Could E-Voting Cure Voter Apathy? 646
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?
Re:In a word, no! (Score:3, Interesting)
We truly need a revolution.
Can't wait until the elections get h4xx0r3d (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course there are ways to ensure this dosen't happen.. but nothing's impossible.
In many cases (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this would have an age-gap stopper though, since you're mostly going to see the younger people getting into the "e-voting is cool" phase (and many older generation can't even use a PC), at least at first.
What we really need though, is a system to be able to vote on issues that are important to us. If we combined a system that took the parliamentary vote, along with combined citizen votes (net-votes, etc) - at least we'd have more say in things.
Re:In a word, no! (Score:5, Interesting)
That is why we need a "None of the above" choice on the ballot too. California tried this via referendum, but it didn't go through.
Re:Right on! (Score:3, Interesting)
You lose none of what you "gain" by abstaining, but you can help out parties that actually reflect your views.
Hell, if enough people do that a few might even get elected. Wouldn't that piss off just the right people
-Peter
A Republic, never a Democracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Although long forgotten, our Constitution is the law of the land in only one way: it restricts government from infringing on the rights of the sovereign people and the States. This means we are NOT a democracy. As the famous quote goes, a democracy is like two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
E-Voting is a great idea, but it has immense limitations. Our Republic was designed to protect the minority (as small as one person) from a crazy majority. 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). I capitalized them because they should really be trademarked
I like the idea of E-Voting 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. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court is handled by Socialists and Fascists, not Constitutionalists, 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.
What does voter apathy mean to you? (Score:3, Interesting)
Many of the people who vote now do so without taking the time to understand the issues and the candidates' stands on the issues. Decreasing the barriers to voting will only increase the amount of stupid voting. I would rather have fewer voters who take more time to study the likely effects of their votes.
I encourage everyone to exhibit that kind of apathy. If you don't know what's going on, don't vote. I've done this selectively. If I am voting and have no real clue why one choice might be better than the other, I skip it and move on. Otoh, if you do want to vote, take the time to understand what's happening, look at the candidates and determine why they pick their positions.
Support democracy; vote with intelligence.
Re:Voter Apathy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No way (Score:1, Interesting)
Not Ready for Prime Time (Score:4, Interesting)
I seem to get some sort of security bulletin at least once a week. They're not all Windows vulnerabilities, either. I don't think we know how to do computer security well enough just yet to entrust our democracy to it. The voter identity systems and the tabulators must both be absolutely hack-proof.
How do we handle failures? Do I lose my right to vote if there's a cable cut somewhere between me and the Board of Elections? Do I lose my right to vote if my ISP has screwed up some routing table? Can a DoS attack deny my right to vote?
Because computers cost money, online voting makes it easier for those with enough money to have a computer to vote, and thus marginally disenfranchises those who don't.
Still, I'm all in favor of testing. Only when we've seen how this stuff works--and how it fails--will we start to understand what it's going to take to do this right. It's important to get it right.
Is it for you? (Score:2, Interesting)
Should you vote if you do not have the interest to spend twenty minutes for it?
Is a vote without thought a real vote? (If you are not ready to spend twenty minutes going to the post-office whatever... have you the time to think about politics?)
Re:In a word, no! (Score:3, Interesting)
All I want is to be ruled by my peers. The none of the above clause will just cause the politcos to be worse not better. We need to remove the career politician.
My way if you're eligable to vote your name is entered in a lottery if you win you get the job.
If you choose not to server your passport is revoked for your term, in effect you become a non-citizen, unable to travel etc.
For congress/senate there is a 25% turnover each year.
This system would elect a representitive cross cut of the US population.
If you do not want to be ruled by your peers is democracy whay you really want?
Voting apathy is indeed a serious issue. (Score:3, Interesting)
This, of course, greatly empowers the people who do vote, since their votes count proportionally higher. Does this go against the "everybody gets one vote" principle? Perhaps. Worse yet, a number of people seem content treating elections - even presidential - as a game. A number of my friends voted for Nader during the last election, knowing full well that he wasn't going to get even 5% (he got something like 3%, as far as I recall), and not even necessarily supporting his program. Their justifications was that, "Well, I don't like either Bush or Gore, so I'm going to vote Green." If even a fraction of those who threw their vote away for Nader voted for Al Gore, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.
