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No offence to Americans reading, but speaking as an outsider, it seems to me that voting in the US is fucked up in so many ways that need to be fixed first befo

No offence to Americans reading, but speaking as an outsider, it seems to me that voting in the US is fucked up in so many ways that need to be fixed first before starting on "smartphone based voting". I saw this short twitter thread listing some of problems that are especially apparent from a foreign perspective: https://twitter.com/MackieJonathan/status/1059962407244718081 https://twitter.com/MackieJonathan/status/105996240724471808...

specialist 8y ago
That's a pretty good list. (Copypasta below.) I can only think of a few omissions (eg poll taxes, destroying all the evidence asap). No one considers the USA's elections fair, transparent, accountable. Why most foreign election observers don't even bother. And yet, American exceptionalism. Point out the emperor has no clothes and the serfs lose their minds. -- If British elections had: Parties drawing up constituency boundaries Polls closing at 6pm Councils recording voters party support Government-funded selection meetings Returning officers standing for election Zero regulation on election spending Votes counted in secret Hours-long queues to vote Barely surmountable criteria to stand for election No national rulebook for national election admin Lunatic criteria for voter registration A minimum of a dozen elections happening at once Referendums to approve building a school Voting machines hackable by 10 year olds Electoral data sold to the highest bidder Etc etc etc Folk would go ape. But here we all are watching CNN as if this were a proper democratic election with a stats guy using a giant iPad and everything. And that results are declared while some states are still voting
jillesvangurp 8y ago
It worse than that, some of the flaws are actively protected by both parties because they believe they are benefiting from it. There are differences of opinion about discarding votes, how to count votes, who is allowed to vote, etc. E.g. the debacle with the voting machines with the first Bush election had a whole circus around it involving recounts and how to count. This election was so close that every little argument mattered. Technically, it is not that hard to come up with electronic voting systems. The hard part is making them auditable, privacy sensitive, and robust against malicious attacks. It's not impossible but it seems hard enough that this gets messed up consistently.

specialist 8y ago

That's a pretty good list. (Copypasta below.) I can only think of a few omissions (eg poll taxes, destroying all the evidence asap). No one considers the USA's elections fair, transparent, accountable. Why most foreign election observers don't even bother. And yet, American exceptionalism. Point out the emperor has no clothes and the serfs lose their minds. -- If British elections had: Parties drawing up constituency boundaries Polls closing at 6pm Councils recording voters party support Government-funded selection meetings Returning officers standing for election Zero regulation on election spending Votes counted in secret Hours-long queues to vote Barely surmountable criteria to stand for election No national rulebook for national election admin Lunatic criteria for voter registration A minimum of a dozen elections happening at once Referendums to approve building a school Voting machines hackable by 10 year olds Electoral data sold to the highest bidder Etc etc etc Folk would go ape. But here we all are watching CNN as if this were a proper democratic election with a stats guy using a giant iPad and everything. And that results are declared while some states are still voting

jillesvangurp 8y ago

It worse than that, some of the flaws are actively protected by both parties because they believe they are benefiting from it. There are differences of opinion about discarding votes, how to count votes, who is allowed to vote, etc. E.g. the debacle with the voting machines with the first Bush election had a whole circus around it involving recounts and how to count. This election was so close that every little argument mattered. Technically, it is not that hard to come up with electronic voting systems. The hard part is making them auditable, privacy sensitive, and robust against malicious attacks. It's not impossible but it seems hard enough that this gets messed up consistently.