with paper ballots, with enough pressure, you could force a recount. but with electornic voting, no one knows what is real, and what is not. the process is opaque. it's electronic, it's quicksilver. ok, someone messed with the paper ballots. did they hide them in storage? burn them? letss look at hanging chads. ok, someone messed with the elctornic votes. what is real? what isn't? smoke and mirrors. you build me an ironclad system of trust and verification in eletronic voting, and i'll show you the smart teenager who can outwit it, mess with it, and completely cover his tracks
you need an army of conspirators working hard and long to mess with paper ballots to a large degree. you need one asshole in the right spot for 3 seconds to completely alter the results in any way you can imagine, including recreating plausible degrees of randomness, and you can cover your tracks completely
you're so worried about people and close votes, but you want to put your faith in a system that can be messed with in so many more powerful ways than paper ballots
when the next bush versus gore extremely close imbroglio occurs in another election, there won't be any hanging chads to look at. just some assholes in suits from some private company with questionable political connections telling us over and over that everything is ok and everything is verified and everything is squeaky clean. oh really? what you get after that is instant chaos, instant zero legitimacy in the government in the eyes of the public. out of the woodwork come all of the demagogues, spreading all of their lies, and public trust gets placed in the wrong hands
incredibly stupid of you if the thing you are worried about most leads you to choose a system which gives you the least protection from what you worry about
is actually better than all the other options
in other words, a nation steered by hoardes/mobs of couch potatoes absolutely sucks
and yet every single other option you can think of is yet worse
(snicker)
i actually do believe that people are better and worse than other people, on a whole number of judgment calls
however, there is no one out there who can accurately measure those qualities in any trustworthy way
therefore, you have no choice other than to start looking at people as equals, and let things fall as they may. proof by outcome of life. no test can test for the qualities that are important in leading, for example. the only honest way to look at your fellow human being is as an equal. there is no magic test or projected characteristic that is a shortcut for making a determination of a complicated quality of that person. race for example. income another example. all failures at judging someone's true value
take a test for intelligence
can you even define intelligence? how incredibly complex a topic are we dealing with? do you honestly think it can be measured in such a way as to find the best leader out there?
your standard iq test has things for example that put value in manipulating 3D shapes in your head. there are autistic people who can do that. meanwhile, some guy fails miserably on an iq test for manipulating 3D objects in your head. ok. that same guy is extremely gifted in many leadership qualities: persuasion, instilling trust, etc. so what is the point of this stupid iq test again in determining worthiness in life? zero
so the idea of drawing people into classes in terms of good potential to lead or not lead, vote or not vote, is completely a nonstarter
it's not that people aren't better or worse than another. i believe in fact they are. it's just that there is no way to determine that objectively, so you can't go down that path in any moral or intellectually honest fashion
to say that point better than you just said it
kudos
"I don't think electronic voting necessarily means opacity"
oh but it does, by definition. inseparably
anything on a computer is opaque. a disk drive has to be read, a processor has to cycle, a monitor has to project. something on paper meanwhile, requires nothing but a human being to understand what is written on it
eletronic voting is most definitely opaque. all of interaction with computers is an opaque process as compared to paper based media. paper is obviously inferior in many more important ways than electronics, but not when it comes to something stone cold simple as voting
this is where distrust can grow. in the sapce between who you vote for and who winds up in thw hite house: based on paper, i can trail, and trust, and verify. with electronics, so much can be hidden and quickly changed. trust evaporates
"it would mean we should trust whoever ends up winning an election to do a competent job, so why bother voting in the first place?"
and i'm the nut
huh
because if i identify islamofascism, which is a real trend, i must automatically be a fascist myself. it's impossible of course to hate both zionists and islamofascists, which i do. in your mind, i have to be one extreme or the other, i can't be a moderate on the issue
by your thinking, german nazism was created by poverty. by your thinking, japanese nationalism before world war ii was created by povery
ethnocentrism is an evil endemic to all ethnicities in the world. and if you have a fascist movement based on that, you have fascism defined, and there is nothing about poverty that created islamofascism
please read the above comment slashdotters
Making citizens a part of the process only "instills legitimacy" when those citizens are fully competent, and the majority simply aren't.
i want you to look at and consider you fellow citizens, your fellow human beings. if, when you look at those people, you find something lacking, something untrustworthy, this is an antidemocratic instinct
the full inference of the comment of the man above is that there is the unworthy, a magical cut off line (which no one can determine, but that's besides the point), and then a special higher class of worthy people
this is a story as old as time. it's called aristocracy. it's called classism. it can be based on an arbitrary test for intelligence, a certain amount of money in your bank account, a certain genetic makeup
but the end results of aristocracy and classism is all the same: the french revolution
if you find yourself with antidemocratic instincts like the poster above, take a deep breath, step back, and fix yourself. you are broken in a dangerous, authoritarian, fascist way
you fellow human beings are your fellow human beings. beginning and end of story. you are no better than them. if you think you are, and there is a special class of people who share this superiority with you, you are a danger to society. YOU and your thinking is the seed to the downfall of democracy. and it is the same fear based pap that you often howl about coming from the right
the biggest threat to western democracy is not neocons, islamofascism, chinese technocrats, etc.
it's electronic voting
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=413698&no_d2=1&cid=21986758
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=409654&cid=21950000
democracy has plenty of problems, but one of democracy's greatest strengths is that by making the citizens it rules a part of the process, it inspires confidence in the government, it instills legitimacy
if you make the voting process opaque, you destroy confidence, you destroy legitimacy, you weaken people's faith in their democratically elected government, out of bad perception that their part in the process has been messed with, hidden
electronic voting must be universally rejected in all ways and all levels of government, asap