It seems hard to vote electronically in a way that can't be hacked and is fully private but for those that are not too bothered by privacy it seems ok. I mean I voted Labour in the last thing and aren't bothered if someone finds out. You could still go do the paper ballot thing if worried.
“A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
151–160 of 377 posts
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#152This particular idea seems bad from a security standpoint. But we do need to make some major changes to level the playing field so that people who have small children, move often, work odd hours- in other words, everyone except for propertied old people- are able to vote.
I can see a few ways to make this happen:
1) make voting day a national holiday
2) automate voter registration when you file a tax return and make same-day registration the law nationwide
3) automatically mail everyone an absentee ballot
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#153If 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…
The goal is not to do the right thing, it is to get maximally ignorant, easily manipulated voters under your control. Or kabuki voting, in which the choices are the same, but voters get to feel like they matter.
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#154I know how to solve this problem. Upload a speech by each candidate to YouTube on election day. At the end of the day whomever gets the least downvotes wins. Google's CAPTCHA and profiling will protect us from election tampering and make sure only the people who are allowed to vote will vote. Might need CAPTCHA 4, though. The one where you go through a DNA test to verify your uniqueness, then get an RFID implant for…
You can early vote one weekend here in Texas, and that doesn't seem to radically increase turnout. This year i believe turnout was lower on Saturday/Sunday than during the week.
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#155As an Estonian who has voted online and via mobile ID for years, couldn't imagine going to vote in a physical location, using pen and paper.
As someone who is about to claim Estonian citizenship I am horrified that a nation that borders Russia with a relatively significant ethnic Russian community even has online voting.
I like how bold Estonia is on some things but I feel like this has to be scaled back.
Given the population, all it takes is some heavy Russian language propaganda combined with some low key attacks to tip the result in the way you want.
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Question: Are there (m)any people other than those involved in the manufacture and sales of voting machines , or their lobbyists, that support increased automation in the voting process? I'm absolutely, 100% happy with putting a pencil mark onto a paper ballot, which I fold and place into a box (with people watching), which is later taken (with people watching) to a counting place, emptied out on a table (with people…
Finally. REASON! Now this guy has the right idea. Why are people trying to fix something that is not broken?
A good question which could also be asked of 30% of HN articles
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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?
Higher participation means voting is more likely to represent the population. As it is, vote results only reflect the opinions of those who considered that the benefit they gain from voting exceeds the costs, which is a biased sample and negatively affects democratic principles. Costs need to be made as negligible as possible in order to be inclusive.
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#158There needs to be a paper trail. Newer technology is not the answer for voting. What would be a good idea is a team to do UX on voting ballots, nationally. Solve this problem once and take into account all the variations of local things (bonds, amendments, etc.) Then pick a company to make ballot readers, open source the software and use best in class info-sec practices. We don't need instant results, people don't ta…
"There needs to be a paper trail. Newer technology is not the answer for voting."
I agree. Voting systems need to be extremely simple and understandable - and auditing the system, or the votes, needs to be a task that any person pulled randomly off the street could accomplish.
Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#159I know how to solve this problem. Upload a speech by each candidate to YouTube on election day. At the end of the day whomever gets the least downvotes wins. Google's CAPTCHA and profiling will protect us from election tampering and make sure only the people who are allowed to vote will vote. Might need CAPTCHA 4, though. The one where you go through a DNA test to verify your uniqueness, then get an RFID implant for…
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Re: “A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And how does it count votes per candidate then? Codes can be simply be computed as HMAC(secret key, SIN + candidate) or something similar, the user and any attacker without the secret key just has a random string of bits. You do realize votes are tallied by computer currently, right? Most of these just rely on phone-based systems that often expose interfaces to news orgs and such. The sort of interface I'm talking…
> Codes can be simply be computed as HMAC(secret key, SIN + candidate) or something similar, the user and any attacker without the secret key just has a random string of bits. In other words: The codes do identify who voted for what, which is contrary to your original claim. The attacker not having the secret key is an inacceptable requirement for voting systems, as the election is run by those in power, but has to b…
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