Just ramblings, of course, and now I've gone completely off-topic. Ah well
Ever look at an online poll? Skewed RIGHT. (Score:2, Interesting)
Voter apathy (Score:3, Interesting)
Go ahead and mod me as flamebait, but...
I never understanded why people feel a need to cure a problem that really isn't a problem. Who cares about people who think it is too much hassle to vote? Or think their vote doesn't make a difference? Or who just doesn't care? Leave voting to those who try to remain informed, and who actually feel a civic duty to do so.
Re:In a word, no! (Score:2, Interesting)
People are more apt to criticize than to praise. So, getting people to go out and say, "Hey! I think this candidate is good, I'll vote for them" is not an easy task. Perhaps this is why negative campaigning works so well.
What if we reveresed the current system. Instead of voting for a single candidate, votes would be cast against them. One could vote against everyone if one wished. You could vote against Kang, and Kodos. The candidate with the least votes wins. It might even give third party candidates a chance.
This would appeal to human nature by letting voters do what they do best -- complain.
Re:In a word, no! (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, a new election requires new campaigning time. So if elections are held 9 months before the end of the term, each election has a little less than three months for campaigning.
The trouble of course, is that if candidates are elected right away in the first election, the lame duck period is 6 months!
harder is better (Score:3, Interesting)
The idea of making voting easier seems counterproductive when the goal is for the best candidate verses who has the best smile or sense of humor. I could see airheads saying "I need to vote for someone... I know- I will vote for Bill Gates for president because I have heard his name before." In the United States, at one time, one needed to pass a litteracy exam and own property. I would love there to be a simple exam to pass before becoming a registered voter (something like who was the first president of the USA, how many states are in the USA and etc...). Now I know this is being done in England but I hope it never comes to the U.S.- especially if it is successful.
Voter apathy is good! (Score:2, Interesting)
In this country, things will continue (more or less) to be business as usual, regardless of the results of any one election. No news is good news in this sense, regardless of what any reactionary or revolutionary wants you to think.
Re:Sheesh (Score:3, Interesting)
You wouldnt have long distance jobs, it would simply cost too much. Think abou the implications of having to pay per usage, at market bearing prices to things you take for granted now.
Imagine having to pay 10 dollars just to go to a city away. And there is no reason it wouldnt cost 10 bucks either, thats an hours wage right? say, 5 dollars each way on JUST that road.
Right now you have UNLIMITED use of roads you want to use, and you progressivly pay to do that.
The more gas you use the more roads you use. But imagine if you were using a bike, no taxes there for bike usage.
I dont knwo where you live where you say the roads are always broken down. In kansas the roads arent "that good" but they are servicable. Now i have travelled in Colorado and was appalled by the roads there, but they wouldnt be there at all if ti werent for taxes.
Imagine if a company was creating the roads, and bearing the costs, you would only have roads to places it was PROFITABLE to have roads. That probably menas there wouldnt even be country roads, that would have to be... erm... funded by taxes within a small group of people to get those roads.
Things such as interstates cost too much for any private interest to have made, especially when they made them. Just imagine how many vehicles would have to go over an interstate to make it profitable! PROFITABLE!
Remember, the roads now that you DO pay a toll on, are to pay for the construction of the road, your other taxes go for paying its maintanence. They arent there to make a direct profit off of the road, but a corporation would. I would rather have a slightly neglected road, than the pay out the ass for a pristine road. Hell I already do that, I take the back highway from where I live to get to and fro, instead of using the toll road, even though the back highway is a bit more curvy and takes about 10 extra minutes, I am not paying 3 bucks either.
People that want to privatise everything scare me, because they cannot be poor people that imagine wanting privatization.
Taxes are progressive too, poor people dont pay out the ass in taxes because they cannot bear the cost of the taxes. I know a LOT of poor people, and trust me they didnt pay a whole lot in taxes.
I finally read some good literature by Harry Schaffer (an economist who teaches at te university of kansas) on the REASON why we have progressive taxing, and why we do have government controlled programs.
