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“A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

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Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

#141

Post by lb1lf »

shittyadmin wrote: post #61
lb1lf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...how does the user know his vote is valid and added to the tally? Changing a vote to be for another candidate is not the only way to influence an election; you could have votes for the 'wrong' candidate be thrown out as invalid, too.

> ...how does the user know his vote is valid and added to the tally? I could say the same thing currently - how do you know that vote you placed on a voting machine actually counted? > you could have votes for the 'wrong' candidate be thrown out as invalid, too. That's why you have codes that have no public mapping to candidates as I already suggested - I even suggested a primitive way to do so.

As for voting machines, I don't know, I cannot know - and, luckily, in my jurisdiction they don't exist.

I'd be happy with voting machines if all they did was keep a running tally - have them print a ballot, have the voter deposit this ballot in an urn - if the result (gotten from the voting machine as the polls close) is disputed, recount the paper ballots, end of discussion.

As for the second part, I misread your initial post -apologies.

Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

#142

Post by justinpombrio »

calvinbhai wrote: post #65
RankingMember wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in favor of ditching Columbus day and replacing it with November 6th as a national holiday for that reason.

why not rename Columbus day into something like "we seek forgiveness" day? how does it make sense to have November 6th as a holiday in a country where more than 50% people don't/can't vote?

> how does it make sense to have November 6th as a holiday in a country where more than 50% people don't/can't vote?

The point of making it a holiday is so that people wouldn't have to work that day, to increase the percentage of people who will/can vote. I agree that <50% is too low: let's get that number up, yeah?

Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

#143

Post by TeMPOraL »

dforrestwilson wrote: post #133
athenot wrote: post #12

Earlier 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.

Why do I even need to elect a Congressman/woman to make decisions for me? Just let me do it directly now that the technology is here. We should vote on issues in real time, or within a week or month-long window. It would incentivize people with time and interest to be more involved, and get rid of that pesky agency problem. At the very least we can marginalize the role of politicians and perhaps be less disappointed…

The so-called fluid democracy. I very like the idea, as it sounds ideal on first glance - especially that with the Internet, we can actually implement direct voting on small issues without too much hassle. But I expect there are some holes in this idea; is there a list of main issues someone could reproduce here or link to?

Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

#144

Post by tmaly »

athenot wrote: post #12
CWuestefeld wrote: post #3

If 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…

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.

a Saturday or Sunday would have a much higher turnout. However, you would still be excluding a large number of lower income service workers that work on the weekend.

Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

#145

Post by foldr »

throwawaylolx wrote: post #127
CrlNvl wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is clearly a funding problem and a date problem. I don't know what the situation is in the US, but in France it never took me (or my parents) more than 15 minutes to cast a vote. Most of the time I'm in and out within 10 minutes. Vote always happen on Sunday.

>So this is clearly a funding problem and a date problem Clearly not, because I wouldn't go out on Sunday to vote unless it was on my way to do something else. It's an UX problem for me and others--the effort required is not properly compensated by the benefits I'm rewarded with for my vote as far as I'm concerned.

If you care so little about voting that you can't be bothered to go out of your house to do it, why are you even interested in increasing participation? Either voting is important, in which case you should be willing to make a small effort, or it isn't, in which case who cares if people vote or not?

Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

#146

Post by Steltek »

zaroth wrote: post #21

My town has annual “Town Meetings” where everyone pours into a gymnasium (turnout is up to 800 voters in a town with population ~15,000) to vote on all the “articles” of which there can be upwards of 20. The annual meeting often extends multiple evenings as much discussion is permitted on each article, and traditional voting can add several hours to the process when vote counts are close. Instead of shouting aye or n…

Yikes, I can see a lot of our TMM's having trouble with phones. It'd be better to just invest in dedicated phones and not allow BYOD. In fact, I can see some TMM's trying to get away with voting remotely (attendance is sometimes challenging).

That said, the remotes are amazingly useful for going back and looking over the results.

Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

#147

Post by jillesvangurp »

nmeofthestate wrote: post #110

No offence to Americans reading, but speaking as an outsider, it seems to me that voting in the US is fucked up in so many ways that need to be fixed first before starting on "smartphone based voting". I saw this short twitter thread listing some of problems that are especially apparent from a foreign perspective: https://twitter.com/MackieJonathan/status/105996240724471808...

It worse than that, some of the flaws are actively protected by both parties because they believe they are benefiting from it.

There are differences of opinion about discarding votes, how to count votes, who is allowed to vote, etc. E.g. the debacle with the voting machines with the first Bush election had a whole circus around it involving recounts and how to count. This election was so close that every little argument mattered.

Technically, it is not that hard to come up with electronic voting systems. The hard part is making them auditable, privacy sensitive, and robust against malicious attacks. It's not impossible but it seems hard enough that this gets messed up consistently.

Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

#148

Post by ckastner »

toyg wrote: post #68
acdha wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My $.10 proposal: change Veterans Day to be the 2nd Tuesday in November. Almost no cost, there's a strong “they served so you would have this right” angle, and it'd pair naturally with other civic events.

With all due respect, ideologically linking the military and democracy is a horrifically bad idea. The two systems embody completely opposite concepts.

How is democracy the opposite concept to the military? Or was that just poorly phrased?

Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

#149

Post by EpicEng »

sailfast wrote: post #53
CWuestefeld wrote: post #3

If 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?

ig·no·rant /ˈiɡnərənt/

adjective

lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated.

Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

#150

Post by throwawaylolx »

thrower123 wrote: post #132
throwawaylolx wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing participation? I won't drive out of my way and queue somewhere to vote. Sure, many people think the solution to this is shaming me for not caring enough about democracy, but it is obviously not working. If it were easy and safe to vote from my phone, I may be more inclined to vote.

Would you be more inclined to educate yourself on the candidates and the issues on the ballot? If increasing voter participation is just about having more ignorant voters, or stuffing the ballot box with people from given demographics, then quite frankly, I am not in favor of it. I wouldn't qualify myself to be sufficiently educated to really vote on any of the issues I voted on yesterday, but hey, I did my civic dut…

>Would you be more inclined to educate yourself on the candidates and the issues on the ballot?

Yes, definitely.

>Voting is basically a solved problem

Not sure what's your definition of "solved problem," but, as far as I'm concerned, it's not solved if it fails people who would be inclined to vote and educate themselves on voting if it were easier to vote.

>open more polling places, hire more people to staff them.

That would be an alternative, especially if they could open polling place at each workplace and near each home with infinite staff. Alternatively, technology and automation could be used to scale UX, but, as you mentioned, current tech does not appear to be fit for this, which makes voting not a solved problem.

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