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We need to make voting simpler to understand for the average person, and each step to involve more people. Right now the systems are so convoluted that it give

We need to make voting simpler to understand for the average person, and each step to involve more people. Right now the systems are so convoluted that it gives a fertile bed for ignorance to grow, which can directly results in lower public trust in voting and or conspiracies. The electrification of voting (e.g. Diebold Election Systems) have only worsened that through a combination of questionable bidden processes and outright low competence. This takes complexity and multiplies it, then expects the public to "get it" when you show them the algorithms, and ask them to do the raw mathematics themselves. It is completely out of touch with the general public.

mindslight 6y ago
The easiest way to go about this would be to give up the requirement that votes are private. This would make the need for cryptography drop away completely, and trusted third parties mostly. Individual voters could verify that their votes were counted correctly, and everyone could verify that eg dead people didn't vote. I'm not saying this is a good policy, just a hard technical tradeoff of what would be required for verifiable voting without cryptography. It's an all or nothing proposition too. A hybrid system (opt in to make your vote public so it can be publicly verified) would create additional vote pools that would differ based on ideological preferences and thereby attract calls to disenfranchise, as we've seen for mail in voting.
- arrosenberg 6y ago
  It's a universally bad policy. Public votes mean those with money will purchase them, as they have the ability to validate their investment. We have examples of for the general electorate pre-1885 and in Congress post-Watergate.
  - cocoa19 6y ago
    And plenty in our current times as well. Mexican politicians buy votes with a one time delivery of grocery bags or 20-50 dollar grocery store cards.
    - rebuilder 6y ago
      How do they verify the votes? Or does Mexico not have secret ballots, either officially or in practice?
- moritonal 6y ago
  It worries me that you don't see how fundamentally that undermines the point of democracy. It's illegal to take a photo of your ballot to prove who you voted for, think about why. Because if you could then the local crime-ring would force every person they can intimidate to go vote for their boss and take a photo to prove it or the thugs will hurt their kids. Or maybe think about the pressure some people surrounded by family and friends of the opposite party feel. Sure they will wave the right coloured flag and throw dirt at the TV with their friends at the "wrong" guy, but when safe and sound in the voters box they can do what they like. Imagine if all your friends "opted" into revealing their vote and you didn't.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Wow. I mean, I'm very sympathetic that people should get private votes, but your description of someone faking their opinion and throwing dirt makes me sort of hate the person in your example. Mark Twain comes to mind. What an interesting way to garner sympathy.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - antepodius 6y ago
      More of your friends than you think hide their true thoughts and opinions from you, because they (often correctly) expect social censure if they reveal them.
    - moritonal 6y ago
      What about a mother who doesn't want her kids in the army to go to war but the whole house supports a war-monger? Or doctor who has a single opinion about a practice they want legalised, but doesn't want to admit it to anyone. A gay teen surrounded by homophobic people who wants to legalise their sexuality but has to fake it and shout at rallies because otherwise people might question what's up. Those weren't hard to come up with...
      - 6y ago
- yandie 6y ago
  But then social pressure might overwhelm individual choices. It's gonna be harder for people to disagree with the mass, because they then can be punished easily. Given how our current society operates, I can't see this work anywhere at all.
- eyeball 6y ago
  Seems like a bad idea when political leaders are calling for compiling enemies lists and punishing opposition supporters. https://nypost.com/2020/11/06/aoc-facing-heat-for-wanting-to-archive-posts-by-trump-sycophants/ https://nypost.com/2020/11/06/aoc-facing-heat-for-wanting-to...
