Anyone who tries to "modernize" or change something as simple and straightforward as "Take a ballot, tick your preferences, and place in the ballot box for counting" is up to no good.
Good is in the eye of the beholder. Be especially careful about what that eye is looking at -- or if they know you're watching, what they don't look at.
That's not how voting is done. Before you take a ballot there are some checks to get past first. Ie, make sure you name is on the list of registered voters for that polling location, then sign the register, in some places the signature may be checked but not always. If this stuff doesn't line up you can still get a provisional ballot for most states in the US, which is treated similarly to a mail-in ballot (signature is checked by hand and is cross checked to make sure the person with that name and addre
Voter registration is stupid and unnecessary. Signature checking is stupid and unnecessary. ID checking is stupid and unnecessary.
No they are not. They have an explicit purpose which is, or should be, very clear.
The DNC/GOP cannot maintain control if everybody is allowed to vote. As it is, they receive ~95% of the vote, and they want to make damn sure it stays that way.
That system is fine for a national election in a third world country, but for state and/or local elections, what is to stop someone from strategically voting in a different area from where they live?
Anyone who tries to "modernize" or change something as simple and straightforward as "Take a ballot, tick your preferences, and place in the ballot box for counting" is up to no good.
That's not how voting is done. Before you take a ballot there are some checks to get past first. Ie, make sure you name is on the list of registered voters for that polling location, then sign the register, in some places the signature may be checked but not always. If this stuff doesn't line up you can still get a provisional ballot for most states in the US, which is treated similarly to a mail-in ballot (signature is checked by hand and is cross checked to make sure the person with that name and address didn't actually vote in person elsewhere, etc). Some places may require something to verify your ID (official id in some places, but sometimes even a bill with your name and address is good enough in many places).
This checking is in essence already a part of the modernization from the early days of the country.
And it shouldn't be. Anyone who is here is affected by the outcome of an election.
Places like Iraq handle it by dunking your thumb in purple ink. If you're there and you haven't been inked yet, you get to vote.
Voter registration is stupid and unnecessary. Signature checking is stupid and unnecessary. ID checking is stupid and unnecessary. The only reason mailing it in is necessary at all this year is because there's a massive fucking pandemic.
Inking someone's thumb is certainly a good way to keep someone from voting more than once. But it does nothing to confirm that someone is entitled to vote in the first place.
Voter registration and signature/ID checking is still important, whether you vote in person or by mail. Voter fraud is extremely rare, because these checks exist. If they didn't, you would see much more fraud, not from lots of non-citizens, but by a small number of miscreants, foreign and domestic, who would exploit such weaknesses to i
Simplest thing to do is what we do here in Canada. To register for an election, all you have to do is tick the appropriate box on your tax return. Taxation authorities know if you're a citizen or not, and that box gives them permission to pass your personal information on to Election authorities. For those filing electronically (most people), the legislation states that the box must be checked by default.
The reason paper voting is safer is not that you can't defraud the system you can, easily, they are not handwriting experts checking your signature, or checking your id for fakes. It is good because no single person can perform a fraud that can have any significant effect on the election. I would need a mass conspiracy in order to carry out anything with any real impact.
That's why all these attempts at voting machines really annoy me. The only way of making elections easier for counting purposes is to centralise and consolidate the votes, which make it easier to attack.
The only system I can think of with allowing a simplified counting system, for immediate results, would be that the voting machine prints out your intended ballot which you still submit to a ballot box. The printer can keep a log to immediately release once voting has closed, but the paper ballots are what d
Actually in most cases provisional ballots are discarded without review. I encourage everyone to read Greg Palast's exposes on the utter catastrophe which is the US voting system today. While much attention is paid to almost non-existent voter fraud (most cases are people with green cards who think they can vote before becoming citizens), the press corpse carefully ignores the rampant voting fraud.
It's revealing that up to the 2000 election exit polls always matched the votes counted to within a point o
What are you a luddite? Riding a camel was considered safer than any other thing. Yet some jerk introduced automobiles, even though they were a lot inferior to camels.
We can modernize voting -- maybe using hashed receipts things -- better identity proofing, things like that. It may be that the current solutions are bad.. but who is to say better methods won't be thought of.. and let's not forget paper ballots are highly vulnerable to cheating as well. Why is it that people don't believe JFK won Illinois i
What are you a luddite? Riding a camel was considered safer than any other thing. Yet some jerk introduced automobiles, even though they were a lot inferior to camels.
On the other hand, my car almost never spits on or tries to bite me.
maybe using hashed receipts things -- better identity proofing, things like that
I don't think you fully understand the problem.
