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United States Politics

Did You Vote? Now Your Friends May Know (nytimes.com) 344

A look at VoteWithMe and OutVote, two new political apps that are trying to use peer pressure to get people to vote. From a story: The apps are to elections what Zillow is to real estate -- services that pull public information from government records, repackage it for consumer viewing and make it available at the touch of a smartphone button. But instead of giving you a peek at house prices, VoteWithMe and OutVote let you snoop on which of your friends voted in past elections and their party affiliations -- and then prod them to go to the polls by sending them scripted messages like "You gonna vote?" "I don't want this to come off like we're shaming our friends into voting," said Naseem Makiya, the chief executive of OutVote, a start-up in Boston. But, he said, "I think a lot of people might vote just because they're frankly worried that their friends will find out if they didn't."

Whom Americans vote for is private. But other information in their state voter files is public information; depending on the state, it can include details like their name, address, phone number and party affiliation and when they voted. The apps try to match the people in a smartphone's contacts to their voter files, then display some of those details. The data's increasing availability may surprise people receiving messages nudging them to vote -- or even trouble them, by exposing personal politics they might have preferred to keep to themselves. Political campaigns have for years purchased voter files from states or bought national voter databases from data brokers, but the information has otherwise had little public exposure outside of campaign use. Now any app user can easily harness such data to make inferences about, and try to influence, their contacts' voting behavior.

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Did You Vote? Now Your Friends May Know

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  • I voted (Score:4, Funny)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @12:33PM (#57600522)
    I'm in a state with vote by mail, so I did it weeks ago.

    Still can't get my friends to vote. They're convinced it gets you jury duty [lifehacker.com]
    • Re:I voted (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @12:47PM (#57600656)

      1) At least in my state, just the fact you have a drivers license means you can get jury duty

      2) Why are people so against jury duty? Yes, it's inconvenient but so what? We need more intelligent people willing to participate.

      • 2) - I've heard the pay is particularly poor?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The per diem is a joke, but the actual pay is knowing you have access to a jury of your peers should the need arise.

        • It pays about $30 / day where I live. But then my employer continues to pay my full time salary while I'm on Jury Duty, so it just means free lunch. So I'd take as much Jury Duty as I could get. Unfortunately I've been called a few times but dismissed during voir dire every time except once, when the defendant did not show up.
          • Unfortunately I've been called a few times but dismissed during voir dire every time except once, when the defendant did not show up.

            I got bumped during noir dire as well - prosecutor didn't like that I said I couldn't convict someone if I thought the particular law under which a person was charged was morally unjust (which was not applicable to the case we were on, and I went to lengths to make it clear that I wasn't referring to it).

            • by Binestar ( 28861 )
              Ahh, you've heard of Jury Nullification. That generally makes you unsuitable to serve on a Jury.
              • Not unsuitable. Just unlikely to be selected. This is the corollary to the executive branch's selective enforcement. It's an important part of the checks and balances.

                • by Binestar ( 28861 )
                  I missed a bit of my sarcasm tag there. The Lawyers rate you as unsuitable, not that you're actually unsuitable.
          • Unfortunately I've been called a few times but dismissed during voir dire every time except once

            That's the problem The justice system might need more intelligent people willing to participate but a lawyer defending a guilty defendant does not want them to participate.

          • It's good to have a job that continues to pay even if you're absent for jury duty, but I imagine for some people it can be a serious financial burden and that meager pay is not going to make up for it.

            I've been fortunate enough to get paid while I've gone downtown to fulfill my jury duty although the last time my boss was clearly not happy about it. (What he didn't know is I was already looking for a new job and even did a phone interview on the drive to the courthouse one day).

            The pay was meager enough t

      • Re:I voted (Score:5, Insightful)

        by thomn8r ( 635504 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @02:13PM (#57601440)
        We need more intelligent people willing to participate.

        Which is exactly what trial lawyers and DA's don't want.

        • We need more intelligent people willing to participate.

          Which is exactly what trial lawyers and DA's don't want.

          Uh, so a zero sum game? Rather, DAs want intelligent, consistent jurors so they can make informed decisions on what to prosecute and whether and how to prosecute. DAs really aren't served by a crapshoot like the defense is.

        • the one Jury I've served on a women said this:

          We cannot allow our feelings to sway us when making this decision and we need to get this guy off the streets

          Didn't even pause between those non-sequitur. Sure as hell didn't see the irony. Since then I've been opposed to Juries. The possibility of jury nullification saving me is dwarfed by the chances that somebody would send me up the river because they don't like the cut of my jib; especially since I'm a nerd.