  - opheliate 6y ago
    Hey, could you point me to where the political leader you're referring to has actually called for punishing opposition supporters? The tweets she actually wrote only explicitly ask for archiving things people have posted publicly, not for punishing anyone. It's obviously possible to read what she wrote as a plan to compile a list of enemies for future consequences, but just to give an alternate perspective, I read what was said as a simple call for accountability of public figures (i.e: politicians within the Republican party who have supported Trump, but now are disavowing him), rather than being intended as some sort of mass-surveillance programme targetted at anyone who disagreed with her.
    - matthewmacleod 6y ago
      Of course they can’t do that; they’re deliberately misrepresenting a statement in order to stir up more of this nonsense.
    - eyeball 6y ago
      >It's obviously possible to read what she wrote as a plan to compile a list of enemies for future consequences Yes, yes it is. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/first-aocs-list-now-cnn-warns-of-blacklisting-trump-team https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/first-...
      - opheliate 6y ago
        This doesn't provide any more evidence for AOC having called for punishing opposition supporters, does it? Tapper doesn't appear to be directing employers to do anything here: he's stating how employers judge candidates, and noting how considering one's actions in that frame might cause one to act differently. There's not a threat here, it's an acknowledgement of how society works. My point is that these aren't reasonable interpretations of what these figures have said. Like I said, it's certainly possible to read into their words as much as you want, but it requires far fewer assumptions about the unknowable mental states of others to simply take their words at face value. Divorced of the spin placed onto what's been said by the press, these statements are entirely innocuous.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ericbarrett 6y ago
  I think public voting is untenable due to the massively increased risk of voter intimidation[0]. Any voting process that requires it is going to be a non-starter unless you can change human behavior. [0] A recent example: https://news.yahoo.com/mystery-blue-dots-painted-near-225645157.html https://news.yahoo.com/mystery-blue-dots-painted-near-225645...
herodoturtle 6y ago
At first I thought you meant to say _average_ person, but then I realized you were correct either way :)
systemvoltage 6y ago
I disagree. The loss of trust from public is not because the system is simple or complex to understand. It is much deeper than that. Even if the voting process was simple, public trust has been eroded by people like Trump across all disciplines, and have propagated through a large percentage of his voter base - voting, health, climate, etc. We need to get back to where average Joe the Bartender doesn't need to delve into the election process to call it "FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS TRYING TO STEAL THE ELECTION". We need to get out of the rut of "If I can't verify it myself, it must be false." There are a lot of things you can't verify yourself - the measuring tape you have at home requires that you trust the manufacturer for its accuracy. No one asks for a NIST certificate and proof that it traces to the original standard of a meter. Or the pharmacist who gave you the pills. Or that the money is safe in your bank. We trust our doctors, our scientists and our institutions. That's how the society works. Please stop the nonsense of empowering each citizen to make their choice of truth - because they would be pretty horrible at evaluating it. I personally think that voting should be based on physical ballots and ink/paper. Not electronic. Yes, it is painful but there is a physical evidence to every vote, not some transaction line in the database - although we already trust our banks with the bank balance.
chrismcb 6y ago
Simpler yes, but I think we also need some consistency. Every state has their own way of doing things. And it seems like everyone is reinventing the wheel and using the non invented here paradigm

