West Virginia To Introduce Mobile Phone Voting For Midterm Elections (cnn.com) 215
West Virginians serving overseas will be the first in the country to cast federal election ballots using a smartphone app, a move designed to make voting in November's election easier for troops living abroad. But election integrity and computer security experts expressed alarm at the prospect of voting by phone, and one went so far as to call it "a horrific idea." CNN: The state's decision to pioneer mobile voting comes even as the United States grapples with Russian interference in its elections. A recent federal indictment outlined Russia's attempts to hack US voting infrastructure during the 2016 presidential race, and US intelligence agencies have warned of Russian attempts to interfere with the upcoming midterm election. Still, West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner and Voatz, the Boston company that developed the app, insist it is secure. Anyone using it must first register by taking a photo of their government-issued identification and a selfie-style video of their face, then upload them via the app. Voatz says its facial recognition software will ensure the photo and video show the same person. Once approved, voters can cast their ballot using the Voatz app.
Hey, great idea (Score:5, Funny)
Now we don't even need to get influence from abroad, we can simply let them hack the devices and vote directly.
Cut out the middle man, it's the capitalist way!
and your boss can force you to vote there way in (Score:5, Interesting)
and your boss can force you to vote there way in the office or your fired.
Re:and your boss can force you to vote there way i (Score:4, Interesting)
Same with voting by mail here in Washington state. Twice my employer has asked for signed blank ballots.
Re:and your boss can force you to vote there way i (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously?
Have you reported them to the authorities? Pretty sure such electoral subversion is a felony.
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But is it illegal to let someone else tell you who to vote for?
We had a meeting yesterday where our CEO went over who to vote for. I think most people just did what they were told. Our ballots are due today. I think most people just did what they were told to since, for example, who is going to do the research to pick from 30 different senate primary candidates? Thirty!
Re:and your boss can force you to vote there way i (Score:5, Informative)
But is it illegal to let someone else tell you who to vote for?
No: what's illegal is coercion, or attempts to intimidate or threaten a voter to vote a particular way. https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... [cornell.edu]
We had a meeting yesterday where our CEO went over who to vote for. I think most people just did what they were told. Our ballots are due today. I think most people just did what they were told to
That might be a grey area; since the CEO presumably has hiring and firing authority over the workers, so you could see it as maybe edging toward coercion. I'd say that, given a secret ballot, it's not coercion, since they can't actually tell whether you vote as they suggest or not. But, of course, a non-secret ballot makes coercion a lot more practical.
since, for example, who is going to do the research to pick from 30 different senate primary candidates? Thirty!
Re:and your boss can force you to vote there way i (Score:5, Insightful)
Same with voting by mail here in Washington state. Twice my employer has asked for signed blank ballots.
Wow, that is seriously illegal.
Next time it happens, document it and put their ass in jail.
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An app could actually help you here. It could have a "duress mode" where it casts a fake ballot and records video with the camera, so when you boss is checking to make sure you voted the way they want it's also gathering evidence of their crime.
Of course the real app won't have that, but certainly will be riddled with security flaws. Place your bets now, I'll put five bucks on using HTTP to submit votes.
Absentee ballots are a flaw in the system (Score:3)
It's sad how many of my friends have said that happened to them. I had trouble believing that until my company asked us to bring our ballots to an all hands meeting. They put a filled out ballot up on the screen and suggested we copy what we saw on the screen. It was a really awkward meeting.
I'd be very interested in seeing somebody put this into print in a citeable source.
It's a good reason to restrict absentee ballots to only people who actually are absent, or physically can't vote in person.
Again: Absentee ballots are a flaw in the system (Score:2)
I'd be very interested in seeing somebody put this into print in a citeable source.
Just repeat after me: "there is no vote fraud, there is no vote fraud...". If you click your heels together while saying that, you'll awake to find yourself in bed and Auntie Em applying a cold compress to your forehead.
I'm not sure what you are responding to here. I would like to have a citable source.
