Log in

View Full Version : Will High-Tech Save Future Elections


Ed Hansberry
11-05-2002, 03:30 PM
<a href="http://www.msnbc.com/news/826193.asp?pne=msn">http://www.msnbc.com/news/826193.asp?pne=msn</a><br /><br />On this election day as you stand in line, you may wonder why in the world you can't just vote from home on your PC or as you stand in line at Starbucks on your Pocket PC or cell phone. "On a crisp autumn morning in 2012, George got a call from his ballot box. He’d been tinkering with his presidential vote on the Netphone for weeks, and had dropped it in the e-mailbox just the night before. Now the election system’s voicemail was calling him back to verify his vote. A recorded message read off the confirmation numbers, as usual — but this time around, the digits didn’t match. George thought for a moment: Was it just a glitch, or did someone actually do what the crypto company said was impossible? Had his vote been hacked?"<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2002/20021105-election1.jpg" /><br /><br />The biggest problem with internet voting is security and vote integrity. "Would Internet voting add to the potential confusion and fraud? Rebecca Mercuri, a computer science professor at Bryn Mawr College and founder of Notable Software, is certain it would. “We’re taking an inherently insecure medium, the Internet, and layering security on top of it,” she said. “It doesn’t work.”<br /><br />There are small online voting experiments going on right now around the US, most to handle absentee ballots. If those prove successful, online voting for you and me may not be far off. Source: Paul Britton<br /><br /><!>Of course, in some states, something a bit more simplistic may be in order. :wink: :lol: <br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2002/20021105-election2.jpg" />

Paragon
11-05-2002, 04:10 PM
Aside from hacking votes, the other problem I have always seen with electronic voting is that it is too easy. Presently if you physically go to a voting pole there is a very good chance you are making an informed vote, and have put some thought into you vote.

With electronic voting it is far to easy to for a very large majority of people to cast a carefree vote.

Just think if that were the case Ed could become the next Governor of Tennessee. :D
Dave

Jimmy Dodd
11-05-2002, 04:14 PM
Just think if that were the case Ed could become the next Governor of Tennessee.


After the current one, I'd vote for Ed.

Bwana Jim

Don Sorcinelli
11-05-2002, 04:15 PM
With electronic voting it is far to easy to for a very large majority of people to cast a carefree vote.

Just think if that were the case Ed could become the next Governor of Tennessee. :D
Dave

Either Ed, or the Dell Dude... 8O

Jimmy Dodd
11-05-2002, 04:23 PM
With electronic voting it is far to easy to for a very large majority of people to cast a carefree vote.

Just think if that were the case Ed could become the next Governor of Tennessee. :D
Dave

Either Ed, or the Dell Dude... 8O

Dude!!! You're getting an income tax!

Jonathan1
11-05-2002, 04:30 PM
With the ingenuity of hackers on the net I would NEVER trust web based voting period. The possibility of some foreign nation and a hack they have corrupting the election process (Corrupting, HEH like it isn’t already corrupt.) is very real.
Heck I'm highly skeptical of digital voting as it stands. A vast majority of these digital "stands" don't have a physical output, hard copy, of the results consequently there is no way to audit the voting in the event of a discrepancy we just have to trust that the computer is right. I don’t know about you guys but I don’t trust computers simply because they are programmed by humans and humans are fallible. Garbage in garbage out.

Fishie
11-05-2002, 04:48 PM
Hey Ed, thats an awesome pic, can I use it?

sundown
11-05-2002, 04:49 PM
I agree with net-voting not being a good solution (sorry) but I don't know what the big deal is about electronic voting at the polls. I keep hearing how insecure it is, etc., etc. An easy solution would be to have your vote printed out when you're done so you can review it and then sign it. These signed ballots would be available if a recount was necessary and could even be barcoded to speed things up. Doesn't sound very hard to me. Fast, simple and has a backup built-in.

Ed Hansberry
11-05-2002, 04:56 PM
After the current one, I'd vote for Ed.
I'd vote for my dog after the current governor. :?

Gerard
11-05-2002, 06:09 PM
Rather than replace the current setup for main elections I would like to see a single simple and standardized method adopted, involving a physical presence, or a witnessed electronic voting method for 'shut-ins'. Where I think Internet voting could really be helpful is in expanding actual democracy, enabling a cheap and simple and reasonably secure means for the average jerk to provide even daily input on critical decision making in governments. Imagine: Your town council wants to allow rezoning of a block for some kind of controversial business. It's a year to the next municipal election. How do they get the citizens' opinions in a fast and reliable manner, for next to no money? Build a page with a series of checkbox questions, process the input into a chart of opinions, and send the results to the Pocket PCs of all the councillors. They might not act on it with the majority, but if they did or didn't, the data could be collected and added to a similar statistical charting available for the populace. Come that next election, everyone would be able to see how far off the mark each polititian had voted over the past couple of years, and make their decisions based on THAT, not on some idiotic television campaign.

