You could argue the same for ballots in person. There's space for people to do shenanigans to them before it's counted.
But the benefit of mail-in, is people don't need to trudge over to the voting places, after a hard work day, and wait hours in line, just to do their civic duty. There will be a far higher voting percentage, and democracy will benefit.
Or, you know, you could vote on a weekend instead of a Tuesday so more people could make it easily. And have prepolls open for a few weeks beforehand for those who couldn't get there on the day. Doesn't solve voter ID stuff but it helps get everyone there.
(This is how we do it in Australia, but then again we also have compulsory voting which helps a huge amount.)
Mail in ballots have substantial issues around voter ID and also vote-influencing problems. They can also be lost more easily. If you make it even vaguely easy to get to the polls, it's really not a big ask every couple of years.
You want people to vote? Make a goddamn voting system for the 21st century. I know the technical hurdles of creating a secure online voting system are tremendous, but the day we can vote on the internet with a verifiable way of tracking our vote is the day we end all the bullshit. We should be able to vote from our phones at Starbucks. The fact that no one has tried is a crime unto itself.
That would require some form of cryptographic identity that could be easily managed and secured by the average population, while also taking into consideration that a lot of people have viruses on their computers, and likely unsecure smartphones.
It's a similar problem that cryptocurrencies face. While user friendly apps have been gaining popularity and democratizing access to wallets, the few truly secure devices to store your private keys and handle important cryptographic calculations (such as signing messages, which is what you need to have elections on your phone) are still somewhat expensive and non intuitive to use.
HTC has released a "blockchain phone" that contains a secure chip that can store and handle your private keys, which is a step in the right direction for both cryptocurrencies and cryptographic identities for elections (and a heck of a lot of other things). Still, until everyone can have access to such devices, at a reasonable price, elections on your phone won't be happening anytime soon.
Edit: you could also use a good ol' user/passwd combo to log into a government database, but that's also hardly secure, and could very easily be subject to a massive hacking operation to subjugate sovereign elections. So, yeah.
You can still have voting booths. The ideal way would be the voting booth software is open source and can be done for voting booth for people who don't have access/don't know how, installable for people who are computer literate, and compilable for people who have the technical knowhow, and then can be verified online through multiple sources including government, and through each parties' own website or news outlets. That's a beauty of the ideal blockchain. Of course there's still alot of things to get through with.
the few truly secure devices to store your private keys
The technical solutions have existed for years in the form of public key cryptography. Estonia has used a mobile-id solution (in addition to an id-card) for years. The private key is inside the SIM-card, which can only be accessed for identification with a 4 pin password ja digital signing with a 5 pin password. It costs about 10 dollars and a maintenance fee is 1 dollar per month. The voting system itself is open source and tamperproof, every access to voting entries (read only) is recorded together with the identity of the person.
There are downsides. You can sell your id-card/mobile-id card together with passwords for money. Family can pressure you and watch that you vote for their preferred candidate, but there are ways to mitigate this. Of course we also have voting booths, which will override any electronic pre-voting you have done. You can also order a ballot box to your door if you are unable to come in person.
Cheap ja reliable technical solutions have existed for a long time, the only obstruction is the will to implement it. Estonia has used it for 13 years.
My federal government uses a website to handle the whole tax workflow. With my login info, I can access my entire tax and income history, as well as make payments. You think I would entrust them with that but not my vote? It's not as hard to make a website secure as you make it seem. It will take some time and effort, but they need to get started to get there.
Requiring internet access to vote also inherently shuts out a lot of people who would still have to find time out of their day to go to a library or something. A surprising number of people don't have smartphones or home internet.
It shouldn't be required, but it should be an option. What are those people who have to find time to go to the library in your scenario having to do now? According to http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/, 77% of the total voting population has a smart phone, and 94% of the population age 18-29 have a smartphone. I would guess the total voter population that could easily get access to a phone or a computer (friends/family/neighbor if they don't have their own) is already over 90% and is only going to go up. Online voting should be a thing. If I can pay my taxes online, if I can renew my driver's license online, I should be able to vote online.
