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Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

• debracleaver 10y ago
  Hey everyone. Debra Cleaver here, founder of Vote.org. I am ready to answer all of your questions about voting in the US, as long as they are non-partisan. Partisan questions should be directed to your local political party. I'm especially keen to talk about ways we can use technology to modernize the election process. My current focus is how we can use electronic signatures to roll out online voter registration in states that don't have it, and for people who don't have driver's licenses.
  • sethbannon 10y ago
    Hey Debra, Thanks for everything you're doing to increase participation in our democracy! I know it's a bit far-sighted, but would love to hear your thoughts on electronic voting. Is it feasible? Desirable? What do we need to get there?
    • debracleaver 10y ago
      seth, it's feasible, but not with existing technology. i'm off-hand, somewhat flippant rule of thumb is that this isn't something we can realistically discuss until we can go a single week without a major security breach. right now breaches are so common that they barely merit a news mention. once we're there in terms of security, however, i am confident that we will see a radical increase in voter turnout.
      • ohitsdom 10y ago
        I get that security is a major, major concern but scanning headlines seems like a really poor metric for deciding when technology is "ready". There will always be bad/rushed/under-staffed developers and bad business decisions that lead to security breaches. That doesn't mean existing technology isn't capable of being secure.
        • debracleaver 10y ago
          we agree 100%. technology is capable of being secure, it just isn't secure yet. think of the stakes here. if a 16 year old hacker working out of his mother's basement in belarus could change the outcome of the US presidential election, we'd all be farked.
    • Techbrunch 10y ago
      Anyone interested in electronic voting, I would suggest reading the article: Internet Voting: A Requiem for the Dream in the last issue of Phrack. It was eye opening for me. http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article
  • dak1 10y ago
    Hi Debra, Is your organization focused only on general elections, or on primaries as well? I couldn't find any information about primary elections on your site, even though many of the most consequential decisions are made then, when voter turnout is at its lowest.
    • mordocai 10y ago
      Not debra, but I would think that would fall under "partisan"
      • dak1 10y ago
        I can think of non-partisan objectives, like pushing for open primaries in all States, and allowing for same day registration.
      • logfromblammo 10y ago
        Not all primaries are partisan. As a non-Republican, non-Democrat, when I voted in the last primary, there was exactly one referendum on my ballot, and nothing else. I was also the only person on the nonpartisan register at that time of the morning. They had to crack open the shrink-wrap on the ballots just for me. I imagine that not many other people would bother to drag themselves in to the polling place for that one issue, were they not also choosing candidates for one party or the other.
      • maxerickson 10y ago
        The fact that the parties have privileged access to the ballot is arguably not a partisan issue. In many places, the support of a recognized party dramatically lowers the requirements for getting on the ballot. In my state, by as much as a factor of 3: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_political_candidates_in_Michigan https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_polit...
  • xiphias 10y ago
    Hey Debra, have you thought of open sourcing the voting backend so that cryptography and security experts can help to make sure that the votes are fair? Also technology is good enough to be able to prove cryptographically the number of voters and to prove that a signature was taken to account. There are many ways to do this, but a professional cryptographer is the best to help in designing a system like this, not me.
    • debracleaver 10y ago
      hey xiphias: we help people register, not actually vote, so we're pretty confident in the security. we're always looking for hackers to try to break it however. want to help out?
  • labster 10y ago
    Debra, how would you feel about an Australian-style fine for failure to vote here in the U.S.? I assume Vote.org work primarily on technological ways to promote voting, but will it also deal with social structural or institutional ways to increase voter turnout?
    • debracleaver 10y ago
      labster, compulsory voting would be amazing in the US. i might be in the minority here, but i consider voting a duty, not a right per se.
      • nommm-nommm 10y ago
        Amazing for who exactly?
        • notahacker 10y ago
          The people collecting the fines, and possibly the None of the Above Party
      • bobwaycott 10y ago
        It's pretty sad to see your statement downvoted. I, too, consider voting to be both a duty and right of citizenship, and wish more people felt the same.
        • icebraining 10y ago
          One may consider it an ethical duty without agreeing that it should involve coercion. And in the end, you can force people to put a piece of paper in a box every few years, but you can't force them to care about what they're doing.
      • hackuser 10y ago
        > i consider voting a duty, not a right per se. Could you clarify? It's somewhat shocking to hear the Vote.org representative say voting is not a right in the U.S.
  • strommen 10y ago
    Do you know of studies or other hard data that tracks _why_ people don't vote? The article claims it is the difficulty of the process, but I would have guessed the top reason is voter apathy (which isn't really a technology issue). Here's one thing technology could help with: identify which polling places are facing long delays on Election Day, so additional resources can be allocated to speed them up. Without being "partisan", I've noticed that areas with lots of college students and minorities tend to have much longer delays than affluent mainly-white areas (I wonder why that is...)
    • debracleaver 10y ago
      oh sure. there are a wealth of studies out there. it's hard to say why any particular person doesn't vote, but there are some trends that show when voting is easier, more people vote. Colorado, Washington and Oregon all moved toward vote-by-mail systems, in which a ballot is automatically mailed to a voter's house, and saw an immediate increase in voter turnout. Honestly, I'm waited to see the outcome of Oregon's automatic voter registration efforts on turnout. My guess is that Oregon will continue to lead the way with high turnout. I could be wrong, of course, but there's nothing that suggests that making voting easier would decrease turnout.
      • pjc50 10y ago
        The UK increased postal voting, and found greatly increased fraud: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26520836 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26520836 I'd be concerned that some of the increased turnout aren't real voters...
        • tehwebguy 10y ago
          That article is just the opinion of Richard Mawrey QC. Here is the Electoral Fraud Review report from the Electoral Commission in 2014. Mawrey seems to strongly disagree with the findings of the report. http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/164609/Electoral-fraud-review-final-report.pdf http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file...
