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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

#241

Post by buzzdenver »

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.

I second mail-in ballots. Everyone automatically gets them in Colorado, you essentially have 2 weeks to fill them out and drop them off.

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

#242

Post by pentae »

knieveltech wrote: post #67
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…

If you want people to vote make it mandatory like Australia. Anything short of that seems incoherent.

And make it a public holiday

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

#243

Post by mikeash »

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 with this sentiment is that ignorance and lack of enthusiasm aren’t necessarily correlated. Lots of normal people follow politics enough to be informed but are too busy to vote. Lots of crazy people get their information exclusively from bogus sources and turn up for every election.

Keeping it harder to vote doesn’t select for informed people, it selects for fanatics and extremists. Making it easier to vote selects for moderates and sane people. That would be a huge win for us.

That said, computerized voting is definitely not the way to do it.

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

#244

Post by aeturnum »

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…

>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.

I think this understanding is common, but it's totally incorrect and is part of the larger project to get fewer people to vote.

Voting does represent, in some sense, a decision of import for how society functions. A vote for a tyrant, for example, would be bad for everyone. But is voting more important or influential than the many, many other ways in which people support or oppose bad things in our society?

In the same domain - political donations support or oppose the same politicians (and the relative impact of a donation and a vote is debatable - at the very least people can donate many times!), but the discourse around them has none of the concern around "poorly informed" donators. In a different domain - working for a company can have an enormous good or bad impact on the world, but we don't caution people against "ignorantly" accepting a position (there is lots of discussion around the morality of companies - but people are not called "irresponsible" or "ignorant" simply for working for bad companies).

I would ask you to consider how big an impact a vote has and compare that any other decision we make that impacts the world. The narrative you're advancing holds voting to a much higher standard than other ways in which people affect the world. I personally think this is because the originators of this argument (but not necessarily you) want people to question if they should vote. However, they would never suggest that a person their suitability to select who to buy services from, or work for, or donate money to - because those are all actions taken by higher-income people and voting is (or attempts to be) universal.

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

#245

Post by jrs95 »

Making election day a holiday could help, but let's be honest - a lot of people are just going to smoke weed and play video games if they get that day off. It would help but it's not a solution to other issues like voter suppression & general lack of voter engagement. Although it seems like the increasing toxicity of our politics is at least getting more people involved.

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

#246

Post by coryfklein »

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…

> they spare us the chance of their error by not voting.

Why would you think that uninformed voters have a lower participation rate than informed voters?

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

#247

Post by moneil971 »

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.

Early voting also helps, many states let people vote through the weekend before Nov. 6. Or mail in ballots, but yes, making it officially on a weekend would simplify quite a bit.

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

#249

Post by coryfklein »

partiallypro wrote: post #165

Democracy only works with a well informed voting base, and while you may disagree with the current state of politics, it has always been my belief that people that do not know the candidates or issues should abstain from voting. I will often vote in some races but abstain from others, simply because I don't know the issue or candidate well enough. I wish more people would do that. Making voting easier for the highly…

The "highly ignorant" are showing up at the polls just as much as the highly informed. Making voting easier doesn't exacerbate that problem.

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

#250

Post by kiallmacinnes »

mr_tristan wrote: post #131
Shivetya wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you validate mail in ballots? I am more worried about votes where we have to verify an absent voter simply because the chance of fraud increases. Fraud not only in not knowing if it is the actual voter but also because we cannot insure their vote was not forced. my state had early voting for weeks so there really isn't a "voting day" issue here. (Georgia). Now I have not looked but how many other states offer…

Oregon's had voting by mail exclusively, and, it _automatically_ registers voters in a number of places, so unless you are fully off the grid, you're pretty much gonna get a ballot. Consequently, Oregon has had consistently higher turnouts in most elections. Each vote gets the signature reviewed by a person, one at a time. I actually had my ballot put on hold this year because the signature wasn't quite close enough…

No two signatures I've ever written actually look the same. I do wonder how this might affect people like me!
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