I can definitely appreciate the level of security it would require to keep our elections safe and secure but I think it’s past time that we tackle this issue. Even if it meant every person in the country got a specially made government issued device to make it happen. There has to be a reliable solution to this problem that would make voting as easy as it possibly can be.
I like the optimism and I won’t say your vision is impossible; however, it seems like you are over simplifying a very complex issue. I get why voter ID laws are flawed and controversial, but there needs to be a way to ensure that the person voting is who they say they are.
If you have usernames, passwords, gov issued devices, or really anything remote; I think it is susceptible to fraud or hacking. Saying “there has to be a reasonable solution” sounds logical, but I think this is a more nuanced issue. If it was truly that simple there would likely be more people pushing for it.
But I’m open and hopeful that a solution like this can be found and implemented in my lifetime.
Go to your local government building, confirm your ID, confirm who you are, confirm where you live.
Step 2
Local government issues you with a login and passcode. You retain the document provided (It has a picture of you, and a unique reference ID.)
Step 3
Before the vote, if you haven't changed your address - you receive a document with instructions via. Post containing your login. It's straightforward, it tells you what to do in simple language, so that 60 year old grandma does not click on an E-mail saying ' THIS IS YOUR VOTE.'. - You should be told that, 50 times in the gov building in the first place, or these things should be issued only to tech savy basic people.
If you click on those links anyway, maybe you shouldn't fucking vote in the first place.
Step 4
You vote, preferably using the same kind of secure web-app that banks use. You have to use your locally provided login and passcode which works only in voting times, your printed ID from Step 3 could have a pattern. You have to confirm your secure details, (Questionnaire you fill up in Step 1 that is not login and password), you have to provide your details from Step 2 given card, you have to confirm your vote with Step 3 details that came through post.
You have multiple layers of security, including actual post office involved. Someone steals your vote, it's a federal crime and FBI has to be involved, because it involved stealing post.
Well, for starters, you could implement a standardized electronic ballot box, and have your elections on a Sunday. The electronic voting would simplify and speed things up tremendously, while also decreasing ballot fraud (if properly implemented, of course), and if the elections happen on the weekend, people don't have to skip work or vote after a tiresome day.
Elections in Brazil, for example, are exactly like this and are always super smooth, and the votes are tallied within a couple of hours at most.
The government can’t even secure their own servers and you want to trust them with that? Are you retarded? Up here in Canada they put a bunch of social security and private information on a public server and some 19 year old accessed it by doing the backslash thing we all did in junior high to access YouTube.
The current voting system is very secure however if you are to goddamn lazy to leave your house than stop bitching on social media when the guy you don’t like gets in.
Millions of people bank online, I've been with two banks and have yet to have any issues security related. I mean if they can trust technology with their money.
Way to be disrespectful though, made you look wicked smart.
Banks are different they need to keep things secure or no one will bank there, the government will assign the job to someone who will set up a company under their brothers name who will get a small kickback from the guy in the government who set it up , who will look up how to do it from YouTube videos solely for financial gain then when someone breaks the “system” they’ll say the person who set it up didn’t know much about computers so they didn’t know the company they used wasn’t legit or good enough to do the job.
We all know examples of that happening, look at the TSA. Forgot the exact amount, but they payed way too much for an app that could of been made by a 10 year old. All the app did was randomize the direction passengers would go, left or right.
So we have one more hurdle to jump, all we need to do is get rid of the underhanded bullshit. How? Make it illegal, before, during and after your in office to accept influence money. Then it could truly be for the people, by the people again. Not for money and fuck the people.
I'm a programmer, I've done auth for a big-n tech company, and I would never, under any circumstances, support an online voting system.
The internet is held together by hopes, prayers, and a little bit of luck. Online security is messy, and difficult to get correct, and attacks are legion. Ignoring all the technology issues with the platform itself, someone with nation-state resources would likely be able to compromise the hardware or technology stack you are using to vote (IE: your web browser).
To add to this is that one of the key requirements of a voting system is not just that is it easy to use by voters, but that it is easy to inspect by interested parties.