  • nickff 10y ago
    Hi Debra, Why do you want to increase turnout? Have you read some of the work on voter ignorance, which shows that voters have very little political knowledge, and are deeply influenced by various biases? This work shows that non-voters are have even worse prejudices and are less knowledgable than voters; how would getting these people to the polls help?[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter
    • whamlastxmas 10y ago
      Why should their prejudices/biases not be represented? I mean, I personally probably disagree with them, but disagreement is sort of the reason for having voting.
      • nickff 10y ago
        The evidence shows that these uninformed and biased non-voters would take different views on a variety of important issues if they were less biased and more informed. Essentially, the voters represent the 'enlightened' views of the citizenry.
        • whamlastxmas 10y ago
          >more informed by who, and in what way? Arguably the issue is people are informed, just by misleading information. Whether it be CNN, Fox News, reddit, or the Drudge Deport - they all have their own bias. By asking people be more informed, you're really just adding to their own bias and prejudices with the biases of a larger group of people. People tend to gravitate towards information sources that reaffirm their existing beliefs.
          • nickff 10y ago
            There is a great deal of statistical work that compares what people think and believe. Some of these works try to 'correct' for wealth and education, then measure the gap between the views of certain groups and what their view would be if they were more well educated. Other studies compare what people say in response to survey questions to objective truths, i.e. what are the branches of the US Government, who is the president, who is the chief justice of the supreme court. If you would like more information on how voters and non-voters differ, I suggest that you read some of the work on the subject; I cannot brief you on the subject in a few Hacker News posts, as there is simply too much information. Citizens (, especially non-voters,) are ill-informed, biased, and lack any incentive to scrutinize their views, as the only change that could come about would be a painful realization that they have been wrong (which nobody wants). If you want to read a very revealing and well-written exposition on this subject, I recommend "The God that Failed" (edited by Crossman).[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed
  • ruthienachmany 10y ago
    What is your go to answer to people who say they don't vote because in the state they vote in, they believe the candidate they want to win will be elected without them making the effort of going to vote? I have a few I generally go with, but curious what you tend to use.
    • PhasmaFelis 10y ago
      Also the reverse, where you believe the candidate you want will lose and there's nothing you can do about it.
    • Lukeas14 10y ago
      Every election is about much more than just the presidency. There's always state/local elections, propositions and ballot measures. And these will often have a much more direct affect on you than the President of the U.S. Most local ballot measures aren't unanimous and the results are usually much closer to 50/50, otherwise the city council would've passed it already. So even if you're a Republican in California your vote will absolutely still count for something.
    • hackuser 10y ago
      > What is your go to answer to people who say they don't vote because in the state they vote in, they believe the candidate they want to win will be elected without them making the effort of going to vote? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11715896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11715896
  • laxatives 10y ago
    Maybe this is or isn't non-partisan, but here's a shot: I'm 25 years old. I've never voted and never will vote as long as there is a two party system. There has never been a situation where I can agree with either party or individual enough to support them in an election. How do you intend to get people like me to vote? Also, if you did you get everyone to vote, wouldn't every vote turn in to a popularity contest? In other words, why wouldn't every candidate attempt to win their elections by appealing to the lowest common denominator?
    • sqeaky 10y ago
      People like you are quite rare. Most people will vote for the lesser of two evils once they hit some level of disgust. If you read their methodology, they are trying to reach a large group first. I seems someone as rare as you doesn't matter when thousands of easy votes are still out there. Even then they may fix something else on the way to voter turnout of 80% or 90% that may be appealing to you.
    • Retric 10y ago
      Voting for 3rd party's often has a larger impact than voting for the top 2 party's. Remember in a 2 party system each side wants to minimize the perceived differences. But, if a 3rd party gains support one of the major party's will generally add those ideas to the platform. Most recently is probably Libertarian > Tea Party. Not that they really had much impact, but people paid lip-service to the ideas.
      • hackuser 10y ago
        > Remember in a 2 party system each side wants to minimize the perceived differences. I don't know that I agree. In practice, it's hardly happening (look at the Republicans and Democrats; at Trump and Clinton), and I don't see why it would happen.
        • Retric 10y ago
          Trump and Clinton are basically still at the primary stage where people have actual choices. You can expect a push to center fairly soon. They don't want to give voters issue whiplash so they generally transition though to more centrist message. Ideally candidates want to avoid alienating their base, but they also can't pick up more voters by pandering to them. So, everyone tries to appeal to independents and not energize their opponents base. The other strategy to to fight dirty which tends to suppress voter turnout, but that can easily backfire in a presidential election. This also often results in coded language. Which lets you target messages to people that care about an issue without generally annoying other people.
  • cloudjacker 10y ago
    I read this article and I still don't see the "why". It says "because there are big problems people want changed", this doesn't answer why you want to increase voter turnout. For example, in America, the will of the people only influences change when it coincidentally is aligned with special interest will. Every other time special interests are more influential than the voting public. This would undermine a theory that voter turnout is even a solution.
    • hnamazon123 10y ago
      The successes of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump would seem to contradict your thesis.
      • cloudjacker 10y ago
        It doesn't contradict the thesis.
        • hnamazon123 10y ago
          I suppose the lizard people do in fact support Sanders and Trump.
      • LionessLover 10y ago
        It only changes WHO is elected, not what's going to happen. Which thus far only is fantasy and speculation. I remember the last time that happened - before Obama. How much "change" did we see? And please - it does not matter if one thinks "it's all the Republicans' fault", assigning blame does not change what the outcome was (is).
    • burkaman 10y ago
      Is it at all possible that the will of the people could influence change more often if more people were involved?
