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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

#181

Post by devit »

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…

The problem is that voting correctly is irrational since the chance of affecting the outcome is minuscule and not worth the massive effort of making a correct choice.

Hence, the only people who vote are irrational or badly informed (driven by the pleasure or duty of casting the vote rather than a commitment to voting optimally), with the well known poor outcomes all democracies suffer from.

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

#182

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mortenjorck wrote: post #167
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

> The Boston-based company raised $2.2 million earlier this year, helped along by buzzwords such as “biometrics” and “blockchain,” which it claims allows it to secure the voting process. Its app reportedly requires voters to take and upload a picture of their government-issued I.D., along with a selfie-style video of their face, which facial-recognition technology then uses to ensure the person pictured in the I.D. a…

Honestly, I don’t think voting by app is inherently a “horrifically bad idea” – just that Voatz’ implementation is horrifically bad. Biometrics are going to be almost impossible to do in a non-invasive and secure way for now, so cut that part of the pitch. Blockchain may not be an entirely round peg in this square hole, but there are other cryptographic architectures that probably make more sense (I am not a cryptogr…

> I don’t think voting by app is inherently a “horrifically bad idea”

If a voter can cast their vote from their phone, anyone else can.

The strength of paper-based voting is in its cost and complexity: the number of confederates required to tamper with an election is prohibitively large. With app-based voting comes the risk of a large number of compromised phones tampering with elections.

The security downsides simply don't make sense next to mailed-in ballots, which capture the security (and accessibility) of paper ballots with the convenience of voting from home. The only upside of app-based voting is cost, which is a ridiculous factor to strongly optimize for when it comes to something as important as elections.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

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

#183

Post by village-idiot »

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…

Vote by mail! My wife and I spent 45 minutes at the kitchen counter figuring out which of the more obscure local candidates we liked, then mailed it back in the morning.

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

#184

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

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…

It seems to me that any measure that makes it too easy to vote will just make campaigns even more reliant on advertising spending.

An uninformed voter would have nothing else to go off of after all, and with average turn out rates of near 60% currently, it would have a dramatic effect on elections.

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

#185

Post by fallingfrog »

mnx wrote: post #172
fallingfrog wrote: post #152

This 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…

Just curious, why do Americans always talk about making it a holiday, wouldn't moving it to a sunday create similar effect, while being much simpler? This is how we do it here in Poland.

That would work too, but most customer serving businesses are open all weekend, so moving it to the weekend would mostly help people working 9-to-5 jobs, but not the young frequently moving people you are trying to target, who are also the ones working weekends and late nights. Whereas on federal holidays like Christmas, only gas stations and hospitals are open.

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

#186

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#188

Post by AnimalMuppet »

devit wrote: post #181
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…

The problem is that voting correctly is irrational since the chance of affecting the outcome is minuscule and not worth the massive effort of making a correct choice. Hence, the only people who vote are irrational or badly informed (driven by the pleasure or duty of casting the vote rather than a commitment to voting optimally), with the well known poor outcomes all democracies suffer from.

The "well known poor outcomes that all democracies suffer from" that just happen to be better than the well known poor outcomes that all the other systems suffer from.

(Well, all the systems that have been tried. The systems that have not been tried do not yet suffer from well known poor outcomes.)

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

#189

Post by pwg »

acdha wrote: post #36
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.

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.

This suggestion is not likely to go very far. The reason Nov. 11 is Veteran's Day is that it is in honor of the armistice with Germany that formally ended World War I:

"major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when the Armistice with Germany went into effect." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Day

So any attempt to 'move' Veteran's Day will likely meet resistance due to this connection. This is also why this day is a fixed calendar day (at least in the US) rather than a "first/second/third Monday of the month" type holiday like most of the other official federal holidays. It shares the same connection with specific exact calendar dates as does the 4th of July, Christmas, and New Year's day.

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

#190

Post by TeMPOraL »

lbotos wrote: post #168
maxerickson wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to know more.

If this was a subtle starship trooper reference, bravo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdrjzE1SE58 (depictions of violence, satire) For those that don't know, Starship troopers is a scathing satire about how "war makes fascist of us all".

The movie has its ups and downs, but the propaganda interludes were absolutely brilliant. I believe in the context of this discussion, the most relevant one is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_5UZfwX0ss.
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