4 ms·

It always amazes me how one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world has such a shitty voting system. Big American tech companies know when

by moksly 6y ago

It always amazes me how one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world has such a shitty voting system. Big American tech companies know when you’re pregnant before you do, but the government doesn’t know who lives in a specific house. So weird.

adsjhdashkj 6y ago
It's by design, i imagine. Like difficult to do taxes.
gpanders 6y ago
> but the government doesn’t know who lives in a specific house. So weird. This seems to me a feature, not a bug.
- Eugeleo 6y ago
  Genuine question: What’s the benefit? And how would you solve the vote-by-mailproblems the US has now because of this?
j_walter 6y ago
There is no federal system, so it's left to the states. Unfortunately some states are good at some things and shitty at others. Take my state...we rarely have vote by mail issues (100% for at least a decade now), but we also gave hundreds of millions to Nigerian scam artists in unemployment benefits recently. All governments have very poor performance when they require scaling up a system quickly...so do many companies, but sadly they seem to have people who are better equipped and motivated to do so.
thingymajig 6y ago
It's a very hard problem. I live next to a multi-family house in a college town and the tenants move in and out so frequently that I'm not even 100% sure who lives there... and I'm 10 feet away. Hell, I could probably only roughly estimate the total number of people that live there. I wonder if there's a solution in there though... maybe landlords should have to report tenants on their federal taxes or something?
- david927 6y ago
  Why are we tracking it via residency? If you're homeless, that doesn't invalidate your citizenship. We need to move to a unique ID per person with password, that you can link to email(s), phone(s) or both. And then we can have on-line voting.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    I really don’t understand why there is so much opposition to online voting in the US. I think people fetishize voting as this super hard problem whee it must be anonymous, must be verifiable that the vote was counted and was correct but in such a way that a person can’t prove to someone else their vote or even that they voted. It’s just exhausting. Just have an account with the government, fill out your ballot, hit submit, post the votes publicly that are counted and let people find their ballot by some ID number if they want and call it a day. I’m willing to bet that more people than not are more than willing to use this system.
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
      > let people find their ballot by some ID number if they want and call it a day. And if your boss or landlord or spouse or cult leader hints that you should show them you voted the correct way, what do you do?
      - Spivak 6y ago
        And if your boss or landlord or cult leader makes you request an absentee ballot and fill it out in front of them?
        dane-pgp 6y ago
        Then you have to hope that the system allows you to override your absentee ballot with an in-person ballot, and that your boss or landlord or cult leader doesn't have people watching the polling locations (or watching your movements whenever the polling locations are open). I admit that's not a perfect system, but it might skew the outcome of the vote less than a system where governors can selectively reduce the number of polling locations, and staff working at them, to produce hour-long lines of people risking catching a potentially deadly disease from each other.

by moksly 6y ago

adsjhdashkj 6y ago

It's by design, i imagine. Like difficult to do taxes.

gpanders 6y ago

> but the government doesn’t know who lives in a specific house. So weird. This seems to me a feature, not a bug.

Eugeleo 6y ago
Genuine question: What’s the benefit? And how would you solve the vote-by-mailproblems the US has now because of this?

j_walter 6y ago

There is no federal system, so it's left to the states. Unfortunately some states are good at some things and shitty at others. Take my state...we rarely have vote by mail issues (100% for at least a decade now), but we also gave hundreds of millions to Nigerian scam artists in unemployment benefits recently. All governments have very poor performance when they require scaling up a system quickly...so do many companies, but sadly they seem to have people who are better equipped and motivated to do so.

thingymajig 6y ago

It's a very hard problem. I live next to a multi-family house in a college town and the tenants move in and out so frequently that I'm not even 100% sure who lives there... and I'm 10 feet away. Hell, I could probably only roughly estimate the total number of people that live there. I wonder if there's a solution in there though... maybe landlords should have to report tenants on their federal taxes or something?

david927 6y ago
Why are we tracking it via residency? If you're homeless, that doesn't invalidate your citizenship. We need to move to a unique ID per person with password, that you can link to email(s), phone(s) or both. And then we can have on-line voting.
- Spivak 6y ago
  I really don’t understand why there is so much opposition to online voting in the US. I think people fetishize voting as this super hard problem whee it must be anonymous, must be verifiable that the vote was counted and was correct but in such a way that a person can’t prove to someone else their vote or even that they voted. It’s just exhausting. Just have an account with the government, fill out your ballot, hit submit, post the votes publicly that are counted and let people find their ballot by some ID number if they want and call it a day. I’m willing to bet that more people than not are more than willing to use this system.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    > let people find their ballot by some ID number if they want and call it a day. And if your boss or landlord or spouse or cult leader hints that you should show them you voted the correct way, what do you do?
    - Spivak 6y ago
      And if your boss or landlord or cult leader makes you request an absentee ballot and fill it out in front of them?
      - dane-pgp 6y ago
        Then you have to hope that the system allows you to override your absentee ballot with an in-person ballot, and that your boss or landlord or cult leader doesn't have people watching the polling locations (or watching your movements whenever the polling locations are open). I admit that's not a perfect system, but it might skew the outcome of the vote less than a system where governors can selectively reduce the number of polling locations, and staff working at them, to produce hour-long lines of people risking catching a potentially deadly disease from each other.