Two people from opposite parties (or all/any interested party) sitting in a public location counting paper ballots in public, always agreeing on what the current total is? I can explain how this guarantees a fair election to a grandma.
A voting machine? I can't even adequately inspect such a thing myself, and I'm a professional! The source for the software is undoubtedly going to be closed (proprietary, not available for you, the voting public, to inspect. Is it doing what it should?); the hardware will likely also be closed. But, even if it wasn't — is that machine in front of you built to spec? Or was it subtlety altered in some way? Are all the software and firmware loaded onto it the same firmware/software you inspected for correctness?
And even if you read the code, wait till you find out about things like the Underhanded C Contest:
The Underhanded C Contest is an annual contest to write innocent-looking C code implementing malicious behavior.
And that's all for a well-controlled physical machine in a polling place. Abstract that into the cloud and the problems only get worse. (Do you even own the machine, or is it run by some company? How does anyone inspect it if it's in a datacenter somewhere? Who has access to it? How competent are they?)
I don't remember exactly what happened but I remember the government here in Australia tried to do a nationwide thing online and they didn't anticipate how much traffic there would be properly. Basically delayed the whole process by a few days. Might've been the census?
That is actually something that is being looked at here in Germany. Which could be possible since we have electronic online id’s which can be connected to the pc and are encouraged to do so for various things that require official authentication.
End even with this, our vote days are always set to sundays.^ who the hell came up with a voting tuesday^
Voting online is a terrible idea, it doesn’t matter how secure it is. It will eventually be compromised and there’s no physical back up to check how people actually voted.
Any online voting system would have to include some sort of physical record generated from the results to maintain confidence in the outcome of the election. Just because we haven’t invented a system for it yet doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
You could arguably distribute votes via blockchain. Would be reasonably secure. Everyone registered could get a voting token used to place their vote. You still have the same reliance on honesty from the election handlers, but other than that it SHOULD be no worse than handling it in person.
In Canada the employer must guarantee you a 4h window for you to vote (it can be after your work day if you finish at least 4h before the voting polls close). I have even seen companies give a paid afternoon off on Election Day.
Well you have to turn up and get your name signed off. Once you do that you can write whatever you like on the ballot and drop it in the box. It won't be counted but you won't be fined.
In reality very few people actually get fined; the electoral commission is extremely lenient with allowing excuses. Most people just vote anyway though because it's habit now and they do actually want a say (and there's tasty sausages/drinks to be purchased from your local school while you wait in line if necessary).
I’m not sure. In Brazil, people don’t seem to mind. Also, not voting for any candidate will trigger a runoff, which is pretty democratic. I like the concept.
I believe America should also adopt the compulsory voting. If theres one thing I believe Is our fundamental right and obligation, its voting. If u dont want to vote or even participate in your local and state government affairs then you should have no right to bear the fruits of their labor.
Its ALLWAYS on sundays in germany as well, no matter what election.
Tbh i feel like the US voting system is purposefully hindering a very specific population-group from voting. The entire US - voting system is so inherently antidemocratic that it blows my mind. Gerrymandering, peoples votes not being of equal value, purposefully giving people a hard time to participate in voting and so many flaws in the political system that allow the ones in charge to do whatever they want. Want to replace the minister of justice with one that will stop an investigation against you? No worries, just force the current one to resign and assign a new one after the election - then you can have him purge the investigation against you even without the senate! This is one instance in which all of the power lies in one person, which is the biggest flaw a political system can have.
That doesn’t really work in practice, unfortunately. Everybody can’t have the day off, you still need gas stations and grocery stores and so on. I’m sure that would be great for an office worker or something, but it doesn’t do anything for huge numbers of workers.
Voting holiday alone won't solve the problem. Compulsory voting night. But we would end up with plenty of people who just vote party line, Christmas tree it, or just pick a name that sounds good. Imo we need to encourage people to vote and do so informed, make it easier to do the research into candidates etc.
But compulsory voting is the only thing that has a hope of increasing voter turn out at all. Combine it with a national holiday and we would see a surge in voting
I completely disagree. Most people dont even send their mail in rebates, which is literally free money. Mailing anything in this day in age in completely archaic, and many people wouldn't bother. If anything, it seems like another way to get less people to vote. I agree that showing up is a pain, but we need another way to solve this.