Repeat after me: an anecdote posted anonymously on slashdot is not a citable source. An anecdote posted anonymously on slashdot is not a citable source.
It's a good reason to restrict absentee ballots to only people who actually are absent, or physically can't vote in person.
You missed the point, I think. In Oregon, and apparently in Washington, EVERY ballot is an absentee ballot. They mail the things out to every registered voter. And by registering everyone who gets a driver's license, they're mailing them to a lot of people who don't care enough to even register to vote. What happens to a ballot that you throw away? Does some nice person "recycle" it for you -- you know, "reuse"?
Then they're clearly not restricting absentee ballots to only people who actually are absent, or physically can't vote in person.
And our nice progressive Senator Wyden wants EVERY state to do it that way. Did I mention, he's a Democrat?
As I said: absentee ballots are a flaw in the system. They are a flaw in the system regardless of which parties the senators proposing them belong
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vote there way in the office or your fired.
their*, you're*
Horrible idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Politicians in West Virginia have never heard of hax0rz? Or are they deliberately trying to make elections hackable?
Everybody from West Virginia: write to WB Secretary of State Mac Warner, and tell him that this is stupid, stupid, stupid.
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There is an even bigger problem. Voting stops being an auditable affair. With pen and paper, anyone (eligible, ok, not just any bozo on the street) can demand a recount and it's actually possible to do one, and whoever should do it does not require any special knowledge or training. Ability to see where the X is and the ability to count is all that's required.
Any kind of machine dependent voting introduces an element that makes auditing the process harder, to the point where it may be completely impossible
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>and your boss can force you to vote there way in the office or your fired.
It also enables pay-for-votes (the de facto limiting factor has been the inability to confirm someone voted a certain way)
In big races, they already spend a few hundred dollars per voter in advertising. Direct payments would be a lot more effective.
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And also a lot more sensible. Let's be honest here, voting has been reduced to a dog-and-pony show anyway, if people at least got a few bucks out of it it would still serve a meaningful purpose.
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Since Obama knew about the "hacks" but did nothing, by your reasoning, Barack Obama colluded with the Russians to get Trump elected.
McConnell told Obama he'd deny the allegations if Obama went public, and given the pizzagate lunacy, the Republican base would have 100% believed him and Obama would look like he was manipulating the election himself. Other than dumping the data and thereby betraying god knows how many sources, how do you propose he should have bypassed McConnell and the party of puppets? It's the same logic that blames Obama for Gitmo when the Republicans actively passed measures to forbid him from spending a red cent to close the camp.
Re:No moron, Putin admitted he wanted Trump (Score:4, Informative)
The entire Russian operation, mostly after the election, was to sow discord and distrust
Judging by this conversation, I'd say they succeeded.
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Just because Putin had a preference it doesn't mean that the government of Russia caused Trump to win. Believing that is just stupid.
If you want to know why he preferred Trump, read this: http://time.com/4422723/putin-... [time.com].
And this: https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
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Fox News reports it differently. [foxnews.com]
The bottom line is that Russia meddled to help Trump beat Clinton. There is plenty of evidence that isn't even disputed by the conservative wing of the media, or the GOP for that matter.
Clearly, you are a troll that is either delusional or in it for lulz. Either way, generally a drag on intelligent conversation and debate.
here's the last comment riley made referring to Fox news, before this one:
Comment Fox News is a beacon of journalistic integrity?? (Score 4, Insightful) 104
by riley on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @12:30AM (#55982167) Attached to: Rupert Murdoch Pushes Facebook To Pay For News To Guarantee Quality
And we are supposed to believe that the owner of Fox News is the guardian of quality information presented in an unbiased format? Really?
I'm sorry, who's a delusional troll? My guess would be the one with inconsistent positions.
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Have to be a US citizen.
Have to have real photo ID and a real face to connect to that ID.
Address, age, birth date, place of birth, residence can then be discovered back into other state gov networks.
A "hacked" ID would not match a person. A random person would not match any of the data on the ID with a photo.