mindslight 6y ago

The easiest way to go about this would be to give up the requirement that votes are private. This would make the need for cryptography drop away completely, and trusted third parties mostly. Individual voters could verify that their votes were counted correctly, and everyone could verify that eg dead people didn't vote. I'm not saying this is a good policy, just a hard technical tradeoff of what would be required for verifiable voting without cryptography. It's an all or nothing proposition too. A hybrid system (opt in to make your vote public so it can be publicly verified) would create additional vote pools that would differ based on ideological preferences and thereby attract calls to disenfranchise, as we've seen for mail in voting.

arrosenberg 6y ago
It's a universally bad policy. Public votes mean those with money will purchase them, as they have the ability to validate their investment. We have examples of for the general electorate pre-1885 and in Congress post-Watergate.
- cocoa19 6y ago
  And plenty in our current times as well. Mexican politicians buy votes with a one time delivery of grocery bags or 20-50 dollar grocery store cards.
  - rebuilder 6y ago
    How do they verify the votes? Or does Mexico not have secret ballots, either officially or in practice?
moritonal 6y ago
It worries me that you don't see how fundamentally that undermines the point of democracy. It's illegal to take a photo of your ballot to prove who you voted for, think about why. Because if you could then the local crime-ring would force every person they can intimidate to go vote for their boss and take a photo to prove it or the thugs will hurt their kids. Or maybe think about the pressure some people surrounded by family and friends of the opposite party feel. Sure they will wave the right coloured flag and throw dirt at the TV with their friends at the "wrong" guy, but when safe and sound in the voters box they can do what they like. Imagine if all your friends "opted" into revealing their vote and you didn't.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  Wow. I mean, I'm very sympathetic that people should get private votes, but your description of someone faking their opinion and throwing dirt makes me sort of hate the person in your example. Mark Twain comes to mind. What an interesting way to garner sympathy.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - antepodius 6y ago
    More of your friends than you think hide their true thoughts and opinions from you, because they (often correctly) expect social censure if they reveal them.
  - moritonal 6y ago
    What about a mother who doesn't want her kids in the army to go to war but the whole house supports a war-monger? Or doctor who has a single opinion about a practice they want legalised, but doesn't want to admit it to anyone. A gay teen surrounded by homophobic people who wants to legalise their sexuality but has to fake it and shout at rallies because otherwise people might question what's up. Those weren't hard to come up with...
    - 6y ago
yandie 6y ago
But then social pressure might overwhelm individual choices. It's gonna be harder for people to disagree with the mass, because they then can be punished easily. Given how our current society operates, I can't see this work anywhere at all.
eyeball 6y ago
Seems like a bad idea when political leaders are calling for compiling enemies lists and punishing opposition supporters. https://nypost.com/2020/11/06/aoc-facing-heat-for-wanting-to-archive-posts-by-trump-sycophants/ https://nypost.com/2020/11/06/aoc-facing-heat-for-wanting-to...
- opheliate 6y ago
  Hey, could you point me to where the political leader you're referring to has actually called for punishing opposition supporters? The tweets she actually wrote only explicitly ask for archiving things people have posted publicly, not for punishing anyone. It's obviously possible to read what she wrote as a plan to compile a list of enemies for future consequences, but just to give an alternate perspective, I read what was said as a simple call for accountability of public figures (i.e: politicians within the Republican party who have supported Trump, but now are disavowing him), rather than being intended as some sort of mass-surveillance programme targetted at anyone who disagreed with her.
  - matthewmacleod 6y ago
    Of course they can’t do that; they’re deliberately misrepresenting a statement in order to stir up more of this nonsense.
  - eyeball 6y ago
    >It's obviously possible to read what she wrote as a plan to compile a list of enemies for future consequences Yes, yes it is. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/first-aocs-list-now-cnn-warns-of-blacklisting-trump-team https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/first-...
    - opheliate 6y ago
      This doesn't provide any more evidence for AOC having called for punishing opposition supporters, does it? Tapper doesn't appear to be directing employers to do anything here: he's stating how employers judge candidates, and noting how considering one's actions in that frame might cause one to act differently. There's not a threat here, it's an acknowledgement of how society works. My point is that these aren't reasonable interpretations of what these figures have said. Like I said, it's certainly possible to read into their words as much as you want, but it requires far fewer assumptions about the unknowable mental states of others to simply take their words at face value. Divorced of the spin placed onto what's been said by the press, these statements are entirely innocuous.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ericbarrett 6y ago
I think public voting is untenable due to the massively increased risk of voter intimidation[0]. Any voting process that requires it is going to be a non-starter unless you can change human behavior. [0] A recent example: https://news.yahoo.com/mystery-blue-dots-painted-near-225645157.html https://news.yahoo.com/mystery-blue-dots-painted-near-225645...

herodoturtle 6y ago

At first I thought you meant to say _average_ person, but then I realized you were correct either way :)

systemvoltage 6y ago

I disagree. The loss of trust from public is not because the system is simple or complex to understand. It is much deeper than that. Even if the voting process was simple, public trust has been eroded by people like Trump across all disciplines, and have propagated through a large percentage of his voter base - voting, health, climate, etc. We need to get back to where average Joe the Bartender doesn't need to delve into the election process to call it "FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS TRYING TO STEAL THE ELECTION". We need to get out of the rut of "If I can't verify it myself, it must be false." There are a lot of things you can't verify yourself - the measuring tape you have at home requires that you trust the manufacturer for its accuracy. No one asks for a NIST certificate and proof that it traces to the original standard of a meter. Or the pharmacist who gave you the pills. Or that the money is safe in your bank. We trust our doctors, our scientists and our institutions. That's how the society works. Please stop the nonsense of empowering each citizen to make their choice of truth - because they would be pretty horrible at evaluating it. I personally think that voting should be based on physical ballots and ink/paper. Not electronic. Yes, it is painful but there is a physical evidence to every vote, not some transaction line in the database - although we already trust our banks with the bank balance.

chrismcb 6y ago

Simpler yes, but I think we also need some consistency. Every state has their own way of doing things. And it seems like everyone is reinventing the wheel and using the non invented here paradigm