Voting Drops 83 Percent In All-Digital Election 156
For the first time ever, Oahu residents had to use their phones or computers to vote with some surprising results. 7,300 people voted this year, compared to 44,000 people the previous year, a drop of about 83 percent. "It is disappointing, compared to two years ago. This is the first time there is no paper ballot to speak of. So again, this is a huge change and I know that, and given the budget, this is a best that we could do," said Joan Manke of the city Neighborhood Commission. She added that voters obviously did not know about or did not embrace the changes.
No faith (Score:4, Interesting)
What were the reasons? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why bother when you know its hacked? (Score:3, Interesting)
> no clear way to capitalize on this without being traced.
You presume a level of diligence that does not exist. We can't even get botnets shut down in this country when we know exactly which computers have been compromised, let along be able to trace the problem to the source.
Not Necessarily Attributable to New System (Score:2, Interesting)
I recall reading an article in the local paper that voter turnout dropped hugely in the most recent California elections. I also recall reading a similar article the next day in the LA Times how voter turnout in LA County also dropped hugely. The whole voter turnout decreasing trend seems to be fairly common throughout the United States these days. Couple that with the ever-popular 'tea party protests' that we have recently seen in the country in which numerous voters are conglomerating and denouncing the government system as a whole and I think you could make a pretty strong case that the drop in the number of votes/voters is not attributable solely to the use of electronic voting instruments. I don't doubt it has had some, and likely even a significant, effect. But I think it would be worth noting that Americans in general seem to have gotten tired of voting. After all, why bother casting a vote when every single candidate elected seems to participate in a general, "who can suck the most" contest. I don't encourage apathy in the populace, but maybe we could try implementing some election system reforms like a, "Choose to withhold my vote from all available candidates" box on ballots. That way we could at least declaratively (yes, I think I made that word up) say that we don't like any of the choices, rather than just not voting and having 'experts' debate the causes of such apathy....
Re:No faith (Score:1, Interesting)
Get a room, you two!
Re:No faith (Score:1, Interesting)
Seems rather ironic when the parent was talking about voting accuracy.
the other 36700 did vote (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, what respectable electronic voting system for Oahu (population 900,000) would not register at least 1,200,000 votes ?
Re:Finally (Score:3, Interesting)
You might not get past the basics - but at least you learned the basics. The thing with 'the basics' is that anybody who is smart can learn 'the basics' in pretty much any field.
With IT though there is this weird thing where people seem to think it is perfectly OK to simply claim "I'm not very good with computers", and not even bother to try and get any further.
I don't think that's a blind spot. Nobody is asking them to write a perl regex to validate an email address.
I agree with you (and I actually think technically you agreed with the parent) *most* people do get the basics. I would seriously question the motives of those who *choose* not to get the basics.
Another Possibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Listening to the stories of Hawaii, It sounds like most of the local population is barely making a living.
Hawaii is an expensive place to live and computers haven't quite supplanted the Television. One could argue that TV still isn't ubiquitous in the US, however I would wager that there are far more households with televisions than there are with computers.
So another possible reason is that people may not have the means to vote electronically.
I am perfectly fine to pay for the gas and take the time to go vote.
If I have to goto an internet cafe and pay to do it once I get there, I might be less inclined.
Sure there is the library but I don't think that a couple of terminals at the public library are really going to pick up the slack.
Not saying this is why there were fewer votes, a simple look at the demographics of who voted would go quite far in helping to answer the question though.