      • cloudjacker 10y ago
  • cloudjacker 10y ago
    As someone that is pretty content lobbying or going directly to a regulator to change a law, than through Congress or a local representative Why do you think voter turnout is even worth spending energy on. Lobbying is way more likely to get your way and only marginally less passive. When Google got the FAA to change a regulation regarding blimps and skydiving, they didn't wait for the next Senate vote to put in their politicians, to nominate a more amenable chairman. They simply said "lets do it this way" to the FAA. Its cute that people fought for the popular vote. But just cute.
  • funkyy 10y ago
    Hi Debra, is there any information on who donated to your cause, what institutions and personas? Are you funded by some pro-democracy circles?
  • koolba 10y ago
    How'd you get such an awesome domain?
    • debracleaver 10y ago
      Ok, don't laugh: I did a whois search, got the owner's contact info and sent an email. We spent the better part of a year discussing the sale. Both political parties had tried to buy it from him in years past. Ultimately he sold it to me because we are fiercely nonpartisan.
      • judah 10y ago
        FWIW, I appreciate the non-partisan stance.
  • mc32 10y ago
    Could voting be "improved" if instead of higher turnout with the same outcome the focus was on informing voters on the issues better? In other words, rather than let's say getting 100 yeas to 80 nays versus 1000 yeas vs 800 nays, on an issue, might it not be better to get 95 nays vs 85 yays on a material issue?
  • sayhar 10y ago
    Debra -- you're awesome. Thanks for doing this. (And congrats on getting into YC!?) Question for you -- you famously have run the predecessor organization to Vote.org on a shoestring budget. Do you have tips on how to interact with "software volunteers" who want to help on civic projects like this?
  • Animats 10y ago
    Well, first you have to make your site work. Your site says that I'm not registered to vote in San Mateo County, California. But San Mateo County's site, "https://www.shapethefuture.org/MyElectionMaterials/default.asp" https://www.shapethefuture.org/MyElectionMaterials/default.a..., says that I am. Also, you collected my email address. That's mandatory before you do the registration check. Why? I don't want to be "onboarded", and if I was, I want to be "offboarded". I just wrote to "info@vote.com" about that. From your terms: We may use Personal Information: To send you informational communications that we believe may be of interest to you. To send you marketing communications that we believe may be of interest to you. ... We may use Flash LSOs and other technologies to, among other things, collect and store information about your use of the Services. So this is really about building a mailing list you can spam, while tracking users to collect their behavior patterns. FAIL
    • debracleaver 10y ago
      if by spam you mean send election reminders, then yes, we are spammers. we're a 501c3 nonprofit. that means we don't profit off of our work unless helping to build a healthy democracy can be considered profit. also, we use a third-party database to power that tool. this probably won't shock you, but aggregating and normalizing voter roll data from 10,000+ election jurisdictions is messy and hard. there will always be the occasional false negative, which is why we encourage you to check again with your state if you think we're incorrect. as for the privacy policy: it's too heavy on the legalese. our law firm wrote it ages ago, and we haven't had time to update it. we're not spammers. we're election reformers
      • hackuser 10y ago
        > we're not spammers. we're election reformers I support what you do. However, that comment's blase-looking dismissal of privacy and spam concerns, rather than a serious attempt to address them, doesn't give me good feelings or confidence.
      • maxerickson 10y ago
        I went and looked up the 990s for Long Distance Voter and you are manifestly not drawing a large salary, but it's quite possible for a 501c3 nonprofit to be a pretty swell deal for the people operating it, even if they have to pay income taxes on all the benefits they receive from the work. Which I apologize for not finding a more elegant way to phrase it, but the distinction between dividends, capital gains and ordinary income is not really that interesting, it's a detail of taxation.
  • joshdotsmith 10y ago
    Hi Debra! Thanks for the hard work on Vote.org. Have you thought about efforts to open up access to a nationalized voter file? As it stands right now, a one-time snapshot of all 50 states would cost approximately $144,000. This makes it difficult for get out the vote efforts, and for efforts to identify registration irregularities. Also, have you thought about open sourcing your work at all? I know there are a large number of developers ready and willing to help efforts like this, particularly for a non-profit like yours.
  • davekinkead 10y ago
    Hi Debra - (longish) question about the white labelling aspect of vote.org: It seems like the implied value of vote.org is that increasing voter turnout can make democracy 'better' by making it more representative. This can only happen however, if the increase in or delta from voter turnout is itself representative of the community at large. If the increase in turnout is only from the extreme of one end of the political spectrum, then that doesn't seem to help democracy. But if you are white labelling vote.org, then the organisations that use it will be far from partisan and therefore the delta from voter turnout wont be representative. So if vote.org is used primarily by one side of politics, how does this help democracy? (assuming you can't show that side of politics is objectively better) And if vote.org is used equally by all sides of politics, how does the increased voter turnout change anything?
  • csharpminor 10y ago
    This is fantastic! Just wondering, how does Vote.org compare/contrast to TurboVote (https://turbovote.org/ https://turbovote.org/)?
  • beatpanda 10y ago
    I think this is a great project, but I don't think it will work without a strong political analysis -- that is, the installation of roadblocks to voting is an intentional political act. How do you intend to get states that are intent on suppressing the vote from certain populations to adopt technology that would make it easier to vote?
• estrabd 10y ago
  Any idea about what the political ideologies of the full 100% looks like? It's bound to be vastly different that the low percentage that turns out.
  • rhino369 10y ago
    I have no idea myself, but I think we can guess based on the fact that democrats generally want more turnout and republicans generally want less turn out. That suggests that democrats and republicans generally agree that the 100% would benefit democrats.
