Oh goodie. If you think the internet of unsecured things revolution was fun to watch, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
“A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
91–100 of 377 posts
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#92If we think that not enough people are voting, the way to solve this is NOT through get-out-the-vote efforts, voter registration drives, and tools like this to make it easier to cast a vote. These are not the bottleneck. Voting may be a duty, but it's one that carries a lot of responsibility. Getting ignorant people to cast poorly-informed votes does not help our society. And I think that people realize this. So when…
A big part of the problem I feel is choice fatigue. Its by design that when you go to vote in a US election you are often voting for sometimes 20 or more different positions, and because of the sheer quantity of people you are supposed to audit this way it becomes impossible to thoroughly investigate all your choices if each one takes an hour of research. You can't ask your average citizen to spend 20+ hours in advan…
When I first moved to the USA, I was astounded at how many different positions people were voting for!
My experience in the UK was a small 3x5 notecard sized piece of paper with my choices for local member of parliament. I marked the box by the person I wanted to elect, and submitted the vote.
I still joke that the USA has "too much" democracy ;)
But, like other things the USA does differently to the rest of the world, a great many of its people just haven't experienced anything different to compare their experience.
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#93This will happen though. Will seem like a bad idea initially.
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
...and it doesn't address one of the key issues with votes being cast in places other than a booth in a polling station where you are alone: Coercion. What's to stop a family member (OK, not much of an issue for overseas military personnel, one would think) or another person from hovering just outside the camera's capture area with a blunt object, ready to -ahem- influence your vote? Granted, this would only affect i…
> What's to stop a family member...[from] influenc[ing] your vote? This is also a problem with mail-in ballots. (It’s why I believe early votes should be allowed to be overwritten by in-person votes.) The issue with smartphone voting with selfie verification is almost everyone’s phones contain selfies. (Americans overseas are also likely to have a photo ID on their camera roll.) So controlling the phone means control…
>This is also a problem with mail-in ballots.
Just as a datapoint this doesn't exist everywhere. In France for instance it's not possible to vote without physically going to a polling place unless you're living in a foreign country and only for certain elections (not possible for the presidential elections for instance). It is however possible to give a "procuration" for somebody else to vote for you but you still need to go to the police before the vote to make the procuration so it wouldn't be a very convenient way to fraud since you'd have to coerce the person into giving you their vote in front of a police officer.
I agree that if your electoral system accepts mail-in ballots then other electronic ways to vote remotely don't seem that much worse overall since they would share pretty much the same potential for abuse. I guess paper ballots would make it a bit harder to automate fraud at least.
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#95If we think that not enough people are voting, the way to solve this is NOT through get-out-the-vote efforts, voter registration drives, and tools like this to make it easier to cast a vote. These are not the bottleneck. Voting may be a duty, but it's one that carries a lot of responsibility. Getting ignorant people to cast poorly-informed votes does not help our society. And I think that people realize this. So when…
There are at least three groups of people who don't vote. One group is the lazy. The second group is those for whom things are going reasonably well - the lights work, the roads get repaired, crime isn't too bad, their economic circumstances aren't terrible, and so why worry? No matter who gets elected, the lights are going to continue to work, and so on - it won't be a radical change either way. (This group may over…
I would break down the third group into people who people who have given up on politics and people who just don't feel represented by the current set of political ideologies, and would rather abstain than support people they don't believe in.
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#96Voting Tek isn't the problem. In fact it's going to make a lot of problems. There is no real way to establish trust without making those votes personally identifiable.
Low turnout is because people do not feel compelled to vote. They need something to vote for. Policy better aligned with the needs of ordinary Americans will improve voter turnout.
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#97If we think that not enough people are voting, the way to solve this is NOT through get-out-the-vote efforts, voter registration drives, and tools like this to make it easier to cast a vote. These are not the bottleneck. Voting may be a duty, but it's one that carries a lot of responsibility. Getting ignorant people to cast poorly-informed votes does not help our society. And I think that people realize this. So when…
If you want people to vote make it mandatory like Australia. Anything short of that seems incoherent.
Mandatory voting? How would you propose enforcing it? How does Australia enforce it?
I'm not necessarily against mandatory voting, but it would be very hard to convince the American public that mandatory voting is a good idea when a huge part of the population would see that as an attack on their freedom to not vote.
This doesn't even begin to discuss the situations where voting only occurs on a Tuesday (aside from mail-ins) and some people can't take that time off work. There would have to be some clause to force employers to let employees go vote, at a loss of money somewhere. Such a clause would lead to more resistance.
Again, I'm not personally against it, but it's not so simple as "make it mandatory."
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
A big part of the problem I feel is choice fatigue. Its by design that when you go to vote in a US election you are often voting for sometimes 20 or more different positions, and because of the sheer quantity of people you are supposed to audit this way it becomes impossible to thoroughly investigate all your choices if each one takes an hour of research. You can't ask your average citizen to spend 20+ hours in advan…
Alternatively, make each elected office require a man and a woman to be independently elected to that office. Have the decision making power split equally between the two 50-50 so that both must agree before taking action (e.g., signing or vetoing bills, or casting votes for bills). Each political party would provide both a male candidate and a female candidate for each office.
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Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#99If we think that not enough people are voting, the way to solve this is NOT through get-out-the-vote efforts, voter registration drives, and tools like this to make it easier to cast a vote. These are not the bottleneck. Voting may be a duty, but it's one that carries a lot of responsibility. Getting ignorant people to cast poorly-informed votes does not help our society. And I think that people realize this. So when…
> Getting ignorant people to cast poorly-informed votes does not help our society. EDIT: "Wow" Retracted and language changes - agree that ignorance is something to be fought, but it's a tough determination when it comes to voting. How are you determining a voter is ignorant? What if someone is informed but disagrees with you? Like so many things, we need both, and I don't think it is an either/or. It should be easie…
> Wow. What if someone is informed but disagrees with you?
OP didn't say anything about agreeing with their positions. I honestly don't see what your "wow" is about - do you believe that it would be helpful to society to have poorly-informed people casting votes?
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moving voting day from a Tuesday to a Sunday would also make a big difference. There are many people who have have informed opinions but can't afford to take off work (write-up for being late to work/take off early, lost income, transport issues). Also that would avoid removing a school day since most public schools are used for polling. Another option would be to switch to make mail-in ballots only.
Well, for one, employers are legally REQUIRED to allow their employees time off to vote. At least I thought that was the case. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Some bad actor employers or supervisors may exert pressure upon the employee to not leave that day. There's a great many methods to force people to do something yet still stay within the word of a given law. Especially in those states that have the "at will" employment law, because you could be fired for sneezing incorrectly and have no legal recourse.
That, of course, is another subject for another day.