Online voting is much more difficult to do securely, and a fundamental problem with the concept is that most voters won't be able to understand whether it's secure or not
This doesn’t directly address anything in the article, but voting just seems to me to be something that does not need to be online. I understand of course the drive to make voting appropriately...
This doesn’t directly address anything in the article, but voting just seems to me to be something that does not need to be online. I understand of course the drive to make voting appropriately easy, but I just don’t think the myriad security issues that arise with online voting justify the moderate increase in ease. A part of me appreciates the commoning aspect of going to the polls as well.
Keep in mind people who aren't able to go to the polls normally. The reality is that there are a large number of people who are sick, elderly, don't have transportation, have to take care of the...
Keep in mind people who aren't able to go to the polls normally. The reality is that there are a large number of people who are sick, elderly, don't have transportation, have to take care of the kids, can't take time off work, etc. So there absolutely needs to be a way to vote that doesn't involve going to the physical polling place. Luckily, we have that — mail in voting. (Of course with the President trying to shut down the postal system, people are rightfully concerned about that, as well.) But I agree that it absolutely doesn't need to be (and probably shouldn't be) online.
Agreed. I think the article makes this point very well: This is the key point, and by the nature of online voting it cannot be changed, and so that risk cannot be removed, only mitigated to...
I just don’t think the myriad security issues that arise with online voting justify the moderate increase in ease.
Agreed. I think the article makes this point very well:
Online election hacking also scales in a way that tampering with an offline election doesn't. Someone can hack an online election from anywhere in the world. A hacker who finds a vulnerability in a voting software package can exploit that same weakness in every jurisdiction that uses the software.
This is the key point, and by the nature of online voting it cannot be changed, and so that risk cannot be removed, only mitigated to various degrees. Compounding this is the complexity of an online system vs paper ballots. Nation wide paper balloting is already a pretty impressive feat of logistics, with potential failure points. An online system is less logistically complicated, but far more complex logically and security wise. There are far more vulnerability points, any one if which can potentially compromise the entire system. If one corrupt official in Florida stuffs some ballots, their impact is limited by physicality. One corrupt employee of a voting software company, and you potentially alter the course of a country.
Keep in mind that a few very neat things could be done by having online voting. You could decrease terms significantly, which ideally would make a lot of bullshit go away. Representatives would...
Keep in mind that a few very neat things could be done by having online voting. You could decrease terms significantly, which ideally would make a lot of bullshit go away. Representatives would represent more because otherwise they're out. Over here we have the joke: The SocDem party is doing SocDem things. Must be an election year.
That would be every year. Imagine the possibilities.
Short term limits are not necessarily a good thing. They cause reactionary politics, which can be harmful in that it's very difficult to do long-term growth or other public policy plans with such...
Short term limits are not necessarily a good thing. They cause reactionary politics, which can be harmful in that it's very difficult to do long-term growth or other public policy plans with such short term limits. You'll have a revolving door of short-term optimal but long-term poor policies.
That's why it's very important the Fed chairs have long terms and are not publicly elected, because otherwise you'd have essentially the worst possible monetary policy by reacting too quickly.
You'd have to weigh those pros and cons. It's certainly hard to tell how bad the reactionary politics would be if it were the case. Right now I can tell you that a certain demographic here will...
You'd have to weigh those pros and cons. It's certainly hard to tell how bad the reactionary politics would be if it were the case. Right now I can tell you that a certain demographic here will vote in a reactionary party no matter what happened immediately preceding the election. And I can however see a large problem with parties not doing much representing. Whether my proposed system improves upon the status quo is anyone's guess.
Additionally, you could maybe also do a more modular voting system, where people can vote for a certain party in individual departments, and also recuse themselves from voting in a department they have no stake in.
I mean, this is just me pipe dreaming, this isn't going to happen and people will ruin it if it will anyway. But it's nice to believe in a functional democracy every now and then. /s
Online voting -> cheaper elections and more convenient voting -> potentially more frequent elections. They don't follow necessarily. They are something that "could be done" once we have online...
Online voting -> cheaper elections and more convenient voting -> potentially more frequent elections.
They don't follow necessarily. They are something that "could be done" once we have online elections.
I'm not one to immediately turn to YouTube for resources as important as those on the fundamentals of democracy, however one of the best resources I've ever found of the subject is the video by...
I'm not one to immediately turn to YouTube for resources as important as those on the fundamentals of democracy, however one of the best resources I've ever found of the subject is the video by Tom Scott on the subject [1]. If you've never seen his videos, you are missing out.
One concern that should be weighed is the importance of improving accessibility to those who might not vote otherwise, and how this issue is propagated as these voters continuously lack a voice in the matter, but I don't really know where to begin on that problem.
Additionally, Scott's video not only makes a case against online voting, but against any form of electronic voting (and maybe even a case against mail-in voting) which are sort of outside the scope of this discussion, and points I don't know I'd feel comfortable being committed to. Either way, his concerns are well put and worth hearing regardless of one's convictions on the subject.
