We need quadratic or ranked choice voting.
Public trust demands open-source voting systems
181–190 of 292 posts
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that paper ballots are better, but also agree that electronic voting, when used, should be open source.
Candidates drop out, die, or become ineligible in all kinds of ways. Paper is not strictly better and can create costs and complications on the day of the election itself. Electronic voting is fine. Why can't we just have a printer in the polling booth? I run my ballot, then hit print, then I can manually verify it, and then drop the printed ballot in a box. Literally the easiest thing to do.
This is not electronic voting imo. Just optimization for someone who finds taping faster than putting X with pen
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what democracy is though. If only the right people are allowed to vote then you have a problem because their definition can change on a dime.
I'm not advocating that people not be allowed to vote, I'm just pushing back on the dogma of more voter participation = better, IE. just because you can vote doesn't mean you should if you dont understand what you're voting for and don't really care enough to learn. Seeing the constant barrage of campaign ads every couple years made me think about it- Why does campaign financing matter, how do they turn money into vo…
Wouldn't banning political ads, and large sum political spending, and PACs and lobbying (I assume you're from the US based on the comments) be a better solution than whatever the f*ck "don't vote if you don't understand" is?
Democracy means that everyone gets a vote, uneducated, bigoted, communist, fascist, everyone. If you don't accept that, you don't accept democracy.
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Posting those links without any insight from your side is just quoting dogma and, to me, it shows that you haven't really spent any time to consider the arguments. In my opinion shows that you lack imagination. Every problem Tom mentions can be worked on and overcome. Maybe not today, maybe not by the next big election, but we should still start now, rather than later. We need to do everything possible to increase pa…
> Posting those links without any insight from your side is just quoting dogma It would certainly be exhausting to share an opinion on every single resource you want to share with someone.
Considering where we are and what we're doing now, are you trying to be funny?
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#185No. Public trust demands no software or programmable hardware in the election process. • Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI > • Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs >
I'm watching him talk about the two key ingredients of an election (anonymity and trust, for those not watching the video) and thinking "We don't have those in U.S. elections". I live in California, where the voting method is vote-by-mail and you sign your ballot . That breaks anonymity right there, plus there's a barcode that matches address and ballot for traceability, so in theory anyone involved in the election p…
> I live in California, where the voting method is vote-by-mail and you sign your ballot. That breaks anonymity right there, plus there's a barcode that matches address and ballot for traceability, so in theory anyone involved in the election process could look at my ballot, cross-reference against address, and figure out how I vote
They actually go through quite a bit of effort to prevent breaking anonymity.
The incoming ballots are scanned and sorted by machine to record that they arrived. Later, signatures on the envelope are checked. The signature verified sealed ballots are then moved and fed into a high speed extractor separating the ballot from the envelope so the envelope label isn't visible, breaking any linkage between the ballot and the voter's identity. Ballots are stacked with other ballots, still folded and moved elsewhere to be counted. The empty envelopes are kept and scanned again.
All of this happens with multiple people and on camera.
The ballot barcodes don't record any unique information that can identify voters - they're just things like precinct, ballot language and page number.
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that paper ballots are better, but also agree that electronic voting, when used, should be open source.
Candidates drop out, die, or become ineligible in all kinds of ways. Paper is not strictly better and can create costs and complications on the day of the election itself. Electronic voting is fine. Why can't we just have a printer in the polling booth? I run my ballot, then hit print, then I can manually verify it, and then drop the printed ballot in a box. Literally the easiest thing to do.
If there is a most HN comment award, this comment must get it. Congrats you invented the most expensive pen / stamp!
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm watching him talk about the two key ingredients of an election (anonymity and trust, for those not watching the video) and thinking "We don't have those in U.S. elections". I live in California, where the voting method is vote-by-mail and you sign your ballot . That breaks anonymity right there, plus there's a barcode that matches address and ballot for traceability, so in theory anyone involved in the election p…
Because of the extreme diversity in voting methods in the US (it varies not only by state, but by county within the state) it's impossible to accurately make any generalization about voting in the US. For example, in my parents' county in Wisconsin, you show up at the polling place, they check you off the list of registered voters, and they hand you a ballot with no individual markings at all. Once you finish filling…
Party registration isn't required (I'm unaffiliated, for example) but enough people do it that you can make a reasonable prediction of how a precinct is going to vote before they actually vote. This is the input data for gerrymandering: you don't need to know every single voter, as soon as you get a statistical sample you know how the area is likely to vote, and then you can construct districts out of precincts such that there's a safe margin of victory for each one.
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what democracy is though. If only the right people are allowed to vote then you have a problem because their definition can change on a dime.
I'm not advocating that people not be allowed to vote, I'm just pushing back on the dogma of more voter participation = better, IE. just because you can vote doesn't mean you should if you dont understand what you're voting for and don't really care enough to learn. Seeing the constant barrage of campaign ads every couple years made me think about it- Why does campaign financing matter, how do they turn money into vo…
> And the fact that elections can be meaningfully influenced by the amount of ads a campaign can run is a signal to me that the democratic process is broken in some fundamental way.
That's probably rational ignorance. It's hard to get people to investigate the details of policy and their consequences when theirs is just one vote out of millions. It's too much work. But that leaves the voters susceptible the kind of ads you mention.
Or stated more simply: getting informed doesn't scale, but mass advertising does.
Athenian-style democracy might handle this problem better. Randomly select, in some unbiased manner, a smaller number of people who then decide. But I suspect sortition is a little too unusual and feels a little too chancy for people to accept as a serious proposal.
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cryptocurrencies don't need to do things like make sure that no human gets more than one vote, only humans (no bots) from a specific part of the world get a vote, and keep votes secret. Blockchain is not the solution.
> Cryptocurrencies don't need to do things like make sure that no human gets more than one vote That's pretty much the problem they were designed to solve no? It's called the double spend problem, and it's crypto's big comp-sci innovation. The whole paper was about it.
Haven't crypto an opposite bias, with no guarantee that any given transaction's ledger will stay relevant ?
Dropping votes is as problematic as allowing too many.
In general, money transactions have failure modes that don't match what we want for other use cases. That's the same trap as using credit card payments for ID verification, it only works if you don't actually care about the ID.
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that paper ballots are better, but also agree that electronic voting, when used, should be open source.
Candidates drop out, die, or become ineligible in all kinds of ways. Paper is not strictly better and can create costs and complications on the day of the election itself. Electronic voting is fine. Why can't we just have a printer in the polling booth? I run my ballot, then hit print, then I can manually verify it, and then drop the printed ballot in a box. Literally the easiest thing to do.
IIRC, last presidential election that was what we did in our county, voted on a machine, got a prinout, verified it, stuck it in the scanner and was done. I think I'm remembering it right?