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

Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

extremetech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 59 posts

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#31

Post by pingswept »

tomjen3 wrote: post #29
eli wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's MUCH more difficult than banking or taxes. Not only must your vote be secure and counted; it must be anonymous! Not even you should be able to prove to anyone else who you voted for and there must be no audit trail that could tie an individual vote to a person.

That's the ideal, but in reality even normal pencil voting can be hacked since it is pretty simple to take a picture of your ballot with a smartphone. Then you can prove whom you voted for.

How would a picture of a ballot prove that it was your ballot, that the picture hadn't been doctored, and that the ballot hadn't been doctored?

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#32

Post by andylei »

splat wrote: post #8

While internet voting could perhaps help, I think a much simpler and more powerful change would be to switch to a Condorcet method of voting. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_voting ) Nothing would do more damage to the two-party system than for the argument "if you vote for a third party, you throw your vote away" to be demolished.

> the argument "if you vote for a third party, you throw your vote away" to be demolished

i don't understand. your vote is basically thrown away regardless of who you vote for. the statistical likelihood that your vote has any impact except in the tightest of races is miniscule.

do people really believe that their vote is "not thrown away" only if they vote for the winning candidate?

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#33

Post by alttag »

Aloisius wrote: post #28
muuh-gnu wrote: post #20

Whether all people go voting or not is irrelevant as long as they only can vote for so called "representatives" who then make all the important decisions. It is more important to implement unfiltered direct democracy first. I want to vote on some stuff directly and let somebody else vote for me on stuff i dont care about. Thinking hard about changing _how_ to vote without changing _what_ you are allowed to vote on is…

Oh yes, because all the direct democracy systems that have been created have worked so well. You know what's worse than voting for representatives? Voting directly on dozens of bills that are so complicated that, unless you don't have a full time job, you have to rely on a bunch of summaries written by biased parties to interpret. My favorite trick which happened in my city is having two bills that look nearly identi…

Amen. As a former elected official, few things in government would scare me more than direct democracy subject to the whim of media campaigns and sound bytes. In my best Tommy Lee Jones voice: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." Or maybe the line attributed to Winston Churchill: "The best argument against democracy is a 10-minute conversation with the average voter."

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#34

Post by bradbeattie »

splat wrote: post #8

While internet voting could perhaps help, I think a much simpler and more powerful change would be to switch to a Condorcet method of voting. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_voting ) Nothing would do more damage to the two-party system than for the argument "if you vote for a third party, you throw your vote away" to be demolished.

The only problem with Condorcet methods is that people aren't used to them. Get people using them for book clubs, school boards, etc first. Only when they're comfortable with it and trust that it can provide fair results will they consider it.

To that end, I built https://modernballots.com. It's difficult to get mindshare when it comes to these kinds of things though. Electoral reform activists are fractured between their own preferred methods. Kinda keeps things from going anywhere.

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#35

Post by bradbeattie »

chimeracoder wrote: post #24
LeafStorm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instant-runoff voting would probably be more practical. It's already used in America in some jurisdictions, so promoting it to the more major offices like President isn't as big a leap as Condorcet (since Condorcet's not actually used by any US jurisdictions).

Also, instant-runoff is easier to explain, because it's literally the same as holding hypothetical runoff elections on election day. With Concordet voting, listing someone as your second choice can cause your first choice to lose, which would probably confuse a lot of people.

It would be misleading to gloss over IRV's significant failings if we're talking about criteria failure.

* 8 people vote: A, C, B * 5 people vote: B, C, A * 4 people vote: C, B, A

IRV eliminates C, despite the majority of voters preferring C over B (12 to 5). The order of elimination means that significant secondary preferences are often ignored.

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#36

Post by chipsy »

chimeracoder wrote: post #24
LeafStorm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instant-runoff voting would probably be more practical. It's already used in America in some jurisdictions, so promoting it to the more major offices like President isn't as big a leap as Condorcet (since Condorcet's not actually used by any US jurisdictions).

Also, instant-runoff is easier to explain, because it's literally the same as holding hypothetical runoff elections on election day. With Concordet voting, listing someone as your second choice can cause your first choice to lose, which would probably confuse a lot of people.

We had an IRV election(under the name "ranked choice voting") in SF. It had some problems:

1. Anecdotes of people thinking it was literally three votes, or people who only voted for the first round, still came up.

2. Voting was too tactical for most people's tastes; in the mayoral race a majority never appeared, thus there were ultimately 11 rounds of runoffs(with 12 candidates), yet you could only pick the top three; voting only for minority candidates left your vote out in the final rounds as they got eliminated.

3. The election still had historic-low turnout.

On the other hand, I still think the result showed a lot of promise.

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#37

Post by eli »

bradbeattie wrote: post #35
chimeracoder wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, instant-runoff is easier to explain, because it's literally the same as holding hypothetical runoff elections on election day. With Concordet voting, listing someone as your second choice can cause your first choice to lose, which would probably confuse a lot of people.

It would be misleading to gloss over IRV's significant failings if we're talking about criteria failure. * 8 people vote: A, C, B * 5 people vote: B, C, A * 4 people vote: C, B, A IRV eliminates C, despite the majority of voters preferring C over B (12 to 5). The order of elimination means that significant secondary preferences are often ignored.

Sure, but you really should not underestimate how important it is that everyone understand how their vote is counted.

I had a roommate who worked for a voting reform nonprofit and he said even gathering signatures for "simple" IRV is quite challenging. It's just too hard to explain quickly.

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#39

Post by chc »

pingswept wrote: post #31
tomjen3 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the ideal, but in reality even normal pencil voting can be hacked since it is pretty simple to take a picture of your ballot with a smartphone. Then you can prove whom you voted for.

How would a picture of a ballot prove that it was your ballot, that the picture hadn't been doctored, and that the ballot hadn't been doctored?

I don't think that's very salient. You could raise analogous objections for Internet-based voting weaknesses, or most information leaks in general.

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#40

Post by zokier »

Aloisius wrote: post #28
muuh-gnu wrote: post #20

Whether all people go voting or not is irrelevant as long as they only can vote for so called "representatives" who then make all the important decisions. It is more important to implement unfiltered direct democracy first. I want to vote on some stuff directly and let somebody else vote for me on stuff i dont care about. Thinking hard about changing _how_ to vote without changing _what_ you are allowed to vote on is…

Oh yes, because all the direct democracy systems that have been created have worked so well. You know what's worse than voting for representatives? Voting directly on dozens of bills that are so complicated that, unless you don't have a full time job, you have to rely on a bunch of summaries written by biased parties to interpret. My favorite trick which happened in my city is having two bills that look nearly identi…

"I want to vote on some stuff directly and let somebody else vote for me on stuff i dont care about." (emphasis mine)

The key for successful direct democracy is encouraging delegation of decision making.

Post reply on HN