Could E-Voting Cure Voter Apathy?

Bendebecker notes that The Register is saying that "A major trial is about to kick off in the UK that could help decide whether e-voting is merely a gimmick or whether it can genuinely help cure voter apathy." Voter Apathy or Flash Poll Elections? What is the lesser of 2 evils?

Oregon, a Unique Experiment of Its Own

[afabbro]

We have mail-in voting here in Oregon. It's ridiculously easy to vote. The government mails you the form and a voter guide, into which anyone can put a page of his two cents for some fee (I think $500 - candidates, etc. get free pages).

Mark, put in envelope, put in mail. Very easy. We still have low voter turnout. Even when the issue is beyond the normal election - e.g., "vote yes to raise your income taxes, vote no to not raise them" - we still don't see much participation.

I doubt whether voting on-line would change anything. It's marginally more convenient (no need to physically put the letter in the mailbox) but...

Voter Apathy

[InfinityEdge]

Give a fine similar to running a stop sign for those who fail to vote.

These folks are trying to do this via a Californian voting proposition. [sonnet.com]

Tipping voter turnout

[mark_sloan]

I don't think any ONE thing will make a difference. Simply giving people the ability to vote online will help those that forget, or don't have time (I won't get into the value people place on voting). Only about 15% of my students (I teach Math at a community college) vote. Is it because they feel soft money runs government? Yes. Is it because it is inconvenient? Yes. Is it because they don't feel educated about the issues? Yes. For a system to be truly successful I believe it needs to address ALL of these issues. The soft money issue simply needs to be taken care of. The online voting should do more than allow people to vote, it should be a gateway for people to EDUCATE themselves on the issues. On a ballot you only get a paragraph or 2 describing the resolution. For positions, you only see the names and party affiliations. If the system linked to something fairly independent like http://news.google.com for articles and the house and senate for incumbent voting history online, to read up on political candidates and topics BEFORE voting, and made it that easy, I truly believe more people would do it. It isn't necessarily that people don't want to put time into it, they don't want to WASTE time on something that takes time and makes them feel out of touch with what is going on and wouldn't make a difference because of soft money anyway. Should people take the time to educate themselves? Certainly. But then we would get the same turnout we are getting now. To get a higher turnout requires lining everything up in a row for them and making it not only easy, but makes them educate themselves all at once. I think of it as an hour spent to educate AND vote, not just mindlessly vote. It could work right? Well, that's my theory anyway! ;-)

CowboyNeal! and "Nobody For President"

[billstewart]

There are different semantics available for None-of-the-Above votes, including "Bounce them all and hold an election with better candidates" and "office stays unfilled". In N-seat elections, e.g. at-large city council elections, people have tried running "None of the above", but it turns out that you can get weird and ambiguous results which can make it impossible to tell how to vote to get what you want unless it's implemented carefully.

I always liked Wavy Gravy [wavygravy.net]'s "Nobody for President! [nobodyforpresident.org]" campaign.

• Nobody's going to cut your taxes!
• Nobody's going to balance the budget!
• Nobody kept us out of war!
• Nobody's telling the truth!
• Vote for Nobody!

Reasons People Didn't Vote

[billstewart]

Here's a US Census Bureau article on reasons people didn't vote. [census.gov] The biggest answer given was "too busy, conflicting schedule" (34.9%), followed by "Not interested" (12%) illness (11%) "Didn't like candidates" (5%) "out of town"(8%) etc. It's got lots of detailed breakdowns of their survey category, and the total sample size was only 40,000 people, somewhat biased by being the kinds of people who are willing to talk to the US Census Bureau (e.g. "Not a citizen" wasn't in there, and "don't trust the government" was underrepresented...)

Brought to you by the "Nobody For President! [nobodyforpresident.org]" web page, which reports that in 1998, 83 million Americans voted for somebody and 115 million voted for Nobody.

Re:A Republic, never a Democracy

[Guppy06]

"This is great for a democracy like the UK, but for a Republic like the US, this isn't the best idea."

I swear, if I hear one more person say that "The US isn't a democracy, it's a republic," I'm going to kill somebody.

First off, what you're trying to drive at isn't "the US is a republic" so much as "the US is a federal republic." The "federal" part is how state's rights come into the equation, and also explains how democracy is used in our country (in a decentrallized manner).

Secondly, I'd personally say the US is more democratic than the UK. The election of the US president is far more accessible to the public than the election of the UK's prime minister, members of the upper house of the US legislature are chosen democratically while members of the House of Lords are born into the role, and there's still that monarchy bit.

"This means we are NOT a democracy."

How is it members of the House of Representatives are chosen again? Or the Senate, as of 1913? Hm? And that doesn't even begin to get into questions about our state and local governments. The only way we're not a democracy is if you compare us to a "true" democracy, where there is no legislature and the people vote on laws directly (offering Socrates a drink on the house).

You get the "we're a republic" from the bit of the federal constitution that says the states will have a "republican form of government." But don't forget that those governments have been formed democratically since before there even was a United States (let alone a federal constitution).

"Our Republic was designed to protect the minority (as small as one person) from a crazy majority"

RepublicS. And you're mincing words. The federal constitution was written in such a way to detatch the federal government from the passions of the mob (paraphrasing) while maintaining a decentralized power base (ie. federal). Note that there is no mention of the individual in the original document. The federal constitution has little to say about the role of the individual because that's what state constitutions are for.

"It is only because we have forgotten about the Republic that such unconstitutional programs such as Social Security, Federal Education subsidies and control, and the Welfare State have come into existance (wholly socialist schemes that truly have no place in a free culture)"

At worst they violate the Tenth Amendment, and vaguely at that. The only thing really restricting the way Congress spends its money is the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, which says they can't give themselves pay raises.

"so long as the Supreme Court actually does the job intended, to protect the rights of the people by making sure ALL laws abide by the Constitutional restraints on government."

Where exactly in the federal constitution does it mention the concept of judicial review? Hint: It doesn't. In many ways it's a power the court gave itself in the early Nineteenth Century.

"Unfortunately, the Supreme Court is handled by Socialists and Fascists, not onstitutionalists"

Then complain your democratically elected members of Congress. The ones that the federal constitution grants the power to impeach any and all federal judges. Oh, wait, that's right, you don't believe there's democracy in this country...

"so we would be at great risk of losing the country to both the Socialist left and the Fascist right, both of which feed each other's desires by giving in to bad schemes."

Get off your damned soap box before you embarass yourself any further. You're giving us true political crackpots a bad name.

Apathy Due to the System Reinforcing Mediocrity

[Soong]

There are some wonderful things you can do with computerized voting, but if all I get to do is cast the same vote for the same tired parties then I may more easily overcome laziness, but I won't affect the outcome.

If I expect that I won't affect the outcome, I become apathetic, and don't bother to vote.

I could vote for a real candidate, more interesting than the two parties, but they won't get elected because only the two parties get elected and anything else is throwing my vote away. Why bother?

Solution: Change the voting system to one that is fair for any number of candidates instead of the current one that reinforces duopoly.

Acceptance Voting or Rated Voting should be implemented as soon as possible at all levels.

See the URL in my sig
http://bolson.org/voting/
(yes, this is my little holy cause)