US Election Year, Still No Voting Reform 302
An anonymous reader writes "A year ago, we discussed this on Slashdot: E-Voting Reform In an Out Year?. The point was that due to the hoard of problems with electronic (and mechanical) voting, it is best to approach reform in an out year, when it is not on everyone's mind yet too late to do anything about it. Well, we failed, didn't we? Another election year is upon us, and our vote is less secure, less reliable, and less meaningful than ever. To reference the last article, we still have no open source voting, no end-to-end auditable voting systems and no open source governance. So don't complain if this election is stolen. You forgot to fix the system."
E-Voting Reform In an Out Year? (Score:4, Interesting)
E-voting cannot be transparent and therefor cannot be acceptable.
Sensationalist Post (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"no end-to-end auditable voting systems" (Score:2, Interesting)
He can't, because those "kiddies" are strawmen who exist solely in your imagination.
RTFA (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Rather than fussing over electronic voting... (Score:4, Interesting)
The United States is not the richest country on Earth by the most important measure [wikipedia.org]. It's #6.
I live in the USA and from where I'm standing, mine is not the most powerful nation on Earth either. The most powerful country is one that doesn't have to listen to what anyone else says. I give that honor to China, based on my observation that China is completely unaccountable for its misdeeds (annexation of Tibet and currency manipulation come readily to mind).
one vote per person is the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is the voting system only allows one vote per voter. You can prove, mathematically, that a "pluralistic" voting system winds up electing better candidates. It also makes it hard/impossible for a 2 party system to push out 3rd party candidates.
There's a number of ways to do it. One is to give every voter N-1 votes and let them assign their votes to amongst the N candidates. Another is to have them rank the candidates in order of preference. (I.E. Johnson > Obama > Paul > Romney might be one ranking.)
Re:Open source? (Score:4, Interesting)
> 2) is online
No, that is just stupid. And so is mail in btw. Anything other than voting in person with a photo ID on election day with a paper ballot where the count is validated right after the polls close while poll watchers from all interested parties are there to witness is asking for fraud.
No, don't jump in with a reply until you STOP and think for a minute. Then you will realize I'm right. The problems with voting boil down to these:
1. Ensure that registered voters have unrestricted access to their polling place.
2. That inelligible people do not vote.
3. Ensure people only vote in the races they are elligible to vote in.
4. Ensure that the vote is secret and immune to outside influence.
5. Ensure that every vote is counted and only counted once.
Violate my formula in any way and one of those rules is impossible to ensure and thus the election by definition is unfair to some extent. Allowing a small percentage of absentee voting, contested ballots, etc. are perhaps acceptable compromises but must be understood as a compromise to prevent certain parties from trying to extrapolate those exceptions into bad general rules like universal mail in ballots, online voting, etc.
Re:"We"? (Score:2, Interesting)
They keep finding more boxes of paper ballots until the selected candidate wins.
Also how do you know the box starts empty?
UN has this figured out. Clear boxes and finger dyes are required to prevent most of the blatant fraud. Of course one party will not allow this (hint: it's the same one that won't allow for ID checks).