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Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

themacro.com

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Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#71
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not more secure? This actually has a chance at being an accurate vote count while we know that the current system can never be accurate.

Let me know when we go a week without a security breach, and I'll let you know when online voting can be secure.

How has the track record on old fashioned voting been? Do we require a perfect replacement or a better one?

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#73
post #41

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…

[deleted]

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#74
post #54

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 did notice the org has raised $650K from a variety of sources. 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.

i would say that our funding tends to come from more progressive donors. that being said, we are ready, willing and able to take funding from say the Koch brothers should they ever offer to financially support our efforts to increase voter turnout.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#75

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, Thanks for everything you're doing to increase participation in our democracy! I know it's a bit far-sighted, but would love to hear your thoughts on electronic voting. Is it feasible? Desirable? What do we need to get there?

Anyone interested in electronic voting, I would suggest reading the article: Internet Voting: A Requiem for the Dream in the last issue of Phrack. It was eye opening for me.

http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#76
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't explain Washington State, where the Democrats didn't use their state-provided primary at all (all of their primary delegates were allocated by a caucus you had to attend) and the Republicans did (though only one candidate is running now, so it doesn't really matter). The Democrats made you physically get up on a Saturday and go, unless you had a valid excuse. Elections in Washington are by mail, so to vo…

That's irrelevant, because the turnout in-person among Democrats isn't comparable to the turnout via mail of Republicans.

vote-by-mail patters are changing, however, to be more representative of the electorate as a whole. i think it tended to skew more conservative in the past because the RNC invested considerable resources into VBM programs. the DNC has been a little later to the VBM process.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#77
post #47

Wouldn't insisting on motor-voter take it to near 90% ? Most states refusing motor-voter are controlled by the hard right. Sure hope there is a plan to fund 100% more voting locations and booths. Because Republicans have figured out a great way to kill voting when they simply just have to give in and let people vote is to defund voting locations. Unless the plan is to just have everyone vote absentee but that allows…

We need to go beyond Motor Voter IMHO. The DMV was not built to be the foundation on which democracy rests. Also, a surprising number of Americans don't have driver's licenses.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#78
post #42

To those commenting with some variation of "only informed citizens should vote," pause and consider how much overlap there is with your idea of what an "informed" voter is with race/class lines. You may be unwittingly (or wittingly in some cases?) insisting that voters in the US should be, disproportionately, wealthier whites.

how do i vote this up roughly 1,000,000 times? does that happen here or is that only a reddit thing (please excuse my ignorance -- i try to spend very little time in online comment threads and a lot of time working on vote.org)

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#79
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I strongly, strongly suspect that the primary motivation for this comes from the fact that higher voter turnout tends to favor democrats. http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/3/progressives-ne...

Probably the most under-represented group is the youth vote, so 100% turnout would probably mean much more progressive, socialist results as well. I say socialist here without the negative connotation.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#80
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online voting (the kind you could do in the comfort of your own home) suffers from manipulation in the more traditional form: I sit at your house with a baseball bat and make sure you vote for my candidate of choice. Voting at a voting booth prevents that. 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 s…

Vote by mail suffers from the baseball bat problem, yet it's not uncommon in the US.

However, vote by mail is more likely to suffer from the peanut butter & jelly problem, which is getting food smudged on the ballots while filling them out at the dinner table.
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