None of their other ID, face, tax, healthcare use, employment status, occupation, education, property tax, medical history, tax forms, an
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And, as a bonus, it would let you trace an individual face to a specific vote! Wow! What a great idea.
Oh, wait.
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It's easy to track that a person voted while not tracking who they voted for.
Proving that the person running the voting app is actually the american citizen they claim to be is more difficult. It's not that I don't think it can be done. I just don't trust that our political figures have enough technical knowledge to choose software that is secure.
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I don't trust our "political figures" to have enough technical knowledge about anything other than getting elected to do anything meaningful in office.
Which is why we have various departments, bureaus, and offices in government filled with technically knowledgeable individuals, each with his own field of expertise, to advise the politicians about technical matters of which they (the pols) know l
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It's a bad idea for other reasons, but in fairness ... they probably will store the proof-of-identity info, so it's auditable. Or at least more auditable than traditional paper voter rolls.
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It would remove many of the traditional voter fraud issues.
Indeed, it would remove some minor flaws and things that don't actually happen, and replace them with major flaws and the possible of wholesale election theft.
Have to be a US citizen.
You have to be a U.S. citizen to register in the first place.
Have to have real photo ID and a real face to connect to that ID.
The belief that people vote under fake names has never been shown to have any basis in actual facts.
Address, age, birth date, place of birth, residence can then be discovered back into other state gov networks.
This is more easily done in the voter registration process, not in real-time during the voting.
A "hacked" ID would not match a person. A random person would not match any of the data on the ID with a photo. None of their other ID, face, tax, healthcare use, employment status, occupation, education, property tax, medical history, tax forms, any criminal/court history would match for that given "hacked" ID in that state. A random face does not give an extra vote as they would have not history in that state. The same face cant vote many times under new fake names. Fake ID and shared ID, created ID for the election would be fictional/not fit with any other data sets in the state. That would have to fit with one real human face of the same age on the ID.
All of these are better done during the voting registration process, not during the actual votin
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>The belief that people vote under fake names has never been shown to have any basis in actual facts.
That's not really relevant to the issue at hand. The key is the appearance of impropriety, not whether or not it actually occurred.
Worry about what's real [Re:Hey, great idea] (Score:2)
In the case of elections, I'm worried about people actually hacking elections, not merely stuff people claim to be worried about which are problems that doesn't actually exist.
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I'm not. Faith in the integrity of the electoral process is important.
FWIW, this concern is also how we justify contribution limits to candidates, etc.
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All of these are better done during the voting registration process, not during the actual voting.
There are lots of validation steps that need to be done during the registration process, not during the actual voting. 1. Are you a citizen? 2. Do you live in this voting district? 3. Are you registered to vote in any other district? 4. Are you over the age of X? 5. Are you a felon who is prohibited from voting? All things that need to be done during registration -- but even then can be faked.
But then, none of that matters at all if you don't bother to tie the person trying to vote back to the specific reg
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But then, voting by phone, even with a face recognition app, does not securely solve that problem, and introduces many more problems, like the ability for the app to be subverted, the possibility of the server to be hacked, the lack of any paper trail to audit, etc.
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Here's an idea how ths can go wrong: the source of the app itself gets hacked, and the app replaced with a hacked version or a look-alike version, that changes your vote(s) to whatever the hackers want.
Who needs a hacked app . . . ?
Facebook's current app will do just fine.
See you in six years, President Zuckerberg . . .
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Really, smartphones are more and more a cancer every year, people would do well to dump them.
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Coupled with all of the illegal immigrant (plus corpse) votes for Dems, all legal US citizens can now just stay home. Super efficient.
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The system works!
And look at the bright side, at least you have voter participation that rivals that of communist Albania with its 105% voter turnout. Ain't that better than the palsy 50% that make it look like nobody gives a fuck about democracy anymore?
he who counts the votes (Score:3)
Photo of their government-issued identification (Score:3)
It allows any numbers and stats on the issued ID to get some deeper database work as the voters has given their data to the government.
