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I'm strongly against online voting. The problem #1 is buying and manipulation of votes. Security and/or anonymity is much smaller issue IMO. In my country, bar

• Synaesthesia 10y ago
  I think there are big opportunities here for the extension of democracy. Democracy as it stands is quite weak - technically a Polyarchy, meaning that elected officials make decisions which we ratify. This could mean citizens could participate in decision making. The same reason is why the government and many people will try to oppose it, because greater democracy is a threat to any power system. The reason why people feel disconnected from politics is by design. The rulers don't want the people to participate, they want them passive.
  • adrianN 10y ago
    Do you really want citizens participating though? I have no clue about what it takes to run a state and I'm not a lawyer and can't really read new laws. Also, I have a job and very limited free time that I don't want to spent on keeping up with new developments in politics. So my opinions are likely very biased and quite useless for the political process. Even elected officials seem to have a hard time reading all the things they vote on, letting Joe average vote on almost everything seems like a recipe for disaster to me.
    • noonespecial 10y ago
      >I'm not a lawyer and can't really read new laws... Even elected officials seem to have a hard time reading all the things they vote on... And yet you're expected to follow them. All of them. Ignorance is no excuse and lack of criminal intent is no defense. We've got a bigger problem here than how the votes are cast.
      • clamstew 10y ago
        When Austin gave its citizens the task to make a decision, they voted against uber/lyft, and now both companies have left the city. Currently feeling like we shouldn't give more voting power to citizens on everyday issues, since the media and lobbies can get people to do crazy things like give up easy cheap and safe rides.
        • tveita 10y ago
          Uber and Lyft spent millions of dollars in campaigning to make people vote in their favor according to the reports I've read. If "media and lobbies" can get people to vote in their favor, why didn't the side with the money and lobbyists win the vote?
        • pc86 10y ago
          Funny how any time a vote goes your way it's democracy, but any time it goes the other way it's "the media" and "special interests" and "lobbyists" that perverted the system. I am extremely pro-Uber, but wasn't Uber's own marketing partly to blame for the outcome of that vote?
        • throwawaysocks 10y ago
          Yeah, democracy can suck when you disagree with the majority opinion...
      • pc86 10y ago
        > Ignorance is no excuse and lack of criminal intent is no defense. For many, many crimes intent is indeed a requirement.
    • Frqy3 10y ago
      I think this issue could be overcome by a proxy/delegate style system. With the ability to change proxy/delegate at any time, we would have ongoing accountability and move away from the problems of election cycles. Even better from a representation viewpoint (but more complex from a design viewpoint) is the option to have different proxies/delegates for different decisions/topics. The real problem is balancing tradeoffs, particularly between spending and taxes. Currently (in Australia at least) the size of the expected budget defecit is a crude metric for the overall financial responsibility of the government and is a factor in elections. If citizens can vote independently for spending versus taxes, then there is nobody to hold accountable (tragedy of the commons).
      • koolba 10y ago
        > I think this issue could be overcome by a proxy/delegate style system. A proxy system should have an automatic expiration (1-month, 1-year, etc) as well.
    • mantas 10y ago
      Look up the Swiss style of democracy. They have elected officials for day-to-day tasks and frequent referendums for subjective matters. From what I saw, their referendum campaigns are great. You can make your own opinion with an hour or two of research, tops. Even with the very limited time, IMO few hours a year is worth it to be more involved with shaping your own society. Best of both worlds.
      • coredog64 10y ago
        Look up the situation in California with referendums. More direct democracy is not always wine and roses.
        • TheCoelacanth 10y ago
          Yes, for instance, Prop 13. Though it sounds good to voters, the actual results are terrible.
        • JumpCrisscross 10y ago
          Our Swiss Constitution was based on California's. We added cooling-down periods and made referendums binding to the Legislature, not directly law.
    • marcosdumay 10y ago
      > Do you really want citizens participating though? What is the alternative? Some aristocracy deciding matters without any consent from the citizens? If you get any alternative that's actually better than the citizens participating, I'd love to hear it.
      • wfo 10y ago
        That is almost exactly what we have now. I'd hope citizen participation would be an improvement but I'm not certain. Populist positions can be good, but they can also be disastrous -- look at Trump, his brand of populism preys on the most base and vile aspects of human nature: hate, bigotry and racism and he intends on enacting policies which will inarguably be horribly destructive to the very fabric of the country and arguably the world. If we had direct democracy, what makes you think we wouldn't just get more of that? A lot of the principled stands that keep the country in one piece are not widely popular.
        • marcosdumay 10y ago
          This is what we have now. We just have a saying on what lizard will rule. Do you think everybody voting for Trump would vote for his hateful policies? I'm not on the US, but it looks to me that Trump gets most of his approval from his "I'm not one of the lizards" PR. If people didn't have to get the entire package, it's very likely they would be critical of those worse parts.
  • mantas 10y ago
    I'm not sure if I'm reading your comment correctly. I totally agree we should aim towards educated and politically active society. However, educated bit should come first. Then we can start making it easier to participate. Tiering the barrier of coming to polling place won't educate people by itself.
    • mkingston 10y ago
      This comment papers over a huge problem. How educated is educated enough?
      • DMac87 10y ago
        Yeah, I'd imagine the founding fathers would see today's voting populace as quite educated, relative to theirs...
    • marcosdumay 10y ago
      How do you get those educated citizens when it's against the rulers interest?
