211–220 of 292 posts
The technology forum that despises technology, what a world. We should be expanding voting access, not taking it back to the 19th century. Vote with whatever means you have: wanna show up physically and hand-write your ballot, great!, wanna mail it in, go for it!, wanna vote via website or app, have fun! Who gives a shit man, it's not going to be the end of the world or even substantially change things no matter what…
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> 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.
keypair != human
We'd still have an old fashioned government employed person validate you can vote and are human.
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And enforce national photo ID finally, like all other countries. I know this is a REP take, but they are absolutely correct in this particular issue.
Correct on the idea maybe, but their implementation schemes are designed to disenfranchise those less likely to vote for them.
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Yet there are many ways in which paper ballots can be taken advantage of. As an example do a search for Eastern European Carousel Voting[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carousel_voting
It is not the paper ballots that's taken advantage of. They have no general public participation and opposition. The public simply do not give a damn about polling stations in places where Carousel voting is possible. There is no opposition observers or they cannot be because the examples in the Wikipedia page are dictatorships, not democracies. You cannot turn a dictatorship into democracy by voting. Every single vo…
Yeah, do that by hand please, without relying on electronic means.
Paper ballots with "honour" based out of circumscription participation is not secure. My country also suffered from this issue and it's not an authoritarian regime. They fixed it by adding and checking IDs on a ballot participation list. Nobody explained how that works to the average voter.
What I was trying to underscore is that even for something that's presented as simple and fool proof as paper ballots one can find vulnerabilities, especially when you're dealing with nation level threats. So in my opinion we shouldn't ask electronic ballots to be more security than what is already in wide use.
And in fairness, electronic ballots don't need to be more (or as) secure as paper ballots, but 'mail in' ballots. If we can come up with a method that's as secure as mail ballots I'd call it a success, despite what Tom Scott says.
No. 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 agree that paper ballots are better, but also agree that electronic voting, when used, should be open source.
You didn't define how paper ballots are better. Given that many electronic systems print paper ballots, I'm not sure how they could be said to be universally better.
Electronic ballots can be much better than paper in two ways. Firstly, they are faster to count. I'm not sure why that matters, but it's true and seem people seem to think knowing the outcome quickly is important.
Far more importantly to me: they are easier to use. In Australia we have compulsory voting. A lot of attention is paid to how many votes are invalid. It currently runs at 5%, but ranges up to 10% in areas with lower education levels or non-English speaking. Voting machines can tell you verify if the vote is valid, help you if they aren't, provide information from the candidates if you want to know more.
One the downside, a poorly designed voting machine can be far less secure than out current paper system. Sadly, I don't think I've seen proprietary voting voting machine that didn't have significant design flaws. Making the situation worse is the voting machine companies like to keep their flaws well hidden (flaws aren't good for sales). In Australia, we've had examples of the Australian Electoral Commission perusing academic researchers in the courts for revealing flaws. [0] Mandating open source mandate is a solution to that.
https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2019/november/flaws...
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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…
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Each polling station should have representatives from multiple parties as well as independent observers. > how can a constituent know with absolute certainty that their vote was counted The representative of your party plus independent observer said all votes at your polling station were counted. You know both those community members and know them to be generally honorable. Ergo your vote was counted. > every voter i…
To rephrase: "You should trust political volunteers." Surely we could do better? Testimony doesn't assuage my concerns that the process may not be tamper proof.
You should trust political volunteers after you have seen their track record of being honest and truthful. (Though there is some default amount of trust the process gets because of the adversarial nature of volunteers with opposing biases checking the process).
This is along the same vein as
You should trust candidates for the seat after you have done your due diligence that they have honest and truthful, and will faithfully represent you in the legislature/administration.
as well as
You should trust civil servants to have done state activities justly and produced truthful records and reports of state activities after you have seen a record of them doing these things correctly over time.
Democracy with humans is built on a lot of trust in humans. We have to keep this in mind when arguing about these things.
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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 you want this, the next step would be to get involved at your county or state level (depending on how your state makes voting technology decisions).
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I've counted paper ballots for multiple presidential elections in my country. People who think it's not safe should really spend some time learning how it works. It's impossible to cheat at scale. Each ballot is verified to be correct my multiple eyes. A person is reading, one is writing down the name, one is verifying and some other things I don't remember. To cheat you need to have everyone in on it. A whole town i…
>> It's impossible to cheat at scale Elon did it, and they both bragged about it, publically.
Why do we believe the liar on this topic?
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It is not the paper ballots that's taken advantage of. They have no general public participation and opposition. The public simply do not give a damn about polling stations in places where Carousel voting is possible. There is no opposition observers or they cannot be because the examples in the Wikipedia page are dictatorships, not democracies. You cannot turn a dictatorship into democracy by voting. Every single vo…
> Every single vote must be checked against publicly available lists of voters Yeah, do that by hand please, without relying on electronic means. Paper ballots with "honour" based out of circumscription participation is not secure. My country also suffered from this issue and it's not an authoritarian regime. They fixed it by adding and checking IDs on a ballot participation list. Nobody explained how that works to t…
I really recommend people volunteer for it, if you're American and you're concerned. All you have to do is call your county elections office; they always want more people. You get paid near-minimum wage and it takes two days a year, but that's it.
What you will discover is that most of what people are asking for in this thread is stuff the states of the United States already do.
If a person is deeply concerned how the election is run? Go get involved. It's your country and your election system.