The unique faces shows the US citizen exists and that their face is connected to presented photo ID.
This gets around the state trying to collected information about a voter. Trying to find out if they have voted many, many times in the same election.
The state ID proves citizenship.
That the ID has not been shared, is not fake.
That a real US citizen exists once as a voter with that issued ID.
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1) state ID is not required. A federal ID can be used and that does not prove citizenship.
2) It is a photo of the ID, pictures of actual id are available and a photo is easy to fake. Even the best of face recognition is bad, and my current federal ID don't look totally like me currently and they are only a few years old.
3) I guess but with the bad face recognition that cannot be done.
Luckly this was just more of that standard poor reporting we get from CNN. In reality the state is
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Banking, tax, work records, use of any US unemployment insurance programs in the past. Health care used for "free"?
Past expected state and federal privacy protections that allowed illegal migrants to keep their photo "ID" may not be as useful as once expected.
Once voting with an ID that does not link back to any US database using the data listed on the presented ID?
That fake ID is now linked to a new image of
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That would not have any state or federal backing.
Counterfeit IDs cant move too deep into state or federal databases or they get noticed. So they are as limited as legally possible.
Once any a real human has to show their face and link it with an ID that is pure database fiction?
What would an illegal migrant like to show? US citizenship?
That woul
They didn't state which countries troops. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hacking aside.
The biggest issue I see, is it takes the privacy out of voting.
We should be able to vote without our pastor looking over our solders judging us, or a Union Rep who may decide that your department may be OK for a layoff so they can bring in other workers. A Boss who may just fire you on the spot...
Voting our conscious without direct personal repercussion is one of our basic rights. And one of our few powers that we have to actually change those who lead us.
So the question will be on voting day, how many Church Congregations, Union Meetings, will there be to show people how to use the app.
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They are not allowed. However they happen to align all their positions on things to match a candidate.
There are plenty of reports where people were punished from the church for voting wrong. For most areas, this isn't a big deal. But some communities are centered around the religion and really put the pressure to vote for the guy without actually saying so.
(and some do, but the community is so tightly linked to the church they will not report it)
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some communities are centered around the religion and really put the pressure to vote for the guy without actually saying so.
Which is why we have a secret ballot. You still vote your conscience and tell your friends and family you voted for whoever meets with their approval.
I think a better question is how in the world can you expect to belong to faith group and NOT be pressured to vote a certain way. Lets face it while no candidate in any given election might happen to be a model member of your group; its pretty unusual that one party platform or the other won't substantively better align or that one candidate wont come down
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Entirely correct except for the fact that you got the tense wrong. We *had* a secret ballot. With phonemail voting, you can't prevent outside parties from insisting that they see how you voted (yes, this is also a problem with absentee ballots, which is why they used to be strictly controlled; a precaution which is now almost completely worn away).
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Where do you come up with this? A church isn't even allowed endorse a candidate...
Was that restriction lifted last year? I know the current administration stated that they were going to do so, but I don't remember offhand if it has been formally changed yet.
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Hacking aside.
The biggest issue I see, is it takes the privacy out of voting.
We should be able to vote without our pastor looking over our solders judging us, or a Union Rep who may decide that your department may be OK for a layoff so they can bring in other workers. A Boss who may just fire you on the spot...
Voting our conscious without direct personal repercussion is one of our basic rights. And one of our few powers that we have to actually change those who lead us.
So the question will be on voting day, how many Church Congregations, Union Meetings, will there be to show people how to use the app.
This.
Forget all the BS about voter impersonation, it's about as serious a problem as Big Foot.
The real voter fraud is from absentee voting, I don't think the examples you mention happen much in practise, but certainly there's a lot of spouses who "help" each other fill out their absentee ballot.
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Perhaps the situation could be improved by allowing people to invalidate their absentee ballot in some way. Fill out and mail the ballot your spouse forces you to, then show up on election day and ask that your previous vote be voided in favor of a new one. Since the absentee ballot is still in the envelope at that point it should be possible.
