Is New York City Ready For Digital Voting? 93
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."
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Re:No No No (Score:5, Insightful)
Electronic voting just makes it easier to rig elections.
I presumed that's what they meant by "modernize the electoral process"
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"The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away."
I always suspected Cheney was a Sith Lord...
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I always suspected Cheney was a Sith Lord...
Wrong group membership, chucklehead; Cheney isn't running NYC. The same machine that has largely controlled it for decades is far more enamored of the potential control (and monitoring) that e-voting would provide. Make sure the cit'zens vote the _right_ way, or else.
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"Cheney isn't running NYC."
Never underestimate the power of The Force.
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Electronic voting just makes it easier to rig elections.
I presumed that's what they meant by "modernize the electoral process"
I think you might have presumed wrong.
Going through TFA it seems they are concerned witb voter registration and information rather than actual voting on line.
That's article was so full of uninspired prose that I may have fallen asleep mid sentence and missed it but I recall no reference to proposals for electronic voting.
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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.
I live in Texas and I'm planning to vote in NYC... 500 times.
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If you're too lazy to vote - no I don't care... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're too lazy to vote - no, I don't care about your opinion.
(Can't make it to your polling place? I'll bet you can find some time in the months leading up to the election to vote absentee. Don't have transportation to go vote? There are a dozen different programs and thousands of volunteers who will help. GOML!)
Re:If you're too lazy to vote - no I don't care... (Score:5, Insightful)
..just move the voting to sundays, like every other sensible western nation does it.
digital remote voting, which enables vote selling and coercion? fuck that. it goes against every basic principle of being able to vote what you want no matter what your employer or even spouse tells you.
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..just move the voting to sundays, like every other sensible western nation does it.
Some sensible nations do it on Saturdays!
Anyway there is a movement to try and change this in the US: Why Tuesday? [whytuesday.org]
Also there are things like this: Bill would let Californians vote on Saturday [sacbee.com]
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..just move the voting to sundays, like every other sensible western nation does it.
Some sensible nations do it on Saturdays!
That would lower turnout not increase it. People can be convinced to leave their jobs to go stand in line for a few hours, but giving up their weekend time? Fuck that.
Re: If you're too lazy to vote - no I don't care.. (Score:2, Informative)
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I am voting electronically this year in the Norwegian election. If somebody is stupid enough to give me money for voting for a certain party, then let them. I can vote as many times as I want, and it is only the last vote that counts. If I want to be even more evil, I can vote by paper as well, and let the guy paying money to see me vote on the net be there until the end. The paper vote superseded the electronic one.
That implies you guys don't have a secret ballot. After all, how would they know which vote to cancel on the subsequent electronic votes? Or worse, they're even able to match up your paper ballot to your electronic vote to know to cancel your electronic vote. Which necessarily implies that if somebody is coercing you to vote a certain way, all they need to do is bribe someone in government that has access to that information, to verify that you actually voted the way you were supposed to.
Of course, that'
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The Norwegian you responded to makes a fair point regarding vote selling.
If you can lock in your vote, then change your mind right up to the time polls close, buying votes would be a fools errand, and would simply disappear.
The Washington way is more prone to vote buying, (bring in your ballet down at the union hall, vote the union ticket, sign, seal and drop in the union mailbox and collect 50 bucks). Although I'm not aware of this being done anywhere, Cy Sun managed to get elected somehow.
Vote by mail i
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What about people who are logical enough to see that their individual vote has no statistical significance and thus is a waste of their time?
"But it should be a privilege to vote! You're throwing away the rights given to you by democracy!"
I'm well aware of that, but I'm a realist, and am not going to do something that has no tangible personal benefit.
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Take for example the election (Non electronic) that be had her not long ago. Here are the options:
Corrupt bastards who will do roughly what they were already doing. lots of scandals. Economy here isn't terrible.
Incompetents who will form the opposition, and would be an unmitigated disast
Betteridge's law of headlines (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines [wikipedia.org]
"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
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CNN: Is Jodi Arias a sexual deviant?
Answer: Yes
But more importantly, QUIT TRYING TO MAKE ME LIKE HER, CNN!
No. (Score:1)
For digital "voting" to even be considered, the city needs to provide every person over 18 with a functional computer and dependable connection.
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Aren't they called smartphones these days?
This question is just silly (Score:3, Funny)
Most Americans are barely capable of making an informed vote, much less being "ready for digital voting".
That's why we're $17 trillion in debt and running a massive defecit.
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It was intended insightfully, but the fact that people think it's funny actually kind of helps make my point.
No (Score:4, Insightful)
But since digital voting is all about easy, traceless election-fraud, it will be used nonetheless.
Do not want (Score:2, Insightful)
Potential voters who can't be bothered to show up at the polling station on the correct day, and maybe stand in line for an unknown amount of time don't deserve to have a vote. It's just a commodity that is ripe for manipulation anyway ("we have a deal just for you").
And that's not even going into the well-known security problems of e-voting.