Its because the market could not bear the kind of developments we have, no one would pay to use a great deal of what we take for granted. We wouldnt have parks, we wouldnt have a whole shitload of stuff that we take for granted to be there, things that enrich our lives.
Our governments role as defined by an econmist named Adam Smith is to Provide:
Law and Order
National Defence
Provide for public good. (whcih also means providing goods and services that are important but wouldnt exist otherwise)
If we let pure capatalism reign, there would be very few educated people in America, because Education is EXPENSIVE, and there would be no recourse for poor people, they would have no way to afford education to their children, their children would have no chance at succeeding because they were uneducated.
Social programs are NOT a bad thing, they are one of the things that help our econonmy!
rich people dont spend a great deal of their income, thye have a lot left over, and there is no sales tax applied to their expendirtures.
but say give poor people money to buy food, and every single ounce of that cash is put back into the econom
You *SHOULDN'T* vote. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is precisely one of the problems with online voting. If you're not willing to exert the effort to go to a polling place, you shouldn't be voting anyway.
Another problem with online voting is the digital divide. A new study found that 42% of Americans aren't online [pewinternet.org]. That's doesn't necessarily correspond to 42% of registered voters, but a number that large shows that online voting won't benefit a significant number of people.
Probably the single best way to improve voter participation is to move elections to Sunday. Almost everyone in the country either has Sunday off or they don't have to work normal polling hours on Sunday (7 AM to 7 PM). Many countries around the world have elections on Sundays, I can't believe we still use Tuesdays.
Suggestion: allow saying NO. (Score:5, Interesting)
From anecdotal evidence there seems to be a significant number of eligible voters who can't bring themselves to say "yes" to any candidate. They don't feel like taking the trouble to go to a voting booth to say "yes" to the least disliked candidate, or going there and making a spoilt vote as a sign of their displeasure.
I suggest that if voters could place a negative vote there would be less apathy.
For example a "No" vote would subtract the total vote tally = -1 . "Don't care" = 0. "Yes" = +1. A net-unpopular candidate will have a negative score. If all candidates are in the negative, then maybe the least negative scored candidate should still win, but have a much shorter term (and not be able to credibly brag about having support of the majority
Would you feel like voting then?
You also get better information. A controversial candidate will have lots of Yes and No votes. You'd be able to have a clearer view of voter disatisfaction.
But I'm sure politicians don't want this sort of thing, and so this is unlikely to happen.
Oh well.
Politicians owning voting machine companies (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0301/S00166 .htm
DAMN STRAIGHT! (Score:3, Interesting)
You need to do one other thing, as well, IMHO: You need to recognize that the "primaries" are nothing of the sort - they are a wart on the side of the electoral process, completely outside the scope of the laws defining the system. They are purely a function of the political parties.
The best thing in the world would be to de-emphasise them, by:
1) not allowing the parties access to the voter rolls as maintained by the State - all they should be able to ask you is "Are you eligable to vote in this district?" not "What party are you registered with?"
2) not allowing the parties to use State property to conduct the primaries - let them find their own damn location to hold the polling and use their own damn equipment to tally the votes. This helps remind people of the unofficial status of the primaries, as well as (hopefully) forcing the two main parties to be at seperate locations, in order to facilitate point #3, which is:
3) If a party wishes to restrict access to its primary voting to party members, that's fine (after all, it IS a private function). However, do NOT allow the parties to prevent me from joining, just because I also joined the other party. If I wish to be BOTH a Rep and a Dem (and a Green and a Lib and a
In the state where I live (Kansas), you are EITHER a Republican OR a Democrat OR an independant, but not more than one of the above. Thus, I cannot vote in both the Rep and Dem primaries - pick one and only one.
With my changes, I could be both a Rep and a Dem, and vote in both primaries, thus preventing the "pick the lesser of two evils" crap when the REAL election comes around - I would at least have a chance to get each party to field a reasonable candidate.
THEN, if the parties refuse to play ball, you can NOTA their sorry selves out of the running.
Thus, the parties won't run lame ass candidates (Like Bush AND Gore) because the matrix looks like this:
Both parties run poor candidates: NOTA wins, both parties have to run a second campain.
Party A runs a poor candidate, party B runs a good candidate - party B wins.
Both parties run good candidates - we ALL win!