If you give people a receipt of some kind that can be used to check who they voted for, you've broken anonymity.
Another huge fundamental problem is that digital tallies cannot be directly observed. Physical ballot boxes can. The ability to directly observe the entire process is absolutely critical. As Germany's Federal Constitutional Court found, "the inability to have meaningful public scrutiny meant that electronic voting was unconstitutional".
These are unique problems that cannot be solved with things like "receipts" and "better identity proofing".
who is to say better methods won't be thought of
Me, and I just explained why. Also Germany, Canada, and many other countries. Also every cyber security expert on the planet, give or take.
paper ballots are highly vulnerable to cheating
False equivalence. Physical ballots are not as vulnerable to large scale tampering as flipping some numbers in a computer.
If you give people a receipt of some kind that can be used to check who they voted for, you've broken anonymity.
That's why the receipt shouldn't leave the voting area. You place a vote for Jack Johnson on an electronic voting machine. It spits out a receipt saying that you voted for Jack Johnson. If it got your vote right, you place it in a slot into a secure container. If it got your vote wrong, you click on the screen and tell the machine to try again until the receipt says "Jack Johnson."
What seems incredibly simple to an individual voter with a single ballot can be quite complex for those who must print, translate, distribute, gather, consolidate, and count tens of millions of pieces of paper many of which are marked incorrectly or illegibly under rigid time constraints using inexperienced temporary labor. Not to mention the requirements to not count ballots from ineligible voters or those who attempt to vote multiple times either inadvertently or purposely. This is a classic example of th
Anyone who tries to "modernize" or change something as simple and straightforward as "Take a ballot, tick your preferences, and place in the ballot box for counting" is up to no good.
I'd like to change the "tick your preferences" part and the "counting" part, and I think I'm up to a lot of good. Specifically, I'd like to switch from "plurality" or "first past the post" voting to something better. My preference is approval voting, for its simplicity, though I think STAR voting is probably the best from a technical perspective. Either would end the Duverger's law-enforced two-party system and enable more diverse opinions, which I think would help us recover a tradition of public debate. R
Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who tries to "modernize" or change something as simple and straightforward as "Take a ballot, tick your preferences, and place in the ballot box for counting" is up to no good.
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Anyone ... is up to no good.
Good is in the eye of the beholder. Be especially careful about what that eye is looking at -- or if they know you're watching, what they don't look at.
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That's not how voting is done. Before you take a ballot there are some checks to get past first. Ie, make sure you name is on the list of registered voters for that polling location, then sign the register, in some places the signature may be checked but not always. If this stuff doesn't line up you can still get a provisional ballot for most states in the US, which is treated similarly to a mail-in ballot (signature is checked by hand and is cross checked to make sure the person with that name and addre
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Voter registration is stupid and unnecessary. Signature checking is stupid and unnecessary. ID checking is stupid and unnecessary.
No they are not. They have an explicit purpose which is, or should be, very clear.
The DNC/GOP cannot maintain control if everybody is allowed to vote. As it is, they receive ~95% of the vote, and they want to make damn sure it stays that way.
What about local elections? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Anyone who tries to "modernize" or change something as simple and straightforward as "Take a ballot, tick your preferences, and place in the ballot box for counting" is up to no good.
That's not how voting is done. Before you take a ballot there are some checks to get past first. Ie, make sure you name is on the list of registered voters for that polling location, then sign the register, in some places the signature may be checked but not always. If this stuff doesn't line up you can still get a provisional ballot for most states in the US, which is treated similarly to a mail-in ballot (signature is checked by hand and is cross checked to make sure the person with that name and address didn't actually vote in person elsewhere, etc). Some places may require something to verify your ID (official id in some places, but sometimes even a bill with your name and address is good enough in many places).
This checking is in essence already a part of the modernization from the early days of the country.
And it shouldn't be. Anyone who is here is affected by the outcome of an election.
Places like Iraq handle it by dunking your thumb in purple ink. If you're there and you haven't been inked yet, you get to vote.
Voter registration is stupid and unnecessary. Signature checking is stupid and unnecessary. ID checking is stupid and unnecessary. The only reason mailing it in is necessary at all this year is because there's a massive fucking pandemic.
Inking someone's thumb is certainly a good way to keep someone from voting more than once. But it does nothing to confirm that someone is entitled to vote in the first place.
