

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

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JonnieCache
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>

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eli
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.

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NinetyNine
Doesn't bitcoin solve this problem?

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AceJohnny2
No, bitcoin is "pseudonymous", transactions are public. It's not necessarily
easily linked to your real identity (hence the pseudonymity), but with today's
profiling tech, is that any guarantee?

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eli
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.

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nitrogen
_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?

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eli
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?

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nitrogen
First let me state that I'm arguing from an assumption that technology, when
not obviously bad, is inherently good, and that increasing the use of
technology is a worthy goal in itself. So in my case, the point isn't just to
vote from home, but to vote from anywhere _using technology_. I don't believe
that it's necessary to share this philosophy, however, to want to see online
voting become a reality.

Obviously there are security and coercion concerns that are more detrimental
to Internet voting's prospects than the class division aspects. And an
absentee ballot sounds reasonable, but is not nearly as convenient as online
voting (and has more potential for fraud and coercion than online voting).

My main point is that I believe class disparity is a weak argument against
online voting. I don't like using postal mail or waiting in line for an hour
or more at the ballot box -- does that mean that it's unfair _not_ to let me
vote from home or the library? At least in the US, with libraries, cheap DSL,
and cell phones, the vast, vast majority of people not currently voting have
easier access to the Internet than they do to polling stations on election
day. Don't deny most people a benefit because a few people can't enjoy it.

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Strilanc
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.

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daenz
> 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?

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fr0sty
> 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.

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splat
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.

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LeafStorm
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).

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chimeracoder
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.

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bradbeattie
It would be misleading to gloss over IRV's significant failings if we're
talking about criteria failure.

* 8 people vote: A, C, B * 5 people vote: B, C, A * 4 people vote: C, B, A

IRV eliminates C, despite the majority of voters preferring C over B (12 to
5). The order of elimination means that significant secondary preferences are
often ignored.

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wisty
Here's another hypothetical example:

6 * Republicans, Libertarians, Democrats; 5 * Democrats, Libertarians,
Republicans; 2 * Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans.

Liberians are eliminated (despite the majority of voters preferring them over
the Democrats), and Democrats win.

Notice how when you use party names, it makes more sense? The Republican and
Democrat voters are simply voting "anyone but the other major party". If they
are neck-to-neck on primary votes, then the secondary votes of the minor
parties start to be counted. This is a feature, not a bug.

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bradbeattie
I see your point here, but all voters in your mockup presented the
Libertarians as their first or second choice. As a compromise candidate,
that's not a bad option.

Further, I don't think real-world voting would match up exactly with the
above. There are people that would vote R/D/L and D/R/L, both of which are
lacking from this example that would swing things away from the Libertarians.

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stfu
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.

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zanny
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.

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muuh-gnu
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
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.

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zokier
"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.

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wedesoft
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>

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

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

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sirclueless
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.

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maresca
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?

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

