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Increasing participation? I won't drive out of my way and queue somewhere to vote. Sure, many people think the solution to this is shaming me for not caring eno

Increasing participation? I won't drive out of my way and queue somewhere to vote. Sure, many people think the solution to this is shaming me for not caring enough about democracy, but it is obviously not working. If it were easy and safe to vote from my phone, I may be more inclined to vote.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
CrlNvl 8y ago
So this is clearly a funding problem and a date problem. I don't know what the situation is in the US, but in France it never took me (or my parents) more than 15 minutes to cast a vote. Most of the time I'm in and out within 10 minutes. Vote always happen on Sunday.
- throwawaylolx 8y ago
  >So this is clearly a funding problem and a date problem Clearly not, because I wouldn't go out on Sunday to vote unless it was on my way to do something else. It's an UX problem for me and others--the effort required is not properly compensated by the benefits I'm rewarded with for my vote as far as I'm concerned.
  - foldr 8y ago
    If you care so little about voting that you can't be bothered to go out of your house to do it, why are you even interested in increasing participation? Either voting is important, in which case you should be willing to make a small effort, or it isn't, in which case who cares if people vote or not?
    - throwawaylolx 8y ago
      Higher participation means voting is more likely to represent the population. As it is, vote results only reflect the opinions of those who considered that the benefit they gain from voting exceeds the costs, which is a biased sample and negatively affects democratic principles. Costs need to be made as negligible as possible in order to be inclusive.
      - wasdfff 8y ago
        Voting needs to be easier but also secure. A smartphone app isn’t secure. I don’t think it can ever be secure; exploiting that app to manipulate the US election would be the prize and singular goal of governments and corporations around the world. It would be much harder to manipulate physical ballots which are observed by multiple witnesses at every step of the process which is decentralized and takes place at multiple locations around the country.
        throwawaylolx 8y ago
        >Voting needs to be easier Which is why it's not a solved problem.
      - foldr 8y ago
        If higher participation is important, then why not make the effort and go out of your house and vote? I just don't follow your line of thought.
        throwawaylolx 8y ago
        Because that only raises participation by a negligible amount.
thrower123 8y ago
Would you be more inclined to educate yourself on the candidates and the issues on the ballot? If increasing voter participation is just about having more ignorant voters, or stuffing the ballot box with people from given demographics, then quite frankly, I am not in favor of it. I wouldn't qualify myself to be sufficiently educated to really vote on any of the issues I voted on yesterday, but hey, I did my civic duty and got my sticker. I don't have the foggiest idea what the difference between the two candidates for county clerk is, or what the material results of amending one sentence in the state constitution with what reads to me as different synonyms will be... I don't think that is a solvable problem. And I would be terrified of throwing smartphones into the mix, because they are just terrible (I think the iPhone has made the world a worse place, on balance...). Any API endpoint that is setup to handle the traffic is going to be attacked, and it is going to be broken; people are going to be on shitty LTE connections, and their votes aren't going to go through. The data is not going to be properly anonymized. Software is terrible, and it is going to have bugs and fuckups and gaping holes that would be horribly exposed under the stress and scale of a real election. Voting is basically a solved problem, and I don't see that piling complexity on top of it is a worthwhile endeavor. You go to your polling place, you grab the sheet of paper, you fill in the bubbles with the sharpie, you drop it in the slot. There are some simple, low-tech ways to improve things if you want; make voting day a national holiday, open more polling places, hire more people to staff them. None of that requires a boondoggle IT project.
- throwawaylolx 8y ago
  >Would you be more inclined to educate yourself on the candidates and the issues on the ballot? Yes, definitely. >Voting is basically a solved problem Not sure what's your definition of "solved problem," but, as far as I'm concerned, it's not solved if it fails people who would be inclined to vote and educate themselves on voting if it were easier to vote. >open more polling places, hire more people to staff them. That would be an alternative, especially if they could open polling place at each workplace and near each home with infinite staff. Alternatively, technology and automation could be used to scale UX, but, as you mentioned, current tech does not appear to be fit for this, which makes voting not a solved problem.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