      • by eth1 ( 94901 )

        2) Why are people so against jury duty? Yes, it's inconvenient but so what? We need more intelligent people willing to participate.

        You can't be fired for time off for jury duty, but you don't have to be paid, either. There are a ton of people where, if they got stuck on a jury for a week, would be in a world of hurt financially. Can't really blame them. I'm fortunate enough that I do still get salary, so, since I never actually get picked, it's basically a day off where I don't have to answer my cell phone.

  • by butchersong ( 1222796 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @12:35PM (#57600540)
    Drives like this always make me think something along the lines of "hey I know you're so disconnected and ill informed that you didn't know today was voting day so please go out and make an ill informed decision"... Still, maybe in aggregate it these things are for the best.
    • by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @12:55PM (#57600748) Journal

      They are not for the best. Basically these types of things just turn the electorate into a mob. We are not picking the next American idle here; this is serious. I think every citizen should be able to vote but those who don't want to take it seriously should do everyone a favor and butt out.

      Voting is a right; however if you choose to exercise it you have responsibility to take it seriously. Frankly if election day rolls around you still need to be told, that it is election day, where to vote, and what the names of the candidates are - you have not done so. You have no business going to polls at this point IMHO.

      • They are not for the best. Basically these types of things just turn the electorate into a mob. We are not picking the next American idle here; this is serious. I think every citizen should be able to vote but those who don't want to take it seriously should do everyone a favor and butt out.

        Voting is a right; however if you choose to exercise it you have responsibility to take it seriously. Frankly if election day rolls around you still need to be told, that it is election day, where to vote, and what the

      • What you say makes sense. However, there is another property of voting that has some effect: if you vote, you get some stake in the goverment.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The idea is to start building a habit, and applying pressure so that people feel they need to vote. Which results in them paying some attention to what they are voting on in subsequent elections.

      It's plausible, but obviously unproven at this point.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      There is a lot of effort to stop people voting, so encouraging them to overcome the barriers is a good thing.

      Even if they are less than ideally informed now, participating is a good step towards more engagement and learning.

      Recent elections and referendums have made people realize that their votes do count.

  • Wrong Reasons (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @12:41PM (#57600594)

    "I think a lot of people might vote just because they're frankly worried that their friends will find out if they didn't."

    If that's your only reason for voting, then you might as well just stay home. People voting on heuristics or based on what pop singer posted is what got this country into it's current mess. If you aren't willing to make the time and effort to research candidate positions (or even who the candidates are) then you are doing more harm to good when you vote. Democracy and effective government can only exist with an informed electorate. Put pressure on our politicians to campaign on actual, thought out policies and then hold them to those policies if they are elected. Do your research yourself, go to each campaign's website, watch debates and speeches, etc-don't just listen to talking heads or what your preferred candidate says about their opponent. Voting is a right just as owning a gun is a right. Uninformed voting is the electoral equivalent of waving a gun around in the air-when exercising a right, you have a duty to exercise that right responsibly.

    • The idea is a significant percentage of the people who start feeling like they have to vote due to peer pressure will find out about what they are voting on. Right now, paying no attention and not voting is socially acceptable. Make "not voting" no longer socially acceptable, and a good number of people will start paying enough attention to decide as well as any other average voter.

      It's unknown at this point if this works, statistically. Anecdotally, people report they have gotten people to pay more att

      • If voting could change the system, it would be illegal!'

        Anybody who votes is insufficiently cynical. Don't hire them.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I'm going to quote your signature to you:

      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil

      Last election it was Clinton or Trump. Doesn't matter how well you researched either candidate's position, because it boiled down to something other than policy for many people.

      Voting from an informed position only really helps if you have a range of candidates, all with a realistic chance of winning. What you actually get is a choice of two and a massive amount of disinformation.

      • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

        Last election it was Clinton or Trump. Doesn't matter how well you researched either candidate's position, because it boiled down to something other than policy for many people.

        Voting from an informed position only really helps if you have a range of candidates, all with a realistic chance of winning. What you actually get is a choice of two and a massive amount of disinformation.

        It was? Huh, I voted for Johnson. You see, that's part of the problem. The 2 party system is broken, everyone realizes it, yet everyone says why vote for them, only the Democrat or Republican can win. It's a cliche, but Rome wasn't built in a day. If the third party candidate is the one that has policies you support, vote for them. Enough people do that and third parties get enough votes to qualify for federal funds in the next election. As they get higher vote percentages, more people will realize t

        • Especially true in 'safe states'. Vote for someone for a change.