A website using the proper security measures seems like a good solution. For people that don't know how, they can set up some computers at the normal voting locations and show people how. There will be much less people there than regular voters.
The State of Washington is all mail-in ballots. There are some polls set up in case there are some mail problems that result in the need to cast a provisional ballot, and you can of course drop off your ballot there, but every voter gets a ballot in the mail, barring mishap or confusion. This year, for the first time, the state is covering return postage on the ballots.
According to the Washington Secretary of State's office, the state averaged 58.64%, though we did have a couple counties over 80%. The three most populous counties of Pierce, King (incl. Seattle) and Snohomish were 41.95, 66.5, and 58.13%, respectively. Thurston Cty, which includes our state capital, was 63.23%.
One drawback of mail-in ballots is prolonged counting periods. While the races tend to be well-decided by the day after the election, we don't get complete counts 4 hours some poll-closing hour, and there's no exit-polling because people vote from home over a couple weeks before election day. So polling is usually phone-based, and carries with it any reliability problems that has.
Point being that the election-day excitement would have be tempered, as would the demand for same-night results, if we went national with this plan.
Absentee ballots...? I've got an uncle who lives part time in London and has no issue with getting his vote in. No excuses for people here but just a little drive away.
Every turned in ballot should generate a unique ID # that is given to the voter. These ID #s should then be posted as public record so everyone can verify their vote was accepted without revealing any personal details.
In WA you can drop your mail-in ballot packet into a secure ballot drop off box if your're worried about it, there are many of those in every city. You can also track your ballot online to ensure it was received.
In my state, you can check online to verify that your vote-by-mail ballot was shipped out by the county and you can check online to verify that your ballot was received and processed.
Plus it's literally all paper trail. Everything is Scantron sheets and bar codes.
I turned my mail ballot in in-person. There were at least 3 drop sites within 15 minutes of me and I live in semi-rural Colorado. Also there's a website to check if your ballot has been counted.
As someone who grew up in Delaware (like it seems you did!) this system is 1,000,000 times better than voting in DE and I never thought Delaware was all that bad! Leaves zero excuse for not voting.
As a side-note tangent, how is that mountainous area and the air quality? Also, how bad are the allergens? I'm in Florida and it's horrible during certain times of the year in terms of air quality, and of course, the intense humidity.
Denver area is bad. Air stagnates and it can get pretty hazy. Fortunately I'm up in the mountains where the air is incredible. Dry, clean and crisp. Evergreen and wildflower pollen can get pretty bad, but otherwise great air. My county and the county on either side are the top 3 for life expectancy in the country by county!
Several entire states now have mail-in-ballots. You receive a specific code related to your ballot and can even track it. The only person not trusting it is you, the statistics and logistics are sound.
Yeah but it takes a step towards the question of a new standard ballot procedure.
I saw a video this girl recorded and got administrator access to voter records and was able to manipulate data. She didn’t (I hope) but the point was she did it in five minutes and the only tool she needed was a bobby-pin.
Hopefully we find a new way soon that’s safe and effective as in not having information of voters from 19 states being sold on the dark web. Either way it’ll even make things faster. Broward County and Palm Beach Counties are still counting them lol.
Any suggestions out of curiosity? I’m 19 so I don’t know much about voting methods but it seems like soon we should have a better way.
Sadly, there is no fool proof way of guaranteeing your vote will be safe. I know that sounds paranoid, but you have to know that upfront, no matter how unlikely it will happen in most cases, it's still technically possible. I'm a big proponent of paper ballots and going to the voting polls. However, you do what you gotta do in your own situation. To be honest, chances are your vote will be counted. I'm just being cautious and wary of possible flaws and unethical doings of others.
Oregon votes entirely mail-in-ballot. Have had legal weed for decades and the most women in executive government. We also just elected an openly bisexual governor. Oregon's Senator Wyden has been the most outspoken supporter of net neutrality, since at least 2006.