    • debracleaver 10y ago
      i tend to think more in terms of progressives and conservatives than dems vs. republicans. given the demographic makeup of our country, the majority of citizens are progressive: they assume that the future is brighter than the past and long for forward thinking policies. then again, i can't see into a crystal ball. i will say this, however: both major parties would have policies that represent the will of the people if we had 100% voter turnout. we'd see greater satisfaction with government and a more equitable taxation system with increased turnout. i also think we'd see higher investment in education and health care.
      • rayvd 10y ago
        ... and I'd argue that the progressive ideas tend to actually be more regressive and that us 'conservatives' actually have the brighter outlook. :)
        • debracleaver 10y ago
          oh, interesting. i guess i know doom and gloom people from both sides of the aisle, but more from the conservative side? at the same time, americans are overwhelming positive as a people, are we not? why get up every day if you don't think the future is bright enough to justify shades. (yes, i just made a corey hart reference in public. i think i just dated myself)
• bpodgursky 10y ago
  I'd rather have 100% turnout by the 10% who are actually informed about the issues and candidates.
  • debracleaver 10y ago
    who decides if someone is informed enough? will their be a test? if so, we're treading dangerously into the jim crow era of american voting, and i don't think either one of us would be comfortable with that.
    • jqm 10y ago
      Each potential voter decides if they are informed enough. Or at least interested enough. And the two probably go together.
      • Retric 10y ago
        I find more informed people are often less motivated to vote.
        • michaelkeenan 10y ago
          According to the sidebar in the Wikipedia article on voter turnout[1], increasing education leads to increasing likelihood to vote. 38% - No high school 43% - Some high school 57% - High school graduate 66% - Some college 79% - College grad 84% - Post-graduate Though, possibly, being educated isn't the same thing as being informed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#Socio-economic_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#Socio-economic_f...
          • Retric 10y ago
            There are barriers to voting that tend to crop up the less white collar your job. One sad issue is lines tend to be vastly longer in poor areas.
  • 10y ago
• boona 10y ago
  To know why this is a bad idea, you might want to watch this video titled The Myth of the Rational Voter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKANfuq_92U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKANfuq_92U.
  • dominotw 10y ago
    They want voting process to be as painful as possible. That is on purpose.
• swalsh 10y ago
  I've always thought that online voting could be made MORE secure than traditional systems. If you combine cryptography with more traditional layers. It can also be anonymous. Take an existing online registration, allow a user to login, and "create a password". Take the password, hash it with the users registration id, and a salt, and that becomes the id for a ballot. Now a user can always login, and view their existing vote (as long as they remember their password) however no outside or inside user could directly link a ballot with a voter. In addition, allow all online votes, and registered users (who voted) to be instantly publicly accessible via API by 3rd party non government organizations so that all results can be monitored. The hashing algorithm can be the same used by any traditional password system.
  • debracleaver 10y ago
    my general take on this is that we are ready to go with online voting when it is as secure as paper based voting. honestly, we're not there yet, but it is something i expect to see in the relatively near future.
    • dexterdog 10y ago
      How is this not more secure? This actually has a chance at being an accurate vote count while we know that the current system can never be accurate.
      • PeCaN 10y ago
        Let me know when we go a week without a security breach, and I'll let you know when online voting can be secure.
        • dexterdog 10y ago
          How has the track record on old fashioned voting been? Do we require a perfect replacement or a better one?
          • 10y ago
• masudhossain 10y ago
  If someone were to vote on your website, how long would it take? One of the main reasons why people don't vote is not being informed enough. Let's be honest, we hate the media and a lot of people don't know WHAT to believe anymore. So do you have any plans on educating the people to think more logically and look at statistics for example when choosing to vote? Of course I'm not suggesting you to have any bias towards any candidates, but rather educate the people on what they vote for.
  • debracleaver 10y ago
    you can't vote on our website, but you can receive help registering to vote, checking your status, and getting your absentee ballot. we focus on the nuts and bolts of voting, but there are so many great orgs out there who work on voter education.
• redthrowaway 10y ago
  Not to sound elitist, but is that really a good thing? What sorts of people are going to be simultaneously not motivated to vote, and good at picking the best candidate?
  • wang_li 10y ago
    I think that's the point. Low information voters can be easily swayed by the free candy party.
  • debracleaver 10y ago
    very few non-voters are unmotivated to vote. voters are far more likely to not cast ballots because voting is too hard.
    • JonFish85 10y ago
      Really? Is that based on evidence, or just a gut feeling? My gut feeling would have been the opposite: people are too lazy and have a general feeling of "it wouldn't matter anyways, I'm only one vote".
    • giancarlostoro 10y ago
      Or in other cases they feel the candidates are not worth their salt. I know a number of people who feel this way.
    • fotbr 10y ago
      I refuse to participate in a process I know from personal experience to be corrupt at the local level. When the people responsible for investigating are the same people responsible for the illegal acts and the state and federal agencies tasked with enforcement won't even take the complaint -- well, there's nothing that's going to convince me that there is any hope for this county's process. In 2004, our ballots had the presidential candidates as the first item. I personally witnessed ballots being sorted at the polling location and placed in different boxes based on that first item. The boxes were identifiable as to which was which ("GWB","JK" and "AO" - all others), placed into the back of a sheriff's car, and driven to the election board's office. The "GWB" box remained in the back seat of the car while the "JK" and "AO" boxes were taken in to the office to be counted. Since I wasn't blessed as an "official" observer, I was not allowed inside. The "GWB" box was never counted, driven back to the Sheriff's office, and was discarded in their dumpster, locked and unopened. Anyone in that particular batch who voted for GWB had their votes, not just for president, but for congressional office and local issues, thrown out. Every single official -- county, state, and fed -- I tried to report the issue to responded with some variation of "mistakes happen, it's not an issue we're going to look into". Party officials didn't care -- D's votes got counted, R's didn't care because the D's had solidly carried that county for decades and more-or-less written the county off, and no one else had the manpower to do anything about it. My vote (in the AO category that time around) was counted, or at least made it inside to be counted, but it still bothers me that things are so corrupt that there isn't even an attempt to hide the corruption. Fix the absolutely blatant corruption, and I might, possibly, be motivated to vote. I don't mean charging people with little misdemeanors and letting them plead out to fines. I want to see felony charges and jail time for those participating, furthering, and knowingly benefiting from the systemic abuse of our election processes.