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Yes, this is exactly the right direction. Let people who know something about what's going on, and actually care, vote more often.
You don't need black box voting for that; it's not like election days and polling places are clandestine secrets, you know.
Spoken like a non-techie (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who thinks that new technology for voting will improve transparency, inclusion, and accountability has not been keeping up with the news. Or bothered to search the EFF web site.
Or is his platform, "Oh, never mind the past! We'll get it right *this* time!"
People are not ready for e-voting. (Score:4, Insightful)
Computers are not ready for e-voting. (Score:3)
And may never be. 'BBV' was a common tag on Slashdot for years, and with good reason: There will always be major obstacles to auditing the machines even after you open source the software. Mountains worth of logic still reside within the ICs and there is no way to just pop the hood and see what logic gates affect which bits of output.
IMO, the closest thing anyone has gotten to a properly verifiable computerized voting system is one where the ballots are printed out with the voters' choices in easily readabl
American voters sure are funny (Score:2, Funny)
I keep seeing many Americans complaining online how their government keeps ruining their country. I wonder if many of those complainers actually voted seeing that turnout percentage. Are the complainers just silent minority? Do majority of Americans actually love how things are or why don't they go to vote? And those who vote, why they always vote the same shit with a different arsehole?
forced voting (Score:2)
Although personally against the idea, I've often wondered how our elections would turn out if everybody was required by law to vote. Would the current patterns be re-enforced? Or would a radically different political landscape come about?
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Ask Australia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_electoral_system#Controversy_of_compulsory_voting [wikipedia.org]
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Though I also want better choices, anyone who thinks the choices we have are equivalent isn’t paying attention at all.
The current administration takes no prizes if compared to ‘idealistic, dream’ administrations, but if compared to the last actual administration there is a huge qualitative difference. Enumerating the difference is off topic, but it certainly does matter whom you vote for. Put differently, even if both options suck, one most likely sucks a lot worse.
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Undo Gerrymandering? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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To Congressdorks: Remember Arab Spring. It can happen here.
Really? The way Occupy Wall Street succeeded? One important characteristic of Arab spring is having a few leaders, self-appointed mostly, who are recognized by many followers. These leaders represent their followers by proxy and leaders accumulate followers. In OWS you had All-Chiefs-and-no-Indians problem. The congress critters know it. They are not scared. The NRA has stood by them election after election, turning out votes repeatedly. That is the kind of track record you have to rake up if you want to be
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If some very bright person could figure out how to under gerrymandering of precincts, I'd vote for them on that principle alone.
Gerrymandering is only a tool, not good or bad. It can be used to make sure that minorities are given a voice in proportion to their numbers, and it can be used to make sure that minorities are completely silenced. Let me guess. White middle class male. Am I right?
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My preferred method: Get rid of districts, and give the power to the voters. Set a window for 6-3 months before the election, and everybody registers their party preference. So, for a Federal election May to July, voters select the party they want to represent them. Maybe you end up with half Republicans and Democrats, and other parties finally get some real representation, collecting the other half. You use the registrations to determine which parties will get how many candidates. (Say 120 for Republicans
Yes this is what we need... (Score:2)
A union thug or employer looking over your shoulder to make sure you vote the right guys in. Or a husband that will force his wife to vote for his candidate under threat of violence.
Digital only? I don't think so (Score:3)
The only way to be as sure as possible that every cast was both cast and recorded correctly will be to have a verifiable paper trail.
Whether a piece of paper is spit out to the voter after voting and stored in a secured box or is actually used to cast the vote, without a verifiable paper trail the means to rig elections go up exponentially.
Human readable paper trail (Score:3)
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Is New York City Ready For Digital Voting? (Score:3)
Somehow the extra word 'Digital" was added to that question.
Gah, not again! (Score:2)
Electronic voting is not secure and can never be made secure.
I won't rehash all my arguments here; if you're interested read the "dskoll" comments on this LWN article [lwn.net].
Of course it is (Score:2)
Sensationalist headline (Score:2)
Aside from the headline, I don't see a single mention of electronic voting in the summary, the article, or the candidate's website. Somebody at Motherboard just thought "digital voting" sounded more exciting then "digital campaigning".
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:1)
Survellience/tracking + secret ballot = ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps people have noticed some recent news about surveillance and tracking, by government and business, of people's computer use.
That's how people want to submit their secret ballots?
Really bad idea (Score:1)
This is great! (Score:2)
Let's roll out the e-vote!
Sell it as multiculturalism (Score:2)
Pitch the idea as a cheaper way to use the 8 zilllion languages of NYC.
Rig an election? (Score:1)
Politicians would like nothing better than to rig elections in their favor. And the easiest way to do that is to have the elections conducted over the Internet.
We're already in the process of losing our democracy to socialists and communists in the federal government. We don't need to accelerate the process by going digital.
NYC already has it (Score:2)
Digital voting == voting with one's digits. Typically the center, longest one. Just ask any cab driver.