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Zero, because it says right in the summary this is for military troops living abroad only.
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In some way, however normally that paper form you get in the mail to your home is easier to do there then a mobile device where you can do anywhere.
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Traditionally, absentee ballots were limited to those unable to vote in person. Nowadays, it's kinda anything-goes. IMHO, this is a disaster waiting to happen.
Early voting (i.e., same standards, but different day) have fewer issues... though even there, we've already had issues with late-breaking candidate replacements / scandals / deaths.
Voatz (Score:2)
Silly (Score:3)
So now they should create an iOS, android, windows, blackberry, etc app so that you can vote? Or do they pick only the top 2 and screw everybody else?
If they want to move that way then just do it via web site. But you need to have the verification in place to prove that I cast my vote.
Does a drivers license even prove citizenship? My father in law has a drivers license but isn't a citizen.
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Depends on the US state and who they allow to request and then give such a "drivers license" to.
A 'lease agreement" with a landlord?
"utility bills"?
"photocopies"
"nonprofit entity" attesting the applicant resides in the state?
ie any random document for "residency" but not the ones that need US citizenship...
The easy way to work that out is to then pass all that information back into state and federal networks. See if the data exits on the informa
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In any case, though, the time to check citizenship is during voter registration, not at the polling place.
Take away voter surpression (Score:2)
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Medicare for all and ending the wars would both put huge industries and their lobbyists out of work, that's why they don't happen regardless of poll numbers. Truthfully it would cause a bit of economic chaos for a while if we stopped killing people / letting people die.
True but when you drill down to the nitty gritty (Score:2)
Unless of course... (Score:4, Insightful)
This won't end well. Based on the news stories of how well most facial recognition works on African Americans it will probably only allow one black person to vote and ID the rest as the same person.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0... [nytimes.com]
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For West Virginians, that's a feature, not a bug.
Absentee Ballots (Score:4, Interesting)
Heck, the only way to even remotely make this phone app accurate and secure is to _mail_ the service men and women a unique passkey to log their vote with. But even then, it's data in a database connected to the bloody internet, not to mention that they'd have only the word of the service provider that there votes were credited anonymously and not tied to their identity.
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Exactly wth is wrong with the current absentee ballot system?
It destroys the integrity of elections because it makes it super easy for people to fill out a ballot for you. Did granny fill out and mail that ballot or did her home health aide? How can we ever know?
It leaves the door open for vote swapping because although it generally illegal to photo or show your ballot to other etc - people can still do it which allows for swaps, sales, and trades.
I think absentee ballots are needed but we should do a few things - require it be post marked the DAY of the election!
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Require it be post marked from a location not less than 20 miles from your otherwise assigned polling place or accompanied by a written statement on pain of purgery that you were physically unable to travel to the polling place (hospitalized, deployed as a member of the armed forces etc).
Most absentee ballots are from people overseas on vacations, business, school, etc. Hardly anyone uses one within 20 miles from their polling place. FYI: Some states do require a written statement.
No paper trial at all.... (Score:2)
Who will do the voting? (Score:2, Insightful)
Stalin is reported to have said that "It doesn't matter who votes. What matters is who COUNTS the votes".
iPhones are in a walled garden run by Apple. Google controls Android phones. Will ballots cast for Conservatives be lost "by mistake" while traveling through their system?
Apple and Google are even now massively censoring and/or blocking any political content on their platforms except that posted by the Extreme Left. When called out on it, the excuse is always a "mistake" but such mistakes are mad
Voter intimidation (Score:2)
So what's stopping the Sergeant from watching his enlisted cast their vote for the "right people"? What stops someone selling their vote and allowing the person paying to watch them vote?
There are reasons we have voting booths.
I realize mail-in absentee ballots have the same issues, but this is a step towards allowing or requiring everyone to vote this way.
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I disagree with the harder to cheat part. My vote here in Washington has only counted once since we switched to voting by mail. It's a terrible system. On the other hand, it is nice to be able to track that.