• seomis 10y ago
  To those commenting with some variation of "only informed citizens should vote," pause and consider how much overlap there is with your idea of what an "informed" voter is with race/class lines. You may be unwittingly (or wittingly in some cases?) insisting that voters in the US should be, disproportionately, wealthier whites.
  • debracleaver 10y ago
    how do i vote this up roughly 1,000,000 times? does that happen here or is that only a reddit thing (please excuse my ignorance -- i try to spend very little time in online comment threads and a lot of time working on vote.org)
    • choward 10y ago
      So let me get this straight, you are trying to encourage people to vote but think your vote here on hacker news should be worth 1,000,000 times more than others?
    • hackuser 10y ago
      > does that happen here or is that only a reddit thing Each registered user can upvote each comment once; with a little accumulated track record, they alternatively can downvote once. Soliciting upvotes, etc. is against guidelines and generally not done. Talking about voting, rather than the subject at hand, is generally frowned upon. So, more importantly, why do you support this comment so strongly?
  • logfromblammo 10y ago
    Studies on statistical aggregations often show that a crowd can make a better guess collectively than any individual member. If you ask a crowd to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar, the people who are the worst overestimaters and underestimaters tend to cancel one another out, and the mean and median of all responses will be shockingly close to the actual numeric value. Therefore, my hypothesis is that reaching 100% voter turnout will be more beneficial per unit cost than any attempt to "inform" the citizenry already most likely to vote. Here is a thought experiment. 20% of voters are knowledgeable about a subject, and vote accordingly. 80% vote based on a coin flip. How do the random voters harm the outcome of the vote? They add noise to the result, certainly. But if the signal from knowledgeable voters is unable to overcome the random noise, how certain can you really be that those people are correct? Is it at all important to know what percentage of all voters cared enough about the subject to self-inform, rather than just trust their lucky voting coin? Outside a hypothetical, people are very rarely entirely ignorant of a subject. Even if they know only one true thing about it, when they vote based on that thing, it is incorporated into the statistical aggregate, and therefore influences the final result in some small way. If you restrict the vote to knowing certain things, only those things end up influencing the final result, and you can therefore bias the result by changing the test criteria.
• ck2 10y ago
  Wouldn't insisting on motor-voter take it to near 90% ? Most states refusing motor-voter are controlled by the hard right. Sure hope there is a plan to fund 100% more voting locations and booths. Because Republicans have figured out a great way to kill voting when they simply just have to give in and let people vote is to defund voting locations. Unless the plan is to just have everyone vote absentee but that allows for votes to be "lost".
  • debracleaver 10y ago
    We need to go beyond Motor Voter IMHO. The DMV was not built to be the foundation on which democracy rests. Also, a surprising number of Americans don't have driver's licenses.
  • atria 10y ago
    Perhaps that has something to do with people who aren't supposed to vote, who's demographics skew to the left side of the political spectrum: - Foreign citizens with drivers licenses - Permanent residents with drivers licenses - Felons with drivers licenses - Drivers under the voting age of majority - Non-naturalized immigrants with drivers licenses.
    • debracleaver 10y ago
      ok, let's keep this simple: until having a drivers license is a requirement to vote in this country, let's not rely on driver's licenses as a requirement for voting. the DMV was not built to administer elections. that's what local election offices are for
• ausjke 10y ago
  whenever a local election comes up, the first thing I want to know is that who are running for what, and what's their key difference and if available, track records. A quick comparison chart/table will serve the purpose but I rarely if ever found that, hope someone will create a website like that for all, so voters can know the quick-facts before voting relatively easily.
  • ausjke 10y ago
    Actually I might do this myself, even some static html pages are better than nothing
  • dexterdog 10y ago
    My policy is when in doubt vote for the non-incumbent.
    • burkaman 10y ago
      Ok, but wouldn't it be nice if usually you weren't in doubt, because there was a really easy way to educate yourself on all the candidates?
      • dexterdog 10y ago
        There are plenty of ways, but you should still have doubt. Take the two people running for the big seat right now. They're both saying what they need to say to get the biggest base. How does listening to what they say in this crap-storm educate me as a voter?
        • burkaman 10y ago
          If you don't think listening to the candidates is useful then I guess I can't help you.
  • cpeterso 10y ago
    http://www.smartvoter.org/ http://www.smartvoter.org/ gathers pretty good, non-partisan comparisons of candidate information and ballot measure arguments.
• jimrandomh 10y ago
  There's a very important reason to do this which no one has brought up. US elections have a lot of vote-suppression shenanigans; in some noteworthy cases (including the 2000 Presidential election), fraudulently removing voter registrations, understaffing and obstructing poll locations changed the outcome. This sort of thing becomes much more difficult to execute and much more difficult to get away with if there's an expectation of 100% turnout, as in countries which have mandatory voting; large asymmetric chunks of the population failing to reach the polls no longer look plausibly innocent. I think mandatory voting is worth having for that reason alone, in addition to the other reasons.