Also, in a NOTA system the third parties are given more power - in the first election they can focus on tearing down the Rep/Dem candidtates, and NOT run their own guy.
NOTA wins.
Then the third parties blitz to adverties their guys, being on more even footing with the big boys.
Oh, god...save us from the unwashed masses! (Score:2, Interesting)
The main problems with e-voting are twofold, equally serious.
Problem one is a question of motivation and knowledge. Now, the people who vote more often than not have a general knowledge of the political spectrum: they know what they're voting for. They have an idea of the repercussions and don't buy into the hype of electiontime lies.
Once e-voting comes into effect, we'll have the millions of dumb people voting. The populist will win every time, not the one who has unpopular, but correct ideas and ideals. Having high voter turnout is not neccessarily a good thing.
But the second problem is a slightly nastyer one. As it stands you have to physically vote (ie you actually do care about what happens), which means you also have guaranteed privacy...you stand, by yourself in a voting booth where no-one sees what you vote. E-voting means that you can be coerced into voting for someone you might not want to. Dad (or mum) can decide his/her kids/wife/hubby have to vote for his choice. Or roving bands of thugs could come by (yeah, unlikely, but it is possible, and therefore must be avoided) and tell you to vote for mr x.
And that's discounting the fact that e-voting systems (especially closed ones) can be hacked or have backdoors put in.
The House of Reps, and the Electoral College (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, the number of Reps has not changes since 1913, when they filled the room in the Capitol - No you really want to run a country based upon the size of a room?
In 1776 the ratio was 1 Rep per 30k people - that means we would have 9033 Reps! I think this is a GOOD idea - It would be VERY hard for a company to BUY 4517 Reps, but your $100 bucks would start to be REAL money.
In 2002, the House and Senate raised $604 Million in Campaign contributions, or $1.29 Million Per candidate (435 Reps, 33 Senate (Senate count an estimate - 1/3))
Now, let's say we have 9033 Reps and 33 Senators up for election -for a total of 9066. Now if they only get the same amount of contributions, they average 66k each, so lets say they get more - $100k. Your $100 bucks speaks a LOT louder, and it starts to become possible for an individual to run their own campaign, particulary when you realize the big money goes to the 33 Senators - in fact, the average Incumbent Rep spent 500K and the Challenger about 100k - if you figure 1/20th, we talking 25K for an incumbent, and 5K for a challenger. That $100 starts to look like REAL cash
Black Box Voting Scandal (Score:3, Interesting)
With the rise of computerized voting systems, there follows a greater opportunity to cheat in elections. In the past election [for congress], voting districts started using computer voting systems. The problem with this is the lack of accountability. The voting machines are not open source [which in itself is not a problem]. However in the last election, there were a couple incidents in which the vendors "upgraded" [or modified] the code after it was inspected by the accounting people.
In addition, in the last election, one of the candidate owned great number of shares in the voting machine production companies of his state. This is a great potential for conflict of interest.
Lastly, hackers found that the binary files and certain voting data files were found on the company's public FTP site. It was improperly configured so that you can upload your own data files to overwrite the official ones.
Anyways, until we get a more secured system that is more accountable, we should not jump into computerized voting.
Read more about this at: Salon.com Hacking Democracy [salon.com]
Re:An awful lot of "squelch the masses" replies... (Score:5, Interesting)
- Voters are apathetic.
- Apathetic voters vote in a truly random fashion.
- E-voting (ignoring all the inherent problems of such a scheme) will only really draw new apathetic voters.
- With truly random apathetic votes, they will not have any real effect on the election results.
- Implementing e-voting is not cheap.
I'm against e-voting because I don't see the point in spending money to change absolutely nothing.Of course, I'm also against the concept because it introduces unnecesary complecations into the voting process where problems can occur (why do you need Twenty-First Century technology to do something that Nineteenth Century technology can do just as well with less room for error?), but that's another subject.
Re:Voting for idiots or idiots voting? (Score:2, Interesting)
You've been hearing a lot about get-out-the-vote lately. I'm here to say that if you don't really care about the issues, about who wins, stay home. Don't pollute the vote. If you aren't concerned enough about the issues for them to make any emotional difference for you, stay home.
It was a good argument and I've never forgotten it.