          Vermin Supreme was the best choice. As I'm in CA, my vote is wasted in any case.

    • No, the cause of our current political issues are largely tied to First-Past-the-Post voting and Gerrymandering. Switching to a Single Transferable Vote [youtube.com] would be a far more powerful force for good than any other single change we could do, because it would allow a voice in congress for alternative viewpoints and eliminate the evil that is Gerrymandering.

      And it's this echo-chamber of two parties (FPtP) that stay in office forever (Gerrymandering) that's strangling our democracy.

  • by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @12:42PM (#57600606)
    . . . they're probably not the kind of person that should be voting anyway.
    • . . . they're probably not the kind of person that should be voting anyway.

      I would rather be governed [quoteinvestigator.com] by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory,” he said, “than by the Harvard University faculty.”

      -William F. Buckley

    • by mark-t ( 151149 )
      Why? Serious question... why should a vote from a person who needed some convincing to go out and vote count for less than a vote of a person who enthusiastically does so? Or perhaps putting the shoe on the other foot, why should only the people who think that they know better how important it is to vote have any more say in a democratic society than those who might not think they have any real power to make a difference? Doesn't that sort of defeat the point of democracy?
  • I've been deluged... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by afgun ( 634001 )
    My wife registered as preferring one of the parties here in our state. And she has gotten over 100 pieces of mail from that party urging her to vote for their candidates. I did not register a party preference, and have only gotten a couple of pieces of mail urging me to vote. Her voting history has been blazoned across multiple cards in the mail in blatant attempts to shame her into voting. Mine was on one of the pieces of mail that I got. It seems like pretty soon we'll be getting mail telling us that
    • by magarity ( 164372 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @01:15PM (#57600948)

      My wife registered as preferring one of the parties here in our state. And she has gotten over 100 pieces of mail from that party

      I registered as unaffiliated so as not to be a pawn in the gerrymandering wars but that didn't stop me from getting 5 text messages to my cell from the Democrats urging me to vote for their candidates.

      • by habig ( 12787 )

        My wife registered as preferring one of the parties here in our state. And she has gotten over 100 pieces of mail from that party

        I registered as unaffiliated so as not to be a pawn in the gerrymandering wars but that didn't stop me from getting 5 text messages to my cell from the Democrats urging me to vote for their candidates.

        A related example of how the public information leaked by the voting rolls in TFA can be used for the power of spam^h^h^h^h^hevil: my wife voted in a primary. Although our state has open primaries and we are both officially un-affliated, one party's heuristics have decided that we're now obviously part of their party's political base. So, we been inundated with junk mail and spam calls made with that assumption, on top of the regular blast of robocalls generated by all sides since we live in "a competitiv

      • Same here . . . my wife and I are both registered unaffiliated voters but our phones got lit up by Democrat groups urging us to attend rallies and go vote, especially MoveOn -- even after we told them to remove us from their lists. Unwanted spamming is definitely is not a good way to sway people to your cause.
  • > "I don't want this to come off like we're shaming our friends into voting," said Naseem Makiya, the chief executive of OutVote, a start-up in Boston.

    It doesn't "come off" like that at all. It comes across like you're a start-up with a useless, non-monetizable product and you're willing to attach yourself to nearly anything in order to gain your desired career trajectory.

  • My roommate is delivering our ballots to the polling station since he drives that way to work.
  • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @12:50PM (#57600690)

    The apps try to match the people in a smartphone's contacts

    All I have is a dumb flip phone. Aww, too bad you don't get to harvest my information for your use.

  • Just saying. These guys must have a business plan behind their app and my guess it is to sell data to marketing companies. "The apps try to match the people in a smartphone's contacts to their voter files, then display some of those details." and no doubt phone the correlated data home to the mothership. One more in the category of creepy social apps to stay away from.
  • Whom Americans vote for is private for now.

    FTFY

  • With all the voter suppression happening and voting machines flipping votes, you will not have to worry about it any more. Next election, You might not be given the option.

    • With all the voter suppression happening and voting machines flipping votes, you will not have to worry about it any more.

      Showing you're on the left. If you were on the right you'd have said:

      With all the illegal immigration happening and the fake voters created by the combination of unexamined mail-in registration and no-appearance-no-hardship absentee (mail in) ballots, you will not have to worry about it any more.