  • debracleaver 10y ago
    Jim, shenanigans is the word that comes to mind for me as well. I've yet to meet this mythical "apathetic American" that people talk about, but I've met tons of people who were prevented from voting by administrative incompetence (at best) and what appeared to be deliberate attempts to prevent citizens from casting ballots. Here's an fun example: 7 out of 9 of the states that were prohibited from changing their voting laws under the VRA of 1965 immediately passed restrictive laws once the VRA was gutted.
    • nommm-nommm 10y ago
      >I've yet to meet this mythical "apathetic American" that people talk about Well now you have.
    • lotharbot 10y ago
      I've met plenty of people who don't vote for reasons of apathy. Especially in midterms. I also have one friend who always casts a blank ballot, as a matter o principle.
    • jeremyt 10y ago
      You've never met an American apathetic about voting? Are you from a foreign country?
    • hackuser 10y ago
• lujim 10y ago
  Hi Debra, I've always been skeptical of these kind of "rock the vote" initiatives because I believe they motivated not by a overall altruistic love of democracy, but a motivation to sway elections towards the organizations favored political party. What are your thoughts?
  • debracleaver 10y ago
    I've worked with RTV for years and have nothing but great things to say about them. They, like Vote.org, are nonpartisan. I can speak to our motivations, however: we want to see 100% voter turnout and don't give a flying fig who you vote for, as long as you vote. We've been criticized by both sides of the aisle for not appearing to have a political stance, but fuck it: voter turnout is too important to waste time on partisan games.
    • nommm-nommm 10y ago
      Why? Why do you personally care what I do? Why do you think forcing someone to do something against their will is to be desired? What do you get from it? Make voting easier and accessible for those who want to vote? Sure, great. Coerce and force those who choose to opt out? Unacceptable and unamerica.
• klue07 10y ago
  Recent phrack had an article on Internet voting for those interested. http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article
• jjtheblunt 10y ago
  Why stop at 100%? Chicago supposedly has gone far beyond before.
  • debracleaver 10y ago
    i just laughed aloud at this. gold star for humor.
  • DrScump 10y ago
    It's not exactly 100%; there are dozens of dead people who don't vote.
• jakeogh 10y ago
  Computerphile: Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
  • burkaman 10y ago
    This is about voter registration, it has nothing to do with electronic voting.
    • jakeogh 10y ago
      I realize that, but all to often bad ideas are implemented incrementally. Online registration is an obvious step along the way. Next up: Internet ID (for "secure" online registration).
      • burkaman 10y ago
        Well there are a bunch of comments from Debra Cleaver in this thread that make it clear that she doesn't trust online voting yet. But yes, this is an obvious step along the way. Eventually we will get to a point where online voting is practical and safer than physical voting.
        • jakeogh 10y ago
          That's the point, it wont be safer. Software and it's hardware are inherently buggy (or worse) and that's not going to change any time soon. Hand counted paper ballots are by far the safest. http://www.handcountedpaperballots.org/documents/requirements.html http://www.handcountedpaperballots.org/documents/requirement...
          • burkaman 10y ago
            But eventually, it will. I don't think we really disagree here, unless you think that widespread online registration will somehow cause online voting to inevitable happen too early. We tried electronic voting already, it didn't work very well, most states stopped doing it. When the technology gets better we will try again. Self-driving cars recently became a safe idea even though software is inherently buggy. Someday the same will be true for voting.
• igorgue 10y ago
  I have a theory that since that the USA doesn't make election day a federal holiday is one of the major factors the working class of america is not voting, usually it takes too long to vote, and it's not paid for employees, especially blue collar ones. I wonder what are your thoughts about it, and how can it happen in America? I've seen every single proposal be rejected in congress.
  • izacus 10y ago
    Hmm, here the elections are on sundays because of that. USA votes on workdays?
    • cag_ii 10y ago
      No one works on Sundays where you are?
      • lostmypassword2 10y ago
        Plenty of people work on Sundays. Where are you?
        • deleted 10y ago
          [deleted]
      • izacus 10y ago
        Hmm, where did you get the idea of noone working? Most people don't work on sundays, but some of course do. Because vast majority of population doesn't work, this makes elections more accessible.
    • igorgue 10y ago
      That's EXACTLY my point, I'm from the "third world" and our election is on a Sunday and Monday is off for everyone, elections are a celebration, it should be a very important moment to everyone, enough to get so drunk the day after :-). It's so confusing living in the USA and looking at so much justified apathy for the political environment. What people here would never understand (and this is due being mostly white nerdy dudes here) is that it's so hard to get time off work when you're a blue collar guy, and even though it's paid off in some states (California for example pays for 2 hours of work that day) it's not enough. And it's stated by many companies that your work is more important, especially since nobody goes to vote anyways. I work at a startup and nobody went to vote, everyone has work to do. I cannot skip a "lunch meeting" cause I don't have "lunch meetings". And finally, I don't want to keep beating the dead horse but whatever, Bernie Sanders reintroduced the concept and hasn't being enacted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Day_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Day_(United_States)
• pjc50 10y ago
  I recently realised that one big advantage of compulsory voting is that it completely kills attempts to suppress voter registration or differential turnout. How do you plan on dealing with voter suppression and gerrymandering?
  • notahacker 10y ago
    If you make voting compulsory for registered voters, you end up further suppressing voter registration (specifically suppressing registration of those in situations which leave them disproportionately unlikely to be able to get to vote and poor enough to see the fines as an issue) If you ensure all voters are registered, then making the voting compulsory is redundant. There is no advantage to compulsory voting, unless you believe that democracy is enhanced by diluting the votes of those with a preference for a particular representative with those that don't care.
    • tangent128 10y ago
      Compulsory voting's advantage is giving people an excuse to vote. If you are legally obligated to show up at the voting booth, even if you elect to spoil your ballot at that point, your employer can't fire you for taking off work to do so.
