Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/104173-internet-voting-exactly-what-the-99-needs

by ukdm • 15 years ago

45 57 15 years ago

eli6• 15 years ago

I reject the premise that the Occupy movement has very much to do with election administration. I'd bet voter apathy has more to do with the available choices on the ballot than difficulty in filling it out on time.

Further, I don't think Internet voting is automatically a smart way to boost turnout. Same-day registration, early voting, and no-excuse absentee voting are simple and cheap ways to make voting much easier without introducing a bunch of new security problems or dealing with unequal access to computers and the Internet.

nitrogen2• 15 years ago

dealing with unequal access to computers and the Internet.

How is that a problem when most public libraries provide free access, and traditional early and on-time voting are still available?

eli6• 15 years ago

This is not the biggest challenge to Internet voting, but surely you agree that it's unfair that some people would now be able to vote from home while others would not? At least around me, you might wait an hour for a computer at the library during busy times.

If the point is to let people vote from home at their leisure, why not just mail everyone an absentee ballot?

Strilanc• 15 years ago

Internet voting is a bad idea. It's vulnerable to coercion.

Even if we can guarantee the votes are submitted and counted accurately, it's impossible to tell if my boss was standing behind me telling me what to vote (or lose my job).

At a polling station they prevent coercion by enforcing secrecy. One person in a voting booth at a time, no cameras in the voting booth, etc. If you can't prove you voted either way, you're free to lie about how you voted.

rfugger• 15 years ago

I agree. It is a legitimate question, though, to ask whether the benefits of internet voting outweigh the increased opportunity for coercion. No internet voting advocates seem to be addressing that question, though, which makes me think that it is premature to be rolling out these kinds of systems.

mrsebastian• 15 years ago

That's a very, very good point.

I don't even see an easy workaround, either... Hrm...

bdr2• 15 years ago

What about letting people change their vote?

LeafStorm2• 15 years ago

Don't the same problems apply to voting by mail?

daenz• 15 years ago

> it's impossible to tell if my boss was standing behind me telling me what to vote (or lose my job).

Then you just say you already voted and lie who you voted for. What will they do, confiscate your phone? (assuming phone voting). There are so many "outs" to the coercion scenario that it seems implausible that it would ever occur on any significant scale. What scenario can you think of where coercion would be a real issue?

fr0sty• 15 years ago

> What scenario can you think of where coercion would be a real issue?

Forget about intimidation and consider bribery. Instead of a domineering boss threatening termination imagine a man with a laptop and a roll of $20 bills.

rmc• 15 years ago

it's impossible to tell if my boss was standing behind me telling me what to vote

Or, much more likely and hard to change, a domineering family member making sure everyone votes the same way.

tomjen32• 15 years ago

On the contrary, most voters will carry a cell phone which is capable of taking pictures. So your corruption scenario is as applicable to the real world as it is to Internet voting.

sirclueless3• 15 years ago

"Log in and vote for candidate X while I watch" is a much more credible threat than "Bring me a picture of your ballot where you voted for candidate X".

stfu• 15 years ago

Not sure about if this is such a good idea. The writer comes from a point where everyone is active on the internet in some form or another. But in fact only about 72% actually were "connected" as of October 2010.

The same logic would declare surveys on the internet as representative of the society - and we have seen over and over again that these are often quite different to "reality". The idea would therefore favor those views popular among an internet crowd by lowering the access barrier towards this group as much as possible.

Historically American elections have been putting certain hurdles in place that aim not to generate the biggest turnout possible, but a turnout of those who are really interested in the subject (i.e. the preregistration in some states etc). But this is another discussion.

hahaonlysirius• 15 years ago

This could be huge if voting could magically change the fact that the fundamental principles of state rule are unethical and contradictory.

splat• 15 years ago

While internet voting could perhaps help, I think a much simpler and more powerful change would be to switch to a Condorcet method of voting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_voting)

Nothing would do more damage to the two-party system than for the argument "if you vote for a third party, you throw your vote away" to be demolished.

LeafStorm2• 15 years ago

Instant-runoff voting would probably be more practical. It's already used in America in some jurisdictions, so promoting it to the more major offices like President isn't as big a leap as Condorcet (since Condorcet's not actually used by any US jurisdictions).

chimeracoder2• 15 years ago

Also, instant-runoff is easier to explain, because it's literally the same as holding hypothetical runoff elections on election day.

With Concordet voting, listing someone as your second choice can cause your first choice to lose, which would probably confuse a lot of people.

jacques_chester• 15 years ago

IRV is used in Australia in national, state and local elections with very little fuss. Most of our systems are "exhaustive", meaning you must fully order the candidates.

username3• 15 years ago

Everyone should just have a profile they could update with their candidates ranked in order of preference. Representatives could know how they're doing in real-time. No more polling. On voting day, your list is locked in.

andylei• 15 years ago

> the argument "if you vote for a third party, you throw your vote away" to be demolished

i don't understand. your vote is basically thrown away regardless of who you vote for. the statistical likelihood that your vote has any impact except in the tightest of races is miniscule.

do people really believe that their vote is "not thrown away" only if they vote for the winning candidate?

bradbeattie3• 15 years ago

The only problem with Condorcet methods is that people aren't used to them. Get people using them for book clubs, school boards, etc first. Only when they're comfortable with it and trust that it can provide fair results will they consider it.

To that end, I built https://modernballots.com. It's difficult to get mindshare when it comes to these kinds of things though. Electoral reform activists are fractured between their own preferred methods. Kinda keeps things from going anywhere.

18pfsmt• 15 years ago

Perhaps if you named it something else and had people vote on more frivolous topics like hottest celebrity, best band, best city, etc.? Don't even mention politics at all.

sirclueless3• 15 years ago

I understand your inclination towards doing away with a two-party system, but as long as we elect exactly one president, a two-party system does tend towards moderate policy.