Re:Verified voting, what could go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
Therein lies the rub, doesn't it?
On the one hand, anonymous voting protects the voter from retaliation, but puts the entire process at risk of compromise.
"Named voting," conversely, puts the voter at risk but does a lot to secure the process.
Seems like paper ballots + presenting gov't issued photo ID to receive said ballot is a much better process in both ways.
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"Named voting," conversely, puts the voter at risk but does a lot to secure the process.
Not really. A voter can always lie about the ballot not reflecting their vote. In theory, we all have random spot checks to show integrity because the 1% of folks who look will see the deviation; but can we believe them? What if only 1% of votes changed and swung the entire election?
Seems like paper ballots + presenting gov't issued photo ID to receive said ballot is a much better process in both ways.
All non-present voting has problems with integrity, as the public cannot observe the voting process. Paper mail-in ballots don't help this, and Internet voting can achieve greater security for complex reasons (it's not mu
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Polling centers approach voter identity by restricting a voter to a particular polling center near their neighborhood.
No, not anymore. It's discriminatory to force someone to go to a polling place near where they live. They may work miles away and can't get to their own polling place. The solution is a provisional ballot. The voter swears he is registered in location X, and the poll workers at location Y write that data down along with his ballot and it goes to the central election office to be verified.
When you show up, they call your name loudly;
That has never happened in any polling place where I've voted.
To put numbers to this: you have to be a registered voter before you can vote--we track your voter ID with votes, so we know who you are and for whom you voted
Of course election offices keep track of who voted. They do
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Yeah, but according to some, a simple common sense solution like this is apparently "racist" these days.......
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Yeah, but according to some, a simple common sense solution like this is apparently "racist" these days.......
Where "some" is a federal court. [npr.org]
Before enacting that law, the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans.
In response to claims that intentional racial discrimination animated its action, the State offered only meager justifications. Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist.
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Yeah, but according to some, a simple common sense solution like this is apparently "racist" these days.......
The irony being, of course, that claiming a certain race is incapable of getting a photo ID is, in itself, racist.
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Depends on whether things are set up to make it hard for certain segments of society to get ID. Though it usually targets neighbourhoods rather then race.
Just put all the ID producing offices in the rich neighbourhoods with no transit there and short hours, and bang, you've made it hard for certain people to get ID.
Of course you can also get creative, minor typos on the ID or voter list of undesirables so that ID isn't good enough to use for voting.
The racism comes in when the people designing the ID requir
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Well, for example, here in Canada, where we've had voter ID requirements for a long time had a Conservative government, who took advice from the Republicans. They claimed that the ID laws weren't strict enough and greatly reduced the types of ID that were valid. Then they did some other trickery.
My wife has always voted under her maiden name, and all her ID is in her maiden name, and she is also of the wrong race. Last election, she was still registered under her maiden name according to the official voters
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As long as the photo ID is free and easily obtainable even on election day. The problem is most states requiring this pick their parties favorite ID's (gun permit, military ID, etc) while not allowing the other sides ID (College ID, welfare ID[even state ones]) . The fact is photo id would not even be necessary if voter registration included a photo and thumbprint as part of the registration process.
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The elephant in the room is that politicians aren't representing the will of the electorate. It makes no difference how they are chosen.
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The elephant in the room is that politicians aren't representing the will of the electorate.
Understatement of the century, Bruh.
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I ran for Congress recently. I bought lists of voter names, addresses, the past ten elections in which they voted, and for whom they voted.
The State knows whose ballot is whose. The rest of us don't. I'm not currently engaged in a political campaign, so I don't either (although I can page through those lists when I'm canvassing for other candidates, since the law says I can only use them for campaign and election purposes).
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The party for which they voted. In the General election, that's a candidate; in the primary, well...in my district, that's 91% likely to be a particular candidate.
In one column, the voter is noted as registered Democrat/Republican/Independent. In another, the voter is noted for having voted a particular way. I have entries that say on a particular date in a primary or general election they were a registered Democrat and voted for a Republican (again: in the General, there is only one Republican).
