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

US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

durbin.senate.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 311 posts

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#151

Post by 12xo »

kfrzcode wrote: post #145
lozaning wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some part of the way states that already do it are doing it that you take umbrage with?

Scenario: I'm living in a household with three roommates, unrelated to me. Maybe they're not granted the right to vote. The mail-in ballot arrives and is completed by one other than myself, without my knowledge. How do you prevent this? Signing the envelope that you return the ballot in would further de-anonymize the vote. I'm asking not out of snarkiness but because I don't know.

What? Signatures are and remain the best way to verify a ballot. It seems you are stuck in digital, the real world is analog, always will be.

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#152

Post by idontwantit »

Kalium wrote: post #125
calvinmorrison wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think with 10+ million undocumented immigrants - a not insignificant portion of the population, but not citizenry - that people should not be concerned about ensuring only valid citizens can vote?

You're absolutely right. There's a vast potential for very real problems. When those problems manifest, we should deal with them. To try to address problems that don't actually exist is absurd overregulation and government overreach. It certainly is wasteful to expend resources on solving problems that don't need solving because they don't exist, isn't it? Is there evidence of voter fraud by undocumented migrants tha…

> When those problems manifest, we should deal with them

I think this is one of the key problems with a hyper-conservative government.

If your default position is "don't change it" on every issue, then you have a very difficult time solving problems.

More liberal governments that frequently change the rules are like startups vs very large corporations. They are more agile and better able to quickly deal with problems as they arise. They are "responsive" in a way conservative government is not.

Look at recent statewide rent control measures in California. There was a lot of hand-wringing about what it could mean in this scenario or that scenario, but in the end the response is

> When those problems manifest, we should deal with them

Which I think is the sentiment of a people who really feel like they have a handle on their government and that it responds to their will.

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#153

Post by smeyer »

aerovistae wrote: post #143

@dang could we update this very misleading headline to "US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Senate Voting During Emergencies"?

Just one person, but I didn't find this "very misleading". On first read of the title I assumed it was allowing senators to vote on senate votes remotely. Neither the current title nor your proposed title is the original I currently see on the article and I could imagine the title being improved, but I think it's unfair to characterize it as "very misleading".

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#154

Post by aggie »

koheripbal wrote: post #135
ordinaryradical wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be wowed by this kind of hypocrisy, but lately I've concluded that these things are happening so frequently because the voters have proved to them sufficiently that they will take no heed provided it "hurts the other team." Everything on the news looks ironic now because the political class has realized there's almost no limit to what they can get away with.

Remote voting for senators and remote voting for the presidential election are very very different animals. Remote voting for senators is an easy fix, probably (hopefully) temporary with a very low risk of foreign interference. Remote voting for the general public is fraught with complexity due to voting being the jurisdiction of the states, as well as rife with opportunity for foreign governments to mess with the re…

What are you saying is the vulnerability introduced by mail-in voting, a method that has been working successfully in Oregon for years?

It may be relatively easy to commit a single act of mail voting fraud, but if it's not scalable, it doesn't really matter.

You mention election reporting servers being hacked, but that has nothing to do with mail-in vs. in-person voting.

Sounds like FUD to me.

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#155

Post by Frondo »

karatestomp wrote: post #120
calvinmorrison wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think with 10+ million undocumented immigrants - a not insignificant portion of the population, but not citizenry - that people should not be concerned about ensuring only valid citizens can vote?

Has it been an actual problem in states that allow mail-in voting without also having voter ID laws? If it's a real issue, it ought to already be causing problems.

It has not. Oregon has had vote by mail exclusively for over twenty years and, in the 2016, with over two million votes cast, 54 problematic votes (according to an audit done by the then-republican secretary of state.)

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#156

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

madhadron wrote: post #142
koheripbal wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote voting for senators and remote voting for the presidential election are very very different animals. Remote voting for senators is an easy fix, probably (hopefully) temporary with a very low risk of foreign interference. Remote voting for the general public is fraught with complexity due to voting being the jurisdiction of the states, as well as rife with opportunity for foreign governments to mess with the re…

Washington and Oregon only have remote voting. It works extremely well, is less open to voter suppression and tampering, and lets you sit down and research what you're voting for in comfort. A ballot is mailed to you, you fill it out, seal it up, and mail it back or put it in one of the many ballot drop boxes. Electronic voting? Absolutely not. But it's hard to have cyberwarfare campaigns against paper trails.

Paper by mail voting should be our standard in the US. There is absolutely no need for real-time efficiency when it comes to potentially changing political office seats. There usually is a month or two before the successor takes office so we don't need to know that night, it could be a week later.

Sometimes technology introduces more potential problems.

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#157

Post by kd5bjo »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #59
kd5bjo wrote: post #6

The Senate is a deliberative body, and its primary work requires debate . Already too much gets done behind closed doors and outside the public eye. Dispensing with even the pretense of open debate is somewhat concerning.

On the whole this resolution isn’t as radical as you might think. Let’s say DC got flooded and you can’t access any of the Congressional buildings. It’s to address scenarios like that.

Right; it’s a continuity of government measure, which is generally important. The concern is that it only enables voting in such a scenario, and ignores all the other essential parts of a functioning legislature. As such, it’s either half-baked or nefarious, and neither option sits well.

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#158

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR »

idontwantit wrote: post #140
eanzenberg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right supports mail-in ballots with voter-id, and voter-id in general. The left doesn't support that, why?

Voter ID laws are often used to disenfranchise poorer voters by creating bureaucracy mazes or DMV-like conditions to stop voters from acquiring the necessary credentials. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/chal... Anecdotally, as someone who was living in poverty before I got into this line of work, I did not have a state-issued ID and did not have time to waste or even the inclination to get one…

The whole world besides Anglo countries is using photo ID to vote. The article basically says people don't have a way to get it in 10 mile radius which is ridiculous. You really think you get ID in Germany everywhere in 10 mile radius? No, you take a bus to nearest city that offers these services.

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#159

Post by gruez »

munk-a wrote: post #128
J5892 wrote: post #64

I'm against this resolution, because it opens up the possibility of senate voter fraud. What's to stop dead senators from voting? Or senators from voting twice? This may even make it possible for former felons in the senate to vote!

I'm personally concerned that someone might vote in the US senate and then proceed to mosey on up to Canada and cast a vote in the House of Commons - how can we prevent politicians from voting multiple times in separate districts or governing bodies? (Edit, just for clarity, /s on the above statement)

both your comment and the parent comment needs a /s

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#160

Post by bcrosby95 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #43
karatestomp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but it could have been an amendment, or (more likely) some incentive-based "we're not making you, you'll just get less money if you don't" thing.

Plenty of precedent for that sort of thing, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law > States had to agree to the limit if they desired to receive federal funding for highway repair.

AFAIK Supreme Court has said that funding carrots have to be related to what you're trying to get them to do. Speed limits obviously translate to transit funding, I'm not sure you're going to find funding related to voting that is significant enough to convince states that don't have vote-by-mail.

Oh, and it can't be too significant, because the Supreme Court shut down the Medicaid expansion requirement (expand Medicaid or lose all related funding) in the ACA because the funding was too much of states' budgets.

It's a fine line to walk.

Post reply on HN