Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 197 posts

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#151

Post by Supermancho »

Biganon wrote: post #126
alistairSH wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm missing something... how does mailing your vote allow somebody to demand that vote be exposed? If my employer asks me how or if I voted in VA (in-person paper), I tell him to fuck off. If my employer asks me how or if I voted in WA (mail-in paper), I tell him to fuck off.

An abusive wife can force her husband to vote for X and mail the envelope in front of her. She couldn't do that if the husband was voting alone in a booth.

The problem of spouses beating spouses into voting differently (or parapalegics having their votes manipulated) is not on the same level of low voter turnout. Mailing in WA ensures much higher participation than the possible outlier manipulations that might happen (the number of calls about some ex-spouse having manipulated spousal votes is in the number of 0/yr for King County, WA). You get a tracking stub, by which you could contact the election board, if that was really an issue and...it's not.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#152

Post by dane-pgp »

cwkoss wrote: post #87

I hope someone hacks the vote to make Mickey Mouse or some other stupid name win. Phone voting is a cybersecurity nightmare.

Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 votes that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#153

Post by alasdair_ »

Beldin wrote: post #117
Ill_ban_myself wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope by the length of my next sentence I'll be worthy of some small part of the praise you're giving the Seattle Times here :-) It seems to me that the only difference between an exit poll and a voluntary disclosure checkbox which, if utilized by a statistically significant portion of the electorate, could be leveraged by official government commissions to audit election results where online voting is offered is th…

Voluntary disclosure sounds as if it undoes the secret ballot. Just a reminder: the secret ballot is secret to protect those, whose genuine vote would otherwise be manipulated (/forced/extorted/...) Not every individual voter might need that level of protection for themselves. But every individual voter requires this level of protection for the whole process. Phrased differently: for some, anonymity in voting is nice…

>Just a reminder: the secret ballot is secret to protect those, whose genuine vote would otherwise be manipulated (/forced/extorted/...)

For mail-in voting (which is how the majority of people in King County vote), what makes the ballot secret? Can someone be forced or extorted to fill in the ballot in front of their persecutor?

>For democracy to function, we need everyone's genuine vote.

I'd honestly like to see anonymous voting in the house and Senate. This would vastly reduce the influence of political parties. Yes, it means that it's harder for constituents to track what their representative actually does, but the way modern politics works, "what their representative actually does" is essentially vote the party line on almost every vote.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#154

Post by alasdair_ »

reaperducer wrote: post #137
Ill_ban_myself wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this assumes a slippery slope. Organ donors abound. Should we be allowed to redact it on our driver's licenses for fear that we might be judged by our bosses and neighbors or compelled to donate or that it reveals our religious beliefs? When someone says, "America isn't ready for online voting." I hear, "The interests who already buy and aggregate enough information to have the results ahead of time want to st…

No one is going to pay you to tick the organ donor box, or threaten you or your family if you don't. Both of those things have happened with voting in the past, which is why ballots are secret.

>No one is going to pay you to tick the organ donor box, or threaten you or your family if you don't. Both of those things have happened with voting in the past, which is why ballots are secret.

It's perfectly legal to take a selfie at the ballot box showing that you voted a particular way. It's feasible that some party could anonymously pay, say, $20 for every selfie they are sent with the way of voting that they ask for. Sure, it's illegal but so would be doing the same thing if the ballot wasn't secret.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#155

Post by alasdair_ »

bobthepanda wrote: post #131
jimmaswell wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In-person voter fraud isn't that difficult, and especially in Washington people get packets in the mail they can vote with by returning in the mail which would be pretty easy for someone to go swiping from mailboxes. Verifying identity online is not an impossible challenge and we can't just avoid improving anything forever.

It's a lot easier to hijack online voting infrastructure than it is to start digging through everyone's mailboxes at the correct time when they happen to actually be sending a ballot out. The voting period in Washington is 18 days. So someone would have to either be constantly looking through my mail for the better part of three weeks, or have the best luck when it comes to predicting when I would actually send it ou…

To corrupt the vote, just offer some money for every empty ballot that gets sent to you to fill in and mail. There are a lot of people who would trade their ballot for a $20 bill.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#157

Post by Gaelan »

alistairSH wrote: post #123
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's probably the best voting system, hands down. The disadvantage to this system is the erosion of the secret ballot. Someone ( e.g. an employer, spouse or friend) can now ask you for proof of your vote. (I think absentee ballots should be voidable in person.)

I'm missing something... how does mailing your vote allow somebody to demand that vote be exposed? If my employer asks me how or if I voted in VA (in-person paper), I tell him to fuck off. If my employer asks me how or if I voted in WA (mail-in paper), I tell him to fuck off.

In a state with in-person voting, if someone tells you they'll give you $50 to vote for their candidate, you can take the $50, go to the ballot box, and vote for the other person. They'll be none the wiser. In WA, on the other hand, they can watch you fill out your ballot and stick it in the mail before giving you the $50.

As a WA resident, our system is certainly nice. Is that risk worth it? Meh, it probably is.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#158

Post by dane-pgp »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #82

Vote is the new app that makes voting easy. No more paper booklets full of legal mumbo jumbo. Just press the Vote button and Vote does the rest, done and done. Vote automates your votes by choosing the best candidates for you using SocialAI technology.

I guess you're being satirical, and maybe not everyone appreciates that, but you raise an interesting idea. Could AI (or rather, some simplistic machine learning algorithms) help to inform voters about which candidates share the same values as them, or what position on a ballot proposition they should take to be consistent with other views they have expressed?

Of course, that might end up putting a lot of power into the hands of the people making the algorithms, but if the training data and source code were transparent, and the output of the algorithm included a human-readable explanation for its recommendation, then it might actually be a better system than people voting the way they are told to by the only newspaper or TV station that they read/watch. (People should still then go to a ballot box and cast their vote on paper, though).

Here is a TED talk which introduces this idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyGWML6cI_k

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#159

Post by Gaelan »

legitster wrote: post #33

I want to point out that voting in Washington state is incredibly easy. They mail you a ballot, and a packet with detailed information on every single candidate and issue, and then you can drop your ballot just about anywhere - supermarket, mailbox, probably the street (who knows). It's probably the best voting system, hands down. I don't buy that a smartphone magically hits some convenience threshold that turns out…

Huh, TIL the packet isn't normal. Growing up here, it seemed obvious.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#160

Post by joejerryronnie »

legitster wrote: post #52
Spivak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it would work for me. I typically vote by mail but if my phone popped a notification that was like "It's election day!" and let me vote it would be done less than 5m after the ping.

Voting without the information packet seems mind boggling to me. But then I realize that's how 99% of the world votes and I understand so much more now.

Just wait till they gamify electronic voting -

"Congratulations, you've just earned your Junior Progressive badge! Vote for two more progressive candidates to level up!"

Post reply on HN