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Americans only: are you in favor of or opposed to online voting

Jonathan Bailey

Well-Known Member
One of the reasons for having a secret ballot is to help guard against voter coercion: someone may try to bribe or threaten a voter to get them to vote a particular way, but there's no way for the coercer to actually verify that the coercion worked.

It sounds like in your system, this protection would be lost: the coercer could just make the voter hand over their secret key, which would let the coercer bring up how that person actually voted.

You mean even death threats are made to coerce voters? Isn't that a crime? Then in that case there should, be no accessible key available to the online voter and no voting record that is accessible to the online ballot account holder. Once the paper ballot or digital ballot is submitted it can't ever again be retrieved.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
True, however in this system you could also throw away your secret key to confound such coercion.
I expect that anyone who would be willing to harm a voter for not voting as directed would also be willing to harm them for throwing away their secret key.

I agree that it's very important that the system be accurate, but I also think that it's important to make the vote completely anonymous as soon as the vote is cast.

... which can be tricky in a completely electronic system, since if you log each voter as they vote (in order to make sure that every voter is eligible and nobody votes more than once) and log the vote totals as each vote is cast, it's a trivial task to match those two logs up.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
You mean even death threats are made to coerce voters? Isn't that a crime?
Yes. Sometimes, people commit criminal acts to influence elections.


Then in that case there should, be no accessible key available to the online voter and no voting record that is accessible to the online ballot account holder. Once the paper ballot or digital ballot is submitted it can't ever again be retrieved.
That would be my preference... not only that no key be made available to the voter, but that no key exist at all.
 

bobhikes

Nondetermined
Premium Member
in public elections?

What is your party also?

I favor the availability of online ballot casting for at least voting citizens under the following special circumstances if not to the general registered voter public:

1. in military
2. elderly
3. disabled
4. low-income
5. invalid
6. in hospital
7. in mental institution
8. in traveling occupations as trainman, truck driver, ship captain and airline pilot
9. college students away from home
10. those on jury duty


Online voting:

-saves money
-saves paper and postage stamps
-saves energy, keeps gas-burning cars off the road
-saves time
-saves resources
-saves the planet from pollution
-saves the infrastructure from congestion
-is a super incentive for many American citizens to
even vote if this method were made available

Opposed, they have mail in for anybody that can get to the polls I've used it a few times when I traveled, its not hard. Both Democratic party and Republican party will gladly assist you in getting to the polls or providing you with mail in. Locally it mail in is pretty accessible. People are just to lazy.

#4 Low income should not keep anybody from voting
#10 They do not have Jury Duty on election day in my state, I would guess most states to be that way because people are needed to run the election.
 

tytlyf

Not Religious
The one thing that should never change is voting in person. I'm even in favor of marking a person's thumb with ink to further secure the process in person. (preventing voting multiple times).
I'm a democrat. I'm interested in middle class policies, not corporate.
 

icehorse

......unaffiliated...... anti-dogmatist
Premium Member
Shouldn't digitize voting. It's already too easy to cheat the system.

Can you say more about this? My understanding is that other than voter suppression strategies, gerrymandering and the electoral college, which hugely "cheat the system", individual voter fraud is an insignificant problem.
 

Ponder This

Well-Known Member
in public elections?

What is your party also?

I favor the availability of online ballot casting for at least voting citizens under the following special circumstances if not to the general registered voter public:

1. in military
2. elderly
3. disabled
4. low-income
5. invalid
6. in hospital
7. in mental institution
8. in traveling occupations as trainman, truck driver, ship captain and airline pilot
9. college students away from home
10. those on jury duty


Online voting:

-saves money
-saves paper and postage stamps
-saves energy, keeps gas-burning cars off the road
-saves time
-saves resources
-saves the planet from pollution
-saves the infrastructure from congestion
-is a super incentive for many American citizens to
even vote if this method were made available

I think

1. A Hard Copy of the Vote must exist.
2. In Person Identity Verification must exist.
3. The voting process must be secure.

Therefore, I question the assumption that a significant time, energy, resource, etc. savings occurs in such a system or that a significant additional incentive exists for Americans to vote.


Electronic submission of votes does exist in some states.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/internet-voting.aspx

Concerns include:
Privacy: electronic submission is not fully anonymous.
Security: the voters electronic device may not be secure.
Denial of Service Attacks: online systems can be overloaded to prevent votes from going through.
Auditability: cyber attacks may be undetectable.
Authentication: the identity of the voter must be verifiable.
Additional Burden: Each online ballot must be duplicated by Election Officials anyways.
 

74x12

Well-Known Member
Can you say more about this? My understanding is that other than voter suppression strategies, gerrymandering and the electoral college, which hugely "cheat the system", individual voter fraud is an insignificant problem.
Not individuals cheating the system. It's your politicians and government that have the most to gain by cheating the system. I'm not worried about individuals trying to cheat the system. Although now that you mention it; it could also be a concern. Just not as much.
 
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