      • notahacker 10y ago
        A public holiday would be a far less authoritarian way of achieving the same end. Postal ballots and the option of extending voting hours also exist. And frankly, if people are at risk of being fired for taking time out to vote, the problem is that employment law allows people to be fired for voting, not that electoral law doesn't compel them to choose between the risk of being fired or the certainty of being fined.
    • pjc50 10y ago
      The Australian system makes registration compulsory as well. Quite a few places have compulsory registration and optional voting.
• nxzero 10y ago
  100% voter turnout assumes that not voting is a not an meaningful expression of someone's right to vote. Unless there's option to express this within the voting system, there will always be voters that don't vote. Second, if it's safe enough to bank and file taxes online, it safe enough to at least take an unofficial, but publicly published count online; people could for example update their vote during the run up to the official election. Some countries have had penalties for not voting. Unclear if this helps, or hurts, the system.
  • erispoe 10y ago
    Tax errors can, and are, routinely corrected. There's an error tolerance for taxes that is way, way higher than for voting. What if you realize three months after the fact that your taxes are off? Might be a big problem, but not as big a realizing three months after the fact that election results are wrong.
• atria 10y ago
  This is a worthy goal, but is it a good thing to have 100% voter turnout? Every direct democracy has failed since the time of Socrates. After several generations, direct democracies turn into a mob with the majority voting themselves benefits while minorities become permanently disenfranchised. At least voter disinterest allows minorities the possibility of voting as a block and gaining influence in off-year elections. In my opinion, sometimes too much so.
  • shifter 10y ago
    In a similar vein, Andrew Sullivan's article on this year's US election is a fantastic read: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny...
• nxzero 10y ago
  Unlikely, given that many states have an absentee voting option, polls are long enough in a day that if someone really wanted to vote they would, etc. Also heard it's the time of the year, but fact is that there's only so far that you're able to go before you corrupt or bias the system.
• baron816 10y ago
  The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about. Plus, no individual vote matters. This all has to do with our winner-take-all elections. Countries with proportional representation have much higher voter turnout rates (often in the 80-90% range). That's because you get to vote for the person or party you want, and they'll at least still get a seat in government even if they're just in the opposition. But you still have an incentive to get out and vote and make their position stronger. There are no lost causes or strategic voting.
  • JacobJans 10y ago
    One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters. There are so many elections that have a direct impact on your life that you can participate in – state, city, and county election. These are not generally very partisan. Sadly, local elections often don't have enough options simply because there aren't enough politicians standing for election.
    • dragonwriter 10y ago
      > One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters. The problems with the electoral system effect all offices which are elected by either plurality or majority/runoff, not just those for Presidential electors. This includes all members of Congress, most Governors and statewide elected officials, most state legislators, most mayors and other elected local executive officers, and the many city and county legislative officers (city council, county supervisors, etc.) that are elected in single-member districts. There's some of the latter that are elected in vote for N and the top N win elections, which tend to provide slightly more choice, but still less choice (and less effective democratic representation of the choices made) than proportional election.
    • hackuser 10y ago
      > One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters. I haven't seen this suggested in the media.
• partiallypro 10y ago
  Not everyone should vote. This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but democracy only works with informed citizens. If you have a bunch of people that are not informed on the issue voting you're probably going to have an outcome that is awful. If you think politicians are bad now, just wait until the populists have the uninformed voting in high numbers (hey, that sounds familiar this year.) To me, if you don't care enough to take time to vote as it is, you probably don't know the issues, and you probably shouldn't vote. Or maybe you do know the issues, and that's why you're not voting. There are some cases where this is not true, such as someone having a weird shift; but that's what early voting is for, and that's why most states have legal paid time off for voting (up to 3 hours.) There's also mail-in ballots, absentee voting, etc. Democracy isn't always a good thing, to be frank; and it's undoubtedly why the U.S. was set up as a representative democracy rather than a pure democracy.
  • ssmoot 10y ago
    > To me, if you don't care enough to take time to vote as it is, you probably don't know the issues, and you probably shouldn't vote. Or maybe you live in a state where your vote doesn't matter because it's not a swing state. Or maybe neither two-party candidate is on the right side of the issues you care most about. Don't want to go to war? Do you pick Hillary or Trump? Who knows? Want to see Criminal Justice reform? Which candidate do you pick: The one that backed mandatory minimums helping shift the scales to the prosecution and making judges largely irrelevant for a majority of cases or the "not liberal" one? Want to see domestic spying scaled back and transparency introduced? Which candidate?
    • partiallypro 10y ago
      Oh, I agree with all of that. I amended my post to mention that too. Usually I've vote for a 3rd party though, but I agree that choosing to not vote is just as legitimate as voting. I don't agree with the sentiment of "you can't complain if you didn't vote." That's total nonsense.
  • notahacker 10y ago
    One doesn't need to be "well informed" about politics to express a perfectly valid preference based on one issue that is important to them (indeed, democracy works much better if people who aren't very informed about politics in general turn up to vote en masse against a politician that proposes something that will harm their relatively uninformed demographic[1]) The real reason not everyone should vote is that it's not a good thing for people don't feel strongly enough about something to vote to deprive those that do of relative political influence. [1]a corollary of this is that variable turnout is probably a good thing (easier to discriminate against a demographic if you know that 100% will vote for the other guy regardless of how they act)
• dragonwriter 10y ago
  US voter turnout is low relative to many other modern democracies (much less compared to the ideal of 100% turnout) because the choices are poor because of the structure of the electoral system which supports only two viable parties at a time (which two has changed nationally twice in the history of the nation, and when things were more regional there were times when the two locally-viable parties included one of the national parties and one other, such as the Missouri Republican vs. Farmer-Labor period.) This is a fairly well-established effect of the electoral system, evidence through, among other things, comparative studies of modern democracies. So, what is Vote.org's plan for dealing with this, which is the fundamental problem in keeping turnout low?