If you could implement electronic voting and did it in a way that is safe, secure, and easy to use, I think it would be a very good thing. What I think is quite strange though is everyone is...
If you could implement electronic voting and did it in a way that is safe, secure, and easy to use, I think it would be a very good thing. What I think is quite strange though is everyone is literally afraid of it or just has already written off the idea as preposterous without even at least trying to carefully think about some of the problems we can identify and earnestly trying to come up with a solution. Like how can you be optimistic about future technologies but think we are fundamentally incapable of implementing a voting system electronically in a way that is clearly better than using paper ballots?
The semi-recent thread on the USPS's patent for a blockchain-based voting system had a lot of interesting discussion about how to safely and securely anonymize voting, much of which was centered...
The semi-recent thread on the USPS's patent for a blockchain-based voting system had a lot of interesting discussion about how to safely and securely anonymize voting, much of which was centered around possible systems for voting online, so I'll just link it here.
This doesn’t directly address anything in the article, but voting just seems to me to be something that does not need to be online. I understand of course the drive to make voting appropriately easy, but I just don’t think the myriad security issues that arise with online voting justify the moderate increase in ease. A part of me appreciates the commoning aspect of going to the polls as well.
Keep in mind people who aren't able to go to the polls normally. The reality is that there are a large number of people who are sick, elderly, don't have transportation, have to take care of the kids, can't take time off work, etc. So there absolutely needs to be a way to vote that doesn't involve going to the physical polling place. Luckily, we have that — mail in voting. (Of course with the President trying to shut down the postal system, people are rightfully concerned about that, as well.) But I agree that it absolutely doesn't need to be (and probably shouldn't be) online.
Agreed. I think the article makes this point very well:
This is the key point, and by the nature of online voting it cannot be changed, and so that risk cannot be removed, only mitigated to various degrees. Compounding this is the complexity of an online system vs paper ballots. Nation wide paper balloting is already a pretty impressive feat of logistics, with potential failure points. An online system is less logistically complicated, but far more complex logically and security wise. There are far more vulnerability points, any one if which can potentially compromise the entire system. If one corrupt official in Florida stuffs some ballots, their impact is limited by physicality. One corrupt employee of a voting software company, and you potentially alter the course of a country.
Keep in mind that a few very neat things could be done by having online voting. You could decrease terms significantly, which ideally would make a lot of bullshit go away. Representatives would represent more because otherwise they're out. Over here we have the joke: The SocDem party is doing SocDem things. Must be an election year.
That would be every year. Imagine the possibilities.
Short term limits are not necessarily a good thing. They cause reactionary politics, which can be harmful in that it's very difficult to do long-term growth or other public policy plans with such short term limits. You'll have a revolving door of short-term optimal but long-term poor policies.
That's why it's very important the Fed chairs have long terms and are not publicly elected, because otherwise you'd have essentially the worst possible monetary policy by reacting too quickly.
You'd have to weigh those pros and cons. It's certainly hard to tell how bad the reactionary politics would be if it were the case. Right now I can tell you that a certain demographic here will vote in a reactionary party no matter what happened immediately preceding the election. And I can however see a large problem with parties not doing much representing. Whether my proposed system improves upon the status quo is anyone's guess.
Additionally, you could maybe also do a more modular voting system, where people can vote for a certain party in individual departments, and also recuse themselves from voting in a department they have no stake in.
I mean, this is just me pipe dreaming, this isn't going to happen and people will ruin it if it will anyway. But it's nice to believe in a functional democracy every now and then. /s
I fail to see how any of the things you listed follow from online voting, either directly or indirectly
Online voting -> cheaper elections and more convenient voting -> potentially more frequent elections.
They don't follow necessarily. They are something that "could be done" once we have online elections.
I'm not one to immediately turn to YouTube for resources as important as those on the fundamentals of democracy, however one of the best resources I've ever found of the subject is the video by Tom Scott on the subject [1]. If you've never seen his videos, you are missing out.
One concern that should be weighed is the importance of improving accessibility to those who might not vote otherwise, and how this issue is propagated as these voters continuously lack a voice in the matter, but I don't really know where to begin on that problem.
Additionally, Scott's video not only makes a case against online voting, but against any form of electronic voting (and maybe even a case against mail-in voting) which are sort of outside the scope of this discussion, and points I don't know I'd feel comfortable being committed to. Either way, his concerns are well put and worth hearing regardless of one's convictions on the subject.
[1] Tom Scott: Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea
If you could implement electronic voting and did it in a way that is safe, secure, and easy to use, I think it would be a very good thing. What I think is quite strange though is everyone is literally afraid of it or just has already written off the idea as preposterous without even at least trying to carefully think about some of the problems we can identify and earnestly trying to come up with a solution. Like how can you be optimistic about future technologies but think we are fundamentally incapable of implementing a voting system electronically in a way that is clearly better than using paper ballots?
The semi-recent thread on the USPS's patent for a blockchain-based voting system had a lot of interesting discussion about how to safely and securely anonymize voting, much of which was centered around possible systems for voting online, so I'll just link it here.
https://tildes.net/~tech/rba