Is New York City Ready For Digital Voting?

Daniel_Stuckey writes "Turnout for local elections in New York City was 33.7 percent in 2010, according to Fair Vote. And while some apps and startups are looking to resurrect turnouts in future elections, most candidates still couldn't tell you how they work or why they might be necessary. Benjamin Kallos is a candidate for New York City Council's fifth district, which includes the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island, and has his sights on modernizing the electoral process. He's campaigning on a high-tech platform that he says aims to deepen technology's role in promoting transparency, inclusion, and accountability within pockets of New York City's voting pool that remain largely disengaged."

We're ready for real election progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of high-tech and failure-prone ways to count plurality votes, why not some actual progress in the form of a better voting system? Instant Runoff voting, approval voting, and Condorcet methods would all produce a much better government and reduce voter apathy. Of course only the third parties support such changes, since existing representatives know they can be re-elected under the status quo. So they'd rather we focus on high-tech ways to count obsolete votes.

The only way out of this mess is to suck it up and vote exclusively for candidates who support voting system reform. Personally I'm a libertarian, but I voted for Jill Stein instead of Gary Johnson because her platform included voting system reform. We should only have to fight for one more 3rd party victory, not repeat the process once the Libertarians become the new Republicans. Our problem isn't inherently evil people, it's a broken process which corrupts good people.

Undo Gerrymandering?

[NReitzel]

If some very bright person could figure out how to under gerrymandering of precincts, I'd vote for them on that principle alone.

Nobody likes that idea, though, because it threatens all the little fiefdoms established in congress and state legislatures, and might result in the end of millions of dollars of corporate bribes, er, contributions.

To Congressdorks: Remember Arab Spring. It can happen here.

Re:No No No

[Xicor]

it is already being rigged... theres no difference between now and a digital version, except that if we can all vote from our houses, the voter turnout would be much much higher.