Are either of you programmers? I've been seriously considering starting this as a project as well.
The big nay-sayers make the claim that internet voting will never work because you can be coerced by someone standing over your shoulder to vote a certain way. Personally, I believe this issue (in Western countries anyway) is very minor compared to the fact that so many people don't vote because it is inconvenient.
I personally am willing to stand up (or sit down and type) to come up with a real solution. Is anyone else?
You have some valid points, but I don't buy this argument for the current US culture. I would agree that this is an issue in other countries in different places in their development and in the history of the US.
However, the problem that we are currently facing in the US is not coersion or local party-machine bosses. If this was the 1800s, I could agree with you. The problem we face today in the US is a week democracy because not enough people vote. If we want a new election system, lets address one of the biggest issues we have today. Touch screen versus optical ballet? I barely care. 50% versus 90% of a popultation voting. Now that is something that can make a difference.
http://www.vote.caltech.edu/mail-archives/votingte ch/Jun-2003/0162.html is an interesting archive of the same discussion we are having here.
Accessibility versus traceability
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Cringley on E-voting
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The auditable discussion is important but not that important.
What is probably even more crucial is a discussion about voting being accessible and easy. What's amazed me in the post 2000 election discussion is how fast we've stopped talking about all of the voters who were disenfranchised by having huge difficulties getting to a working election center.
The underlying reason why all of use really want to see internet voting is because it would be easier for us to vote. We can pay all of our bills online. We can file our taxes online. Why can't we vote?
The reason is because it is a really difficult security problem to solve. I'm just amazed there isn't more discussion about how to solve that problem than the discussion talking about a poor implementation of the short-term, band-aid solution.
Specifically, I thought http://www.eucybervote.org/xootic2000.pdf has described a really good start to how to really solve the security problem.
Slashdot Mirror
The big nay-sayers make the claim that internet voting will never work because you can be coerced by someone standing over your shoulder to vote a certain way. Personally, I believe this issue (in Western countries anyway) is very minor compared to the fact that so many people don't vote because it is inconvenient.
I personally am willing to stand up (or sit down and type) to come up with a real solution. Is anyone else?
Greg
However, the problem that we are currently facing in the US is not coersion or local party-machine bosses. If this was the 1800s, I could agree with you. The problem we face today in the US is a week democracy because not enough people vote. If we want a new election system, lets address one of the biggest issues we have today. Touch screen versus optical ballet? I barely care. 50% versus 90% of a popultation voting. Now that is something that can make a difference.
http://www.vote.caltech.edu/mail-archives/votingte ch/Jun-2003/0162.html is an interesting archive of the same discussion we are having here.
What is probably even more crucial is a discussion about voting being accessible and easy. What's amazed me in the post 2000 election discussion is how fast we've stopped talking about all of the voters who were disenfranchised by having huge difficulties getting to a working election center.
The underlying reason why all of use really want to see internet voting is because it would be easier for us to vote. We can pay all of our bills online. We can file our taxes online. Why can't we vote?
The reason is because it is a really difficult security problem to solve. I'm just amazed there isn't more discussion about how to solve that problem than the discussion talking about a poor implementation of the short-term, band-aid solution.
Specifically, I thought http://www.eucybervote.org/xootic2000.pdf has described a really good start to how to really solve the security problem.