      Both ideas are a hazard, whether or not they're true. The purpose of an election is to conv

    • With all the voter suppression happening and voting machines flipping votes, you will not have to worry about it any more. Next election, You might not be given the option.

      None of this happens with enough frequency to change any election result.... But hey, there's no way your vote counts if you don't cast it.

  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @12:58PM (#57600786) Journal
    With friends like that, who need enemies?
  • Who voted probably needs to be public information, with all the finger pointing and insinuations out there about fraud. This can be abused by people with deep pockets and agenda, but it is probably not a huge problem right now.

    Shaming your friends into voting can only backfire.

  • by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @01:16PM (#57600958)
    I actually feel a little better that this kind of public information is out in the open rather than being purchased only by the parties. Maybe it will drive greater participation in democracy and may expose shenanigans where perhaps publication is selectively withheld or delayed by whoever is in control of the elections or even help identify voting irregularities.
  • by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @01:25PM (#57601020) Journal
    Shouldn't we first find out if people have an informed view of the issues on the ballot before we encourage them to go out?
    • Shouldn't we first find out if people have an informed view of the issues on the ballot before we encourage them to go out?

      Too many people think "informed view" means "believes the same thing I do".

      I want people to vote even if they disagree with me on every issue - but that's just me.

  • by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @01:40PM (#57601152)
    The sent me a card telling whether or not I voted for the past years, along with the voting record of other people on my street with their names and addresses redacted for privacy. There are only TWO houses on my street!
  • "I don't want this to come off like we're shaming our friends into voting," said Naseem Makiya...

    Proceeds to create app that shames friends into voting.

  • Look at how well THAT has turned out.

  • by myid ( 3783581 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @02:23PM (#57601536)

    I've been a poll worker three times in California. We had several printouts of the names and addresses of registered voters in our precinct. We had to put one of those printouts outside the polling place. Once an hour until 5 pm, on that public printout, we had to cross off the names of the people who had voted.

    I asked someone why the list of voter names and addresses, and whether they'd voted, should be made public like that. She replied that it was to help political party workers get out the vote.

    For me, that's not a good enough reason. My name and address, and whether I've voted, should be kept private.

    Apps like these, and public voter printouts, hurt people's privacy.

  • by Scutter ( 18425 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @02:25PM (#57601560) Journal

    I received a form letter showing me the voting status of everyone on my street (names redacted, addresses intact, but since I know my neighbors and where they live, it's hardly good enough to redact the names) and a warning that if I didn't vote today they would start calling me on the phone to explain myself. They didn't put it like that, of course, because that borders on harassment, but that's exactly what the entire letter implied. "If you choose not to vote, we'll be calling you in the next few days to discuss your choice." Yeah, I don't think so. The only response you're going to get from me is a big "Eff You".

    It suggested that I may want to "talk to [my] non-voting neighbors to help them understand why voting is important]." and that they would be doing the same by calling them after election day (if they didn't vote), too.

    Yes, you should vote. But whether you vote or not is still a choice and no one has the right to harass you for it.

  • I'm sure Democrats will totally reach out to registered republicans in their networks and urge them to vote...likewise the other way around.

  • In the last 3 months I have seen this exact technique described and reported in 6 different books on Psychology and persuasion.

    The technique, sometimes called "voting report card" depends on the assumption that people can be "nudged" into "responsible" behavior by adjusting the ways in which they are given choices, either through policy or environment. Although the book, "Nudge" by Richard Thaler https://www.amazon.com/Nudge-I... [amazon.com] advocates a more free choice approach to shaping peoples' behavior, it can eas

  • it can include details like their name, address, phone number and party affiliation

    What the flying fuck business does the state have in knowing which one of the 8 significant political parties you're affiliated to? If any. Or several. I mean, it's perfectly possible for you to have valid grounds for affiliation to 4 political parties here, without one word of hypocrisy and only considering where you grew up and where you live now. If you've had a more mobile history, it could be 5, easily.

    But hey, America'

  • Over 18, must be on the roll. Must vote.

    Means lots of poling places everywhere, no queues, the electoral commission comes to your house if you have a reason you cant travel there.

    Also set an independent body to set electoral boundaries so gerrymandering is a thing of the past.

    Don't want to vote for anyone? Draw a giant cock on the ballot sheet.

    Seems to work extremely well in Australia. Sure we have our political problems, but when everyone has to vote it naturally pulls the political representation towar

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