My intuition on this goes as follows: Imagine one single spectrum of policy, that goes from "Left" to "Right" for example. Assume voters exist somewhere on this spectrum, and will vote for the candidate whose policy is nearest to theirs on the spectrum. Then so long as there are exactly two viable candidates then they both have no incentive to deviate from the median voter. Each candidate picks up one whole side of the spectrum, and the only thing that can happen as a candidate makes their policy more extreme is that the median voters begin to see the other candidate as closer.

Of course, the actual US election system is far more complex. Very extreme voters do in fact "throw their vote away" if both candidates appear far from their policy. There are a lot more issues than just one, so a single spectrum of policy is oversimplified. Many voters vote on individual issues, which are often black and white (e.g. pro-life/choice, for/against gay marriage). You could probably argue that candidates actual policies have very little to do with their stated policies, or that voters are significantly more swayed by advertising dollars than policy. All of these are real concerns, but I think the basic point stands: a two-party system encourages both candidates to situate themselves at more or less the median of the American electorate, which I consider a desirable outcome.

zanny• 15 years ago

Internet voting is the eventual future, but like has been said, the lack of representational elections and the broken two party system are why people are disinterested, not because they have to go to a local school and fill out a piece of paper.

Introducing online voting should be pursued as an option, just like early voting is. But we should not even think of making it a standard for a long time, because not everyone has internet access. And many people with internet access still wouldn't know how to go to vote.gov and fill in a form.

maresca• 15 years ago

If you were to give everyone off from work for voting day on the contingency that they voted, most people still wouldn't vote.

Voting in the United States should be compulsory like it is in Australia.

A central location that would let people vote on bills would serve as a check on politicians votes.

As for the problem with not everyone having access to computers/smart phones, why not replace phone booths with electronic voting booths?

wedesoft• 15 years ago

With the Internet it is possible to involve the public much more than just with online elections. The FSF for example uses a website where people can comment on each draft of a license [1].

[1] http://gplv3.fsf.org/comment/agplv3-draft-2.html

muuh-gnu• 15 years ago

Whether all people go voting or not is irrelevant as long as they only can vote for so called "representatives" who then make all the important decisions.

It is more important to implement unfiltered direct democracy first. I want to vote on some stuff directly and let somebody else vote for me on stuff i dont care about. Thinking hard about changing _how_ to vote without changing _what_ you are allowed to vote on is a waste of time.

As long as I can not vote on stuff directly, I dont care for elections at all. All parties are the same, all representatives sooner or later become corrupt. The game is rigged in favor of people with money & influence, elections are a lie.

Aloisius• 15 years ago

Oh yes, because all the direct democracy systems that have been created have worked so well. You know what's worse than voting for representatives? Voting directly on dozens of bills that are so complicated that, unless you don't have a full time job, you have to rely on a bunch of summaries written by biased parties to interpret.

My favorite trick which happened in my city is having two bills that look nearly identical, except one looks better (more savings, more jobs, more whatever), but is actually illegal and will inevitably be struck down by the courts. The illegal one has a supersede clause in it so that if both are voted in, it undos the other, but since it'll be struck down for being illegal, nothing will actually change.

As someone whose state, city and county have implemented direct democracy, I can tell you it sucks. I'd rather have no laws passed then them passed directly via an uninformed electorate.

alttag• 15 years ago

Amen. As a former elected official, few things in government would scare me more than direct democracy subject to the whim of media campaigns and sound bytes. In my best Tommy Lee Jones voice: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." Or maybe the line attributed to Winston Churchill: "The best argument against democracy is a 10-minute conversation with the average voter."

zokier• 15 years ago

"I want to vote on some stuff directly and let somebody else vote for me on stuff i dont care about." (emphasis mine)

The key for successful direct democracy is encouraging delegation of decision making.

JonnieCache2• 15 years ago

Internet voting is untenable from a security perspective. An election is orders of magnitude more complicated than most online transactions, because your vote is just as important to me as my vote.

Whereas filing your taxes online is a one way transaction between you and the government, voting is one big symmetrical transaction between every member of the electorate. This makes it really tricky from a security perspective.

The reason that internet voting is worse than postal voting is the slowness of messing around with paper, the same reason which people tout as a positive. You cant change a million postal votes in a under millisecond from thousands of miles away. Think of the postal service as hash iteration.

For (lots) more info, see the following Google tech talk, "Electronic and Internet Voting (The Threat of Internet Voting in Public Elections)" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GjmRwfkRXY

eli6• 15 years ago

It's MUCH more difficult than banking or taxes. Not only must your vote be secure and counted; it must be anonymous! Not even you should be able to prove to anyone else who you voted for and there must be no audit trail that could tie an individual vote to a person.

NinetyNine• 15 years ago

Doesn't bitcoin solve this problem?

tomjen32• 15 years ago

That's the ideal, but in reality even normal pencil voting can be hacked since it is pretty simple to take a picture of your ballot with a smartphone. Then you can prove whom you voted for.

Raphael• 15 years ago

I vote by mail as required by my state. I could show anyone my ballot after filling it out but before mailing it.

cafard• 15 years ago

Just what the 1% needs to masquerade as the 99% (or, why be greedy, the 51%).

hisabness• 15 years ago

do people here actually believe the current system isn't rigged? does anyone believe an internet based system wouldn't be rigged?

sirclueless3• 15 years ago

Rigged how? I'm fairly certain that a centralized homogeneous voting system would be significantly easier to audit for security loopholes than the current implementation, but if there were a security breach one would imagine it would be far more disastrous.

Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

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