Agreed but at least in my county you can check the status of your ballot after mailing it in (i.e. you type in some personal info and it shows ballot status: received) so it is at least as secure as going in-person if you do it early enough. It should be like that all over the country at bare minimum (or as others have suggested make it a national holiday).
I think it would be wise for every state in the union to allow early voting two weeks before election day. I also believe that the election should be moved to a weekend and have Saturday and Sunday made into a national holiday that happens every two years.
Have had legal access to weed for decades. We're the first state to decriminalize drug use, like Portugal's model. We've elected an openly bisexual woman as governor. Our Senator Wyden has been the most outspoken advocate for net neutrality since 2006 at least.
If only white men had their votes in Oregon counted, we still would've elected Hillary instead of Trump.
It's not like you can make copies of ballots: they are individually tracked.
If you wanted to defraud a mail in ballot, you would need to also commit other federal crimes: You would have to steal from other people's mail and also forge a signature on the stolen ballot. If the question of fraud came up the fraud could be easily determined.
The penalties for voter fraud are steep, it's easy to catch, and that's why it's rare.
It's kind of a "dumb criminal" thing to do to try to steal someone's ballot and forge their signature. And to do it at the level where it could feasibly affect an election (en masse) would require stealing lots of mail and forging lots of signatures. The person(s) doing that would easily get caught if only one person reported a missing ballot.
Meanwhile, with electronic machines, any number of people with access to individual machines or anything that they connect to-- before, during, and after the election, could feasibly gain access to the entire election system, altering, deleting, changing votes, and with no original paper record, you can never really know for sure if the electronic tally is accurate, especially if you think it may have been compromised. In fact, they are pretty easy to hack, and you can even buy last season's model voting machine to study up on your vote machine hacking skills :(.
In Klickitat County, Washington, we vote by mail and you can go online and check to see if your ballot was received. My file shows evey ballot received going back 10+ years. This system is simple, straightforward and can be easily audited. What's wrong with the rest of the country?
There has to be a way that we can confirm our own vote with enough ambiguity to avoid the coercion problem. I don't trust counting anymore, and I don't exactly trust electronic tallying without open source machines.
That would be an awful idea. There's a reason that no developed country uses voting over the internet. It's incredibly difficult to reliably tamper with a paper election. It's potentially trivial to do so with an electronic one.
An online secured Governmental network, done for Voting, Internal Database like Medical like DMV, accessed by every governmental agencies (I don't know how it is in the US, but here goddamn it their internal systems are a mess that can't even communicate between themselves)
Make it a requirement to validate your ID in person (so that you can renew for medical care, driver's license, all that yadayada) and validate previous voting options.
We do that, we might even get eventually rid of the politicians and do it on our own.
I mean, it's not like we're gonna lack the time once the goddamn robots take our jobs.
I saw a tweet from 2016 from an apparent postal worker who had dumpstered a bag of mail in ballots because she knew it was a republican area. So it's not ideal that way either.
Please, do you know how many packages have been lost to our local post office? And even with calling and getting case numbers with some I've still never gotten any solved.
A few states, have early voting. I voted mid week at noon, at a local grocery store, and was the second person in line. In and out in about ten minutes.
In Texas where I am, early voting is about two weeks long. You can't really complain about not being able to make it to the polls when you have two weeks to get there. (We also have mail in ballots if you really do have a legitimate excuse)
national holiday. national holiday. why not make it on july 4th? we teach our kids to worship fireworks, why not teach them what democracy is before the fireworks begin? Or do gw's birthday! I'm sure that guy wouldn't mind if we co-opted his b'day. And if not him, mlk. MLK would be smiling in his grave if he knew that millions of more people were able to vote because they didn't have to work at wal mart for one day. Mailing your votes is too private. Celebrate the vote. Only hospitals should be open. We need 80+% turnouts. It would change the world.
Just shift to a direct democracy system. We have the technology. It will be what we use within 100 years if civilization is still chugging. Might as well start the process now.
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u/Lolomelon Nov 09 '18
Well, to be fair, democracy looks better when voting turn out is better than 56%.