  • openvote 10y ago
    Agreed. In 100 years people will look back at how basic our democracy had become. One choice from a selection of two, every 4 years. This dissociation with current issues is dangerous. As democracy develops and citizens start to participate, we become more responsible for our decisions.
• guard-of-terra 10y ago
  Buying votes is orthogonal to online voting. One can buy offline votes as well. If anything, online voting system can let you "change your mind" later, robbing buyer of vote they paid for.
  • mantas 10y ago
    Sure votes are bought offline too. But it's much more difficult. The people who sell votes don't care to "change their mind". They get their reward and they're happy with that. People who would bother to change their mind, don't sell their votes in the first place.
    • guard-of-terra 10y ago
      Why would it be much more difficult? The difference is "upload a photo of your ballot" versus "upload a screenshot of your vote".
      • mantas 10y ago
        The usual scheme is, buyers pick up sellers and drive them to polling places. Police is usually on the look out for cars that frequent the polling stations. Or park just around the corner. The sellers usually are homeless-ish/addicts/etc. Large amount of such people raises awareness. Sometimes approaching such people and asking what's up is enough. They don't bother to lie and just tell they sold their vote to some guy in black BMW for €xx. Now if online voting was allowed, the buyers could just take the seller's signature device and do voting himself. 100% the vote is correct. No possibility to get caught at polling station. The sellers don't hang around the polling station, thus less chance to raise awareness. In addition to that, buyers could buy the device en masse from the addicts/homeless/etc and have a ready-to-use voting farm. All in all, yes offline vote buying happens and it's not rocket science. But online vote buying would be much easier, quicker and less chances to get caught.
        • guard-of-terra 10y ago
          "could just take the seller's signature device and do voting himself" That's identity thieft, which should be punishable by a few years behind bars. Also, make those signature devices tethered to receiving whatever equivalent of Social Security payments, and addicts/homeless will not let anybody lay a finger on it.
• yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I think you've stumbled across a bigger issue - democracy is fundamentally broken since no one has any incentive to vote correctly. I know a lady who's a likely Trump voter. But she also donated money to Hillary in order to get the "woman card". https://shop.hillaryclinton.com/products/the-woman-card https://shop.hillaryclinton.com/products/the-woman-card She's pretty honest that it's just entertainment for her - like voting on American Idol. Think about how many elections have been swayed due to "I support Obama because I'm not racist", "Bush looks like a cool guy to get a beer with", "boo yeah Trump - take that liberals who look down on me", etc? (Amusingly, neither Bush nor Trump will ever get a beer with you, teetotalers both.) People get away with this because their vote doesn't matter. If they vote wrong, they won't lose anything. So why not just do what makes you feel good? You've got no skin in the game.
  • vlehto 10y ago
    I just finished reading Kant's perpetual peace. He says something like "war protects from despotism". I'm a Finn. During the cold war we we're situated right next to Leningrad, but still pretty much free-trade capitalist liberal democracy. Our country has very little corruption, very good primary education, free health care, conscription and long line of very very well liked past presidents. Everybody had skin in the game.
    • yummyfajitas 10y ago
      Suppose you vote wrong for some national socialist who will destroy the economy and kill the muslims. How much will you, personally, lose? I.e., multiply your actual losses by the probability of your vote affecting the outcome. Now compare that number to the 1 Euro worth of tribal satisfaction/self righteousness/other positive feels you get from voting for that national socialist. In contrast, consider a true "wisdom of crowds" situation. When I hold irrational views about share prices, the stock market immediately takes my money and gives it to people with rational views. Bad decisions result in immediate losses in direct proportion to how bad the decisions are.
      • vlehto 10y ago
• franciscojgo 10y ago
  I am copy pasting my article's reply for the sake of debating this. I, like you, live in a country were barely 50% of the population vote. This is exactly why I think Online voting is good for democracy. Essentially, more people will vote: I am strongly against the view of the author. I see that the majority (or a large portion) of voters are fanatics that vote based on affiliation and fanaticism, not policies nor experience. Ie. The voting numbers are largely biased towards the political fanatic crowd. I see online voting as a way to increase the number of ordinary people that vote. Getting the voting population to 80%+ or more is good for democracy. I see this as a positive. Saying Online voting is a danger to democracy is like saying autonomous cars are a danger to safety. Yes, if the autonomous system doesn't work and is made with loopholes that allow dangerous stuff, it will pose a danger. But if made to work fail-proof, it will be infinitely better. There's no point in saying something will not work if your only argument is based on the proposition that it's going to be broken before it's even used. Sure, an unsafe car is not safe. The only way to make it safe is to make sure it's safe. The only way "democratic" online voting will work is to make sure it's "democratic".
• specialist 10y ago
  Corruption and incompetence are indistinguishable. Electronic mediated systems are utterly infeasible to audit. Among other reasons, many failure modes are silent. The good standard for election administration is the Australian Ballot (private voting, public counting), administered per precinct (distributed), counted onsite when the polls close. It's observable, there's a physical chain of custody (that can be verified), it has the largest attack surface area (increases the cost of attack). On the privacy note, only the Australian Ballot preserves voter privacy while ensuring a public count is possible. Postal balloting, touchscreens, online voting all remove the secret ballot (otherwise they could not be verified).
• alanwatts 10y ago
  Most votes are already bought and manipulated by the handful of people who own the television coverage of the election, by tilting that coverage in favor of their favorite candidate.