51–60 of 458 posts
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?
It is irrelevant. Democracy isn't about picking the best candidate, it is about achieving a median that facilitates social order.
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…
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"
In many places, the support of a recognized party dramatically lowers the requirements for getting on the ballot. In my state, by as much as a factor of 3:
https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_polit...
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.
It might be interesting to see the ideological bent of the source of that funding. But I'm guessing it probably isn't oil drillers and Jesus in public school promoters.
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…
Hi Debra, Why do you want to increase turnout? Have you read some of the work on voter ignorance, which shows that voters have very little political knowledge, and are deeply influenced by various biases? This work shows that non-voters are have even worse prejudices and are less knowledgable than voters; how would getting these people to the polls help?[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_V…
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…
What is your go to answer to people who say they don't vote because in the state they vote in, they believe the candidate they want to win will be elected without them making the effort of going to vote? I have a few I generally go with, but curious what you tend to use.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
i tend to think more in terms of progressives and conservatives than dems vs. republicans. given the demographic makeup of our country, the majority of citizens are progressive: they assume that the future is brighter than the past and long for forward thinking policies. 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…
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…
Hey Debra, 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.
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…
Hi Debra, Why do you want to increase turnout? Have you read some of the work on voter ignorance, which shows that voters have very little political knowledge, and are deeply influenced by various biases? This work shows that non-voters are have even worse prejudices and are less knowledgable than voters; how would getting these people to the polls help?[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_V…
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/3/progressives-ne...
To know why this is a bad idea, you might want to watch this video titled The Myth of the Rational Voter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKANfuq_92U .