Not to sound elitist, but is that really a good thing? What sorts of people are going to be simultaneously not motivated to vote, and good at picking the best candidate?
Don't know how to weigh that against the possible downside you mention.
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Not to sound elitist, but is that really a good thing? What sorts of people are going to be simultaneously not motivated to vote, and good at picking the best candidate?
Don't know how to weigh that against the possible downside you mention.
Not to sound elitist, but is that really a good thing? What sorts of people are going to be simultaneously not motivated to vote, and good at picking the best candidate?
very few non-voters are unmotivated to vote. voters are far more likely to not cast ballots because voting is too hard.
Any idea about what the political ideologies of the full 100% looks like? It's bound to be vastly different that the low percentage that turns out.
I have no idea myself, but I think we can guess based on the fact that democrats generally want more turnout and republicans generally want less turn out. That suggests that democrats and republicans generally agree that the 100% would benefit democrats.
then again, i can't see into a crystal ball. i will say this, however: both major parties would have policies that represent the will of the people if we had 100% voter turnout. we'd see greater satisfaction with government and a more equitable taxation system with increased turnout. i also think we'd see higher investment in education and health care.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi Debra, Is your organization focused only on general elections, or on primaries as well? I couldn't find any information about primary elections on your site, even though many of the most consequential decisions are made then, when voter turnout is at its lowest.
Not debra, but I would think that would fall under "partisan"
As a non-Republican, non-Democrat, when I voted in the last primary, there was exactly one referendum on my ballot, and nothing else.
I was also the only person on the nonpartisan register at that time of the morning. They had to crack open the shrink-wrap on the ballots just for me. I imagine that not many other people would bother to drag themselves in to the polling place for that one issue, were they not also choosing candidates for one party or the other.
I'd rather have 100% turnout by the 10% who are actually informed about the issues and candidates.
I'd rather have 100% turnout by the 10% who are actually informed about the issues and candidates.
I've always thought that online voting could be made MORE secure than traditional systems. If you combine cryptography with more traditional layers. It can also be anonymous. Take an existing online registration, allow a user to login, and "create a password". Take the password, hash it with the users registration id, and a salt, and that becomes the id for a ballot. Now a user can always login, and view their existi…
I'm generally in favor of overhauling the voting system with technology (especially open source technology that can be publicly validated), but I think there are still benefits to having people vote in a supervised public space making sure people can vote anonymously and safely
Hey everyone. Debra Cleaver here, founder of Vote.org. I am ready to answer all of your questions about voting in the US, as long as they are non-partisan. Partisan questions should be directed to your local political party. I'm especially keen to talk about ways we can use technology to modernize the election process. My current focus is how we can use electronic signatures to roll out online voter registration in s…
have you thought of open sourcing the voting backend so that cryptography and security experts can help to make sure that the votes are fair?
Also technology is good enough to be able to prove cryptographically the number of voters and to prove that a signature was taken to account. There are many ways to do this, but a professional cryptographer is the best to help in designing a system like this, not me.
I'd rather have 100% turnout by the 10% who are actually informed about the issues and candidates.
Group B: Group A isn't informed. If they were, they would vote for Group B.
Any idea about what the political ideologies of the full 100% looks like? It's bound to be vastly different that the low percentage that turns out.