• afinlayson 10y ago
  It's an easy problem to solve, just have to make incentives for politicians to get more people to vote. Oregon made it an opt out state, and made all votes be mail in ballots. Seems like an easy way to increase democracy. You could also make it so any politician's terms relative to the populations voting for him. If 50% of eligible voters vote for someone with 51% of the votes, they should only get 25.5% of the term.
• jayess 10y ago
  The right to vote also includes the right not to vote.
• marcoperaza 10y ago
  I don't agree with the stated goal of 100% turnout. As many people should turn out to vote as their are citizens who want to vote. If you're not self-motivated to vote one way or the other, with so much being on the line these days, then maybe it's better that you don't.
• smnscu 10y ago
  Related, here's Andrew Kim's reimagining of the US ballot: http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/america-elect http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/america-elect
  • occsceo 10y ago
    appears to be some progress until you scroll down to see the interview and survey results. the study is all 18-34 year olds. compare against the past 15 years of voter history age grouping on turnout/registration, not a representation of the majority of the voters. they essentially asked their 18 year old kids what car to buy for their 65 year old grand parents. "Easy, Lambo."
• ravenstine 10y ago
  Can anyone explain why everyone should vote?
  • davekinkead 10y ago
    Here are a few justifications of democracy and how increasing voter turnout would affect them: 1) Epistemic (democracy is good because it makes the correct choices). Increasing voter turnout doesn't do much because 10,000 randomly selected voters are sufficient to get the correct answers and increasing less competent voters would actually make it work. 2) Preference Satisfaction (democracy is good because it maximizes preferences). Increasing voter turnout is only beneficial if it improves the representation of voters to actual population. 3) Consent (democracy is good because we consent to it). Increasing voter turnout is only good if you deny those currently not voting are somehow not consenting. Higher voter turnouts make it easier for government to justify laws however - 'but you all voted for this!' 4) Transformational (democracy is good because participating makes us better people). Increasing voter turnout would be good regardless of how representative the new voters are of the population at large. TLDR - there are many ways to justify democracy, increasing voter turnout will be good/bad/irrelevant depending on the justification.
• samstave 10y ago
  I would like to see a security discalimer just like the one at the airport regarding if your bag has ever left your possesion: "Has anyone at any time come to you and asked you to cast a vote for them, or otherwise attempted to compromise your individual right to vote"
• williesleg 10y ago
  Aaaah, this thread. Everybody's got an agenda.
• debracleaver 10y ago
  hey all. it's been great chatting with everyone. i have to go offline for a bit to eat dinner and talk to potential partners, but happy to pick this conversation back up later tonight.
• dingo_bat 10y ago
  Why is 100% so important? There will always be a section of people who really do not care about choosing their representative. Why insist on such people voting too? In my opinion it would be a random, ill thought out vote.
• civilian 10y ago
  I want my brother to tell all of you guys about how it's not worth his time to vote. (Especially in an extreme democrat state like california-- it's unlikely that he'd be the deciding vote.) But my brother is so aware of the value of his time that he doesn't post on HN.
• inanutshellus 10y ago
  I'm likely to be flamed out of existence for saying this, but I'm against 100% voter turnout. A shocking number of people in my social circle get their political opinions by intuition. Never do they watch a debate, nor do they have any idea who the contenders are. When the primaries were running in my home state I asked several of my friends about their opinions and most of them only knew one person from each party that was even running. They were passionate about their hatred of the opposing party's most-tweeted person, and clueless about what their person's positions were, the states they were from, their voting history, their "moral fabric" as it were... Point is, screw my friends. If they only Facebook-Care(TM) about politics, they shouldn't be encouraged to vote anyway. They do not get to decide my country's fate. In fact, I want the opposite. I want a test. Step one: Name 3 people in your primary and name 3 in the opposing party's primary. Who is your party chair? Who's in the majority in the house? Who're the senate majority and minority leaders?
  • nathancahill 10y ago
    I share the same perspective, but draw a different conclusion. Instead, educate the electorate, the first step of which is reversing Citizens United. Then, make voting as easy as signing up for Facebook (whether that means online or mail-in voting). An informed, active electorate is the single most terrifying thing to the Establishment.
    • caseysoftware 10y ago
      US schools can't teach everyone to read, expecting them to be able to effectively teach complex topics that involve nuance - let alone opinions - is wishful thinking.
      • nathancahill 10y ago
        I'm not suggesting government sponsored education, rather, the absence of corporate and super PAC spending in down-ballot (and up-ballot) campaigns.
    • chimeracoder 10y ago
• duncan_bayne 10y ago
  To the vote.org people who are here - have you ever considered throwing your weight behind alternative democratic mechanisms, like sortition, for selecting representatives? This would have the effect of considering all eligible citizens for Government, thereby mitigating many of the problems with voter turnout.
• tn13 10y ago
  Why? High voter turnout is like high page visits, it does not necessarily translate into good things. Ideally people who understand political issues and see that by voting they can truly help their ideology must vote.
• programmarchy 10y ago
  Anarchist here. You can count me out. I won't be consenting to this form of government any time soon.
• Aoyagi 10y ago
  Why would you want to force people who don't have enough knowledge or interest to make an educated opinion to vote?
• rcheu 10y ago
  I feel like an easy solution is to just pay people $20 when they vote so that it's no longer an irrational decision. People will find a way to register and vote if there's a financial incentive. Part of the problem right now is that it's hard to convince someone to vote because it's not actually a rational decision. With very high probability, your voting action has no impact on your life, and it takes significant time. Make voting a rational decision, and we'd probably see more people doing it.