CrlNvl 8y ago

So this is clearly a funding problem and a date problem. I don't know what the situation is in the US, but in France it never took me (or my parents) more than 15 minutes to cast a vote. Most of the time I'm in and out within 10 minutes. Vote always happen on Sunday.

throwawaylolx 8y ago
>So this is clearly a funding problem and a date problem Clearly not, because I wouldn't go out on Sunday to vote unless it was on my way to do something else. It's an UX problem for me and others--the effort required is not properly compensated by the benefits I'm rewarded with for my vote as far as I'm concerned.
- foldr 8y ago
  If you care so little about voting that you can't be bothered to go out of your house to do it, why are you even interested in increasing participation? Either voting is important, in which case you should be willing to make a small effort, or it isn't, in which case who cares if people vote or not?
  - throwawaylolx 8y ago
    Higher participation means voting is more likely to represent the population. As it is, vote results only reflect the opinions of those who considered that the benefit they gain from voting exceeds the costs, which is a biased sample and negatively affects democratic principles. Costs need to be made as negligible as possible in order to be inclusive.
    - wasdfff 8y ago
      Voting needs to be easier but also secure. A smartphone app isn’t secure. I don’t think it can ever be secure; exploiting that app to manipulate the US election would be the prize and singular goal of governments and corporations around the world. It would be much harder to manipulate physical ballots which are observed by multiple witnesses at every step of the process which is decentralized and takes place at multiple locations around the country.
      - throwawaylolx 8y ago
        >Voting needs to be easier Which is why it's not a solved problem.
    - foldr 8y ago
      If higher participation is important, then why not make the effort and go out of your house and vote? I just don't follow your line of thought.
      - throwawaylolx 8y ago
        Because that only raises participation by a negligible amount.

thrower123 8y ago

Would you be more inclined to educate yourself on the candidates and the issues on the ballot? If increasing voter participation is just about having more ignorant voters, or stuffing the ballot box with people from given demographics, then quite frankly, I am not in favor of it. I wouldn't qualify myself to be sufficiently educated to really vote on any of the issues I voted on yesterday, but hey, I did my civic duty and got my sticker. I don't have the foggiest idea what the difference between the two candidates for county clerk is, or what the material results of amending one sentence in the state constitution with what reads to me as different synonyms will be... I don't think that is a solvable problem. And I would be terrified of throwing smartphones into the mix, because they are just terrible (I think the iPhone has made the world a worse place, on balance...). Any API endpoint that is setup to handle the traffic is going to be attacked, and it is going to be broken; people are going to be on shitty LTE connections, and their votes aren't going to go through. The data is not going to be properly anonymized. Software is terrible, and it is going to have bugs and fuckups and gaping holes that would be horribly exposed under the stress and scale of a real election. Voting is basically a solved problem, and I don't see that piling complexity on top of it is a worthwhile endeavor. You go to your polling place, you grab the sheet of paper, you fill in the bubbles with the sharpie, you drop it in the slot. There are some simple, low-tech ways to improve things if you want; make voting day a national holiday, open more polling places, hire more people to staff them. None of that requires a boondoggle IT project.

throwawaylolx 8y ago
>Would you be more inclined to educate yourself on the candidates and the issues on the ballot? Yes, definitely. >Voting is basically a solved problem Not sure what's your definition of "solved problem," but, as far as I'm concerned, it's not solved if it fails people who would be inclined to vote and educate themselves on voting if it were easier to vote. >open more polling places, hire more people to staff them. That would be an alternative, especially if they could open polling place at each workplace and near each home with infinite staff. Alternatively, technology and automation could be used to scale UX, but, as you mentioned, current tech does not appear to be fit for this, which makes voting not a solved problem.