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You'd be surprised at what's out there. Plenty of services will sell you voting history and voter research--some know everything you've purchased and considered purchasing, and will recommend things to say, issues to target, and what kind of money to ask for (politicians run on everyone else's money, and even a well-funded PAC can only donate $5,000) based on everything about your life.
The campaign services market is a very dark place. You can learn more about people than they know about themselves by
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The State knows whose ballot is whose. The rest of us don't.
I'm pretty sure that's not the case in my district here in Ohio. Every ballot has a tear-off serial number on the end. They track which voter was issued which ballot, but you tear off the number before submitting the ballot for electronic scanning. I couldn't swear to it, but I've never noticed a barcode or anything other traceable on what I turned in.
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The tear-off serial numbers are indeed for ballot tracking. They're used to count ballots to ensure the same number are cast as are given out.
I have a voter file from my State Board of Elections that tells me the date of an election, the Voter ID of the voter, their name, their registered voting address, their mailing address, their political party affiliation at the time of the election, and for what party they voted. In a Primary, those match; in a General, however, you can be a registered Democrat an
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In a Primary, those match; in a General, however, you can be a registered Democrat and vote for a Republican--who is exactly one specific candidate because there is only one candidate from each party.
Ah, in the primary! OK, that makes sense.
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One would assume the State collects record of your individual votes. They distribute information about the party for which you voted, which means they either store a reduced amount of information or they store detailed ballot information and provide political candidates with filtered information.
Amusingly, they know if you did not vote in a particular primary--that is: you got the Democratic ballot sheet because you are a registered Democrat, and you only voted in the Congressional and Delegate race bu
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If you look even further back, the republican and democratic party have switched positions several times. What we need is open primaries so we can vote for the candidate and NOT the party. Both Party machines have become a plague on America, money and influence peddlers of the worst kind.
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Come to California. We have non-party primaries with the general election being a runoff between the top two.
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While I used to like the Top-Two system, it isn't working as well as I would hope. It still has a preference for selecting "fringe" candidates-- you don't need to look any further than the next gubernatorial election to see that. I think instant-runoff is a more appropriate move for today, but it takes an informed electorate to work.
The ignorant can be educated, Stupid is forever... (Score:2)
Try a little history... Go back further than your pathetic little life span and open your eyes. Both parties have switched positions several times. Do you even know what the Know nothing party was ...
http://www.ushistory.org/gov/5... [ushistory.org] Political Parties
http://www.ushistory.org/gov/5... [ushistory.org] Campaign and Elections
Re:Damn right! (Score:5, Insightful)
The annual budget of the US government does not actually support that claim. Cheap, small government was abandoned to a small extent by Clinton, then ...
No. Reagan talked a great game about small government, but what he did was increase the size of government and greatly increase deficit spending.
Republicans only talk about how important it is to reduce government spending when they're not in power.
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Gotta admit, any time the president tries to speak, I miss veneer. Presidents should pretend and put on the appearance of being intelligent and honest. Is that so much to ask?
Remember this issue next time in the debates, everyone. "Mister candidate, suppose you needed to tell a big lie, but it conflicts with the previous week's lie and you don't understand the issue well enough to keep the facts straight anyway. How would you go about deciding what to say?"
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The same people who whine about "voting barriers" are now whining about the removal of a voting barrier?
I'm not whining about voting barriers.
I am whining about voting integrity.
http://votingintegrity.org/
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First, I want to improve our elections integrity. I'm trying to raise funds for that [gofundme.com]. Internet voting is a different concern and not a short-term target; I intend to design an Internet voting system for government elections specifically to market it to independent parliamentary groups, as I don't want to design a system without considering the needs of a sovereign electorate.
People are up in arms about the Electoral College and will eventually want to replace it with something. Could you imagine if th
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With their documents that are acceptable as proof of residency, US citizenship. The "categories of people" that cant vote are illegal migrants AC
Everyone else as a US citizen can find the help and support to vote in their state as they always have.