“A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

Post by bradstewart » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

SeanBoocock wrote: post #211

twtw wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure - CA has permanent vote by mail available to all eligible voters, and saw about a 38% voter turnout yesterday. Texas does not, and saw about a 40% voter turnout. If getting to the polling place is the bottleneck, I would expect CAs vote by mail option would increase voter turnout relative to somewhere without it. (Cue someone saying I can't compare TX to CA - it seems like if I can't that demonstrates th…

One thing in Texas’s favor is its early voting setup. Early voting was available from October 20th to last Friday, including weekends, typically from 7am to 7pm.

Post by wasdfff » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

throwawaylolx wrote: post #157

foldr wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by Mikeb85 » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

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…

Post by wasdfff » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

mattferderer wrote: post #9

If this were to ever become a reality I would like to see it be open sourced so all countries can use it & all citizens can test for security breaches. Our government is meant to be transparent & this is something that I don't believe becomes better by being closed off.

Post by ookdatnog » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

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…