Voter registration and signature/ID checking is still important, whether you vote in person or by mail. Voter fraud is extremely rare, because these checks exist. If they didn't, you would see much more fraud, not from lots of non-citizens, but by a small number of miscreants, foreign and domestic, who would exploit such weaknesses to i
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Simplest thing to do is what we do here in Canada. To register for an election, all you have to do is tick the appropriate box on your tax return. Taxation authorities know if you're a citizen or not, and that box gives them permission to pass your personal information on to Election authorities. For those filing electronically (most people), the legislation states that the box must be checked by default.
Re:Duh. (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason paper voting is safer is not that you can't defraud the system you can, easily, they are not handwriting experts checking your signature, or checking your id for fakes. It is good because no single person can perform a fraud that can have any significant effect on the election. I would need a mass conspiracy in order to carry out anything with any real impact.
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Yup, you can fake a signature but you can't fake a signature en-masse. Or in other words, you can do a retail attack but not a wholesale attack.
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That's why all these attempts at voting machines really annoy me. The only way of making elections easier for counting purposes is to centralise and consolidate the votes, which make it easier to attack.
The only system I can think of with allowing a simplified counting system, for immediate results, would be that the voting machine prints out your intended ballot which you still submit to a ballot box. The printer can keep a log to immediately release once voting has closed, but the paper ballots are what d
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I would need a mass conspiracy in order to carry out anything with any real impact.
Like the way that, until recently in the South, votes from black people were just thrown away.
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Actually in most cases provisional ballots are discarded without review. I encourage everyone to read Greg Palast's exposes on the utter catastrophe which is the US voting system today. While much attention is paid to almost non-existent voter fraud (most cases are people with green cards who think they can vote before becoming citizens), the press corpse carefully ignores the rampant vot ing fraud.
It's revealing that up to the 2000 election exit polls always matched the votes counted to within a point o
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What are you a luddite? Riding a camel was considered safer than any other thing. Yet some jerk introduced automobiles, even though they were a lot inferior to camels.
We can modernize voting -- maybe using hashed receipts things -- better identity proofing, things like that. It may be that the current solutions are bad .. but who is to say better methods won't be thought of .. and let's not forget paper ballots are highly vulnerable to cheating as well. Why is it that people don't believe JFK won Illinois i
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What are you a luddite? Riding a camel was considered safer than any other thing. Yet some jerk introduced automobiles, even though they were a lot inferior to camels.
On the other hand, my car almost never spits on or tries to bite me.
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There are definitely cars out there, that if handled incorrectly, will try to kill you.
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my car almost never spits on or tries to bite me.
You apparently aren't the one performing the upkeep. Cars spit on me and pierce my flesh all the time.
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I drive a FIAT, you insensitive clod!
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Do you still use your hands (Score:2)
to scratch your ass? What are you a luddite? Can't you come up with something better?
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think you fully understand the problem.
If you give people a receipt of some kind that can be used to check who they voted for, you've broken anonymity.
Another huge fundamental problem is that digital tallies cannot be directly observed. Physical ballot boxes can. The ability to directly observe the entire process is absolutely critical. As Germany's Federal Constitutional Court found, "the inability to have meaningful public scrutiny meant that electronic voting was unconstitutional".
These are unique problems that cannot be solved with things like "receipts" and "better identity proofing".
Me, and I just explained why. Also Germany, Canada, and many other countries. Also every cyber security expert on the planet, give or take.
False equivalence. Physical ballots are not as vulnerable to large scale tampering as flipping some numbers in a computer.
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That's why the receipt shouldn't leave the voting area. You place a vote for Jack Johnson on an electronic voting machine. It spits out a receipt saying that you voted for Jack Johnson. If it got your vote right, you place it in a slot into a secure container. If it got your vote wrong, you click on the screen and tell the machine to try again until the receipt says "Jack Johnson."
Now, after the v
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Why use a machine at all, when pencil and paper works fine?
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If you give people a receipt of some kind that can be used to check who they voted for, you've broken anonymity.
Something that doesn't really exist with mail-in voting,
at least as far as the members of a household are concerned.
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Anyone who tries to "modernize" or change something as simple and straightforward as "Take a ballot, tick your preferences, and place in the ballot box for counting" is up to no good.
I'd like to change the "tick your preferences" part and the "counting" part, and I think I'm up to a lot of good. Specifically, I'd like to switch from "plurality" or "first past the post" voting to something better. My preference is approval voting, for its simplicity, though I think STAR voting is probably the best from a technical perspective. Either would end the Duverger's law-enforced two-party system and enable more diverse opinions, which I think would help us recover a tradition of public debate. R
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They can't enforce it except through illegal tactics that are already covered under laws against racketeering and extortion.