Adam
11-05-2002, 06:45 PM
I don't have any links to hand (and this is from memory of when I was there, then), but last year Switzerland announced that it was etting up some trials with electronic and phone voting. They have a lot of elections and referenda but still a relatively small turn-out.

They seemed to have quite a long timetable for implementation so their progress should be worth following.

icatar
11-05-2002, 06:53 PM
Although I think that there is too much room presently for an Internet-based voting system to be comprimised, I think that Internet voting is the wave of the future. We can currently file taxes over the Internet, so why can't they figure out a system to vote securely?

If I can vote for baseball All-Stars or the next American Idol over the Internet, why not the next president? :twisted:

ECOslin
11-05-2002, 07:36 PM
I think that, no matter what was tried, there would be room for error in almost anything tried.

Of course the more complicated a thing is, the more chance for a spectacular failure.

Edward

Rob Alexander
11-06-2002, 02:28 AM
I particularly liked Sundown's and Gerard's comments. Sundown proposes a simple system that makes use of technology for counting with a solid backup in case of situations like two years ago. Now if he can think of this off the top of his head, why can't some polling equipment company figure this out and develop such an option? I also agree with all who feel that voting should be done in person and not over the Internet(with appropriate arrangements made for people who are physically unable to go to a polling place).

But I really like what Gerard had to say because that is the best contribution that the Internet can make to the democratic process. The Internet is a communications and information medium and that's where it's value lies in this case as well. The greatest failing of democracy to date is a lack of adequate information available easily and in a form that people can understand with which to evaluate the past performance, and future vision, of candidates. Governments couldn't spend money any better than by providing a single web site covering all candidates for a position with objective information about them, past voting records (where applicable), statements from the candidates themselves, and the main points of each party's platform. Sure, they could still go kiss babies if they wanted, but at least we'd be able to see for ourselves when someone's past voting record is inconsistent with the promises they're making today and there would be a single unbiased place to go to compare people side-by-side.

Adam
11-06-2002, 10:37 AM
Governments couldn't spend money any better than by providing a single web site covering all candidates for a position with objective information

A nice idea, and call me cynical, but unfortunately I think the concept of "Government" and "objective information" is about as oxymoronic as is possible. :?

Brad Adrian
11-06-2002, 01:08 PM
...With electronic voting it is far to easy to for a very large majority of people to cast a carefree vote...
Sorry, you lost me there. I'm not saying that online voting is a good idea, but assuming that a system introduces informed choice just because it's time-consuming is a bit of a stretch.

yubee
11-06-2002, 04:30 PM
Governments couldn't spend money any better than by providing a single web site covering all candidates for a position with objective information about them, past voting records (where applicable), statements from the candidates themselves, and the main points of each party's platform.

I often feel that part of the problem with the process is the candidates/parties seem to only disseminate information in a format that is meant for the lowest-common intellectual denominator.

As such, you get such a primative look at what a candidate/party or even the whole political scene is about.

See Dick run.
Dick thinks schools are good.
Dick thinks drugs are bad, unless they are affordable prescription drugs for seniors.
Dick thinks shooting people is bad.
Vote for Dick.

Inevitably, what you get is an abhorrent, slanderous marketing campaign, where two people try to level each other over two relatively miniscule political issues that they have decided via some backwardsass polling mechanism are the two things that people "care about most".

Unless you take it upon yourself to dig past the superficial nonsensical crap, watch C-SPAN a few times a week regularly, and really dig for unbiased third-party information, everything you read is such marketing BS that you can't possibly make any kind of educated decision based on the available information.

Regardless of what media is used to disseminate the information, unless there is some kind of unbiased source, it will only be that much more mudslinging, targeted at people with below median IQs.

As for voting electronically. I'm all for it. You couldn't possibly have a more corrupt and inaccurate system than the current one. At least if the concern is hacking, the people effecting the results will be reasonably bright people, not the ol' boys network, and have atypical political motivations.

T-Will
11-06-2002, 07:43 PM
How about starting with ID checks at the polls?!?! There's already 5 or so states doing this, and this would help prevent illegals and fraudulent voters from voting.

Adam
11-08-2002, 02:02 PM
Here's one argument: http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-250&CID=1051-110502A

Here's a link to the Swiss set-up (you'll notice that Zurich's project may be interesting to people on this site): http://socio.ch/intcom/t_hgeser12.htm

...and something I wasn't particularly aware of (I was in Zurich when it was announced over here), here's a link to a .pdf of the UK research: http://www.electoralcommission.gov.uk/publications_pdfs/e-voting%20report.pdf