5 ms·

These are terrible ideas IMHO. Republicans don't like mail-in voting because it makes it a lot easier for the entire population to vote, and they have been spe

These are terrible ideas IMHO. Republicans don't like mail-in voting because it makes it a lot easier for the entire population to vote, and they have been spending the last few decades making it a lot harder for people who are not rich white suburbanites to vote.

hajile 6y ago
What we need is a blockchained using name, DOB, address, and ID. At that point, most issues go away and where you vote becomes much less important. Neither the Democrat nor Republican establishments want that either. After all, rigging primaries or engaging in other dubious activities would be much too hard.
- tekknik 6y ago
  The changes need to still allow for anonymous voting. Nobody should face repercussions for how they vote.
  - randomswede 6y ago
    And equally important, no one should be able to prove to someone else how they voted (because if they can prove it, coerced[1] voting could be a thing). "Secure voting" is a complicated beast, at the best of times. [1] I am using "coerced" a bit loose here, I am including both "vote X, or else" as well as "if you vote X, I will give you this $SUM money". If it is by structure impossible to show that you complied, it is less likely that either will happen.
  - hajile 6y ago
    The actual votes on a block can be encrypted separately. The chain makes the system completely and easily auditable. You can't easily game the system. Votes can be easily tallied and randomly sampled to ask voters if the votes match up. As to repercussions, you already sign your ballots and register to vote. Because of this, there's pretty much no stopping government repercussions if they chose to take action. Most importantly, it gets rid of all the election fraud debate.
    - tekknik 6y ago
      But then someone has to decrypt the vote, and the vote has metadata about its source. You have to operate under the assumption that a gov actor would take that information and punish you if it was not the vote they wanted (however unlikely, that’s what we’re protecting against)
downandout 6y ago
I am an Independent. I don’t like mail-in voting, at least as it exists today, because it opens up extraordinarily easy avenues for voting fraud. In the run up to the 2020 election, Democrats at the state level (where most election regulations are actually decided) opened the mail-in voting laws so far and wide that anyone with a pen could send in as many votes as they wanted in different names and nobody would have any proof of which were valid and which weren’t. Note that I am not saying that widespread fraud actually occurred in this election...there was no evidence of it, in large part because the laws were setup so that there wouldn’t be. But that isn’t really the point. It could have occurred and nobody could ever prove it, short of the perpetrators themselves coming forward to admit what they did. Unless something changes before 2024, there is no longer any point in bothering to cast your vote. When anyone can vote without having to prove that they are eligible, and can do it remotely, it renders all votes meaningless.
- erikpukinskis 6y ago
  I generally agree with you, and would prefer we move toward in person voting on paper ballots in as many jurisdictions as possible. With easy exemptions for people with mobility impairments, etc. However I think any pressure towards in-person voting MUST be accompanied by an expansion of rights in terms of how far polling places are from you, a national holiday where everyone gets the day off work, sizeable transportation stipends, etc. Without all of that, requiring people to vote in person is de facto disenfranchisment. And furthermore, with regards to 2020, I disagree with you wholeheartedly. I think everyone had a right to no-contact voting this year due to COVID. It was a special set of circumstances.
  - downandout 6y ago
    I agree with you that voting needs to be as accessible as possible, as long as we have steps in place to ensure that only eligible voters are voting, and that they are only able to do so once. I don’t know how you do that with the hard push against voter ID laws, however. With regard to 2020, the changes to the laws that occurred could have been entirely well-intentioned. They probably were. But those changes have led to the current crisis of confidence in the election results, and rightly so.

hajile 6y ago

What we need is a blockchained using name, DOB, address, and ID. At that point, most issues go away and where you vote becomes much less important. Neither the Democrat nor Republican establishments want that either. After all, rigging primaries or engaging in other dubious activities would be much too hard.

tekknik 6y ago
The changes need to still allow for anonymous voting. Nobody should face repercussions for how they vote.
- randomswede 6y ago
  And equally important, no one should be able to prove to someone else how they voted (because if they can prove it, coerced[1] voting could be a thing). "Secure voting" is a complicated beast, at the best of times. [1] I am using "coerced" a bit loose here, I am including both "vote X, or else" as well as "if you vote X, I will give you this $SUM money". If it is by structure impossible to show that you complied, it is less likely that either will happen.
- hajile 6y ago
  The actual votes on a block can be encrypted separately. The chain makes the system completely and easily auditable. You can't easily game the system. Votes can be easily tallied and randomly sampled to ask voters if the votes match up. As to repercussions, you already sign your ballots and register to vote. Because of this, there's pretty much no stopping government repercussions if they chose to take action. Most importantly, it gets rid of all the election fraud debate.
  - tekknik 6y ago
    But then someone has to decrypt the vote, and the vote has metadata about its source. You have to operate under the assumption that a gov actor would take that information and punish you if it was not the vote they wanted (however unlikely, that’s what we’re protecting against)

downandout 6y ago

I am an Independent. I don’t like mail-in voting, at least as it exists today, because it opens up extraordinarily easy avenues for voting fraud. In the run up to the 2020 election, Democrats at the state level (where most election regulations are actually decided) opened the mail-in voting laws so far and wide that anyone with a pen could send in as many votes as they wanted in different names and nobody would have any proof of which were valid and which weren’t. Note that I am not saying that widespread fraud actually occurred in this election...there was no evidence of it, in large part because the laws were setup so that there wouldn’t be. But that isn’t really the point. It could have occurred and nobody could ever prove it, short of the perpetrators themselves coming forward to admit what they did. Unless something changes before 2024, there is no longer any point in bothering to cast your vote. When anyone can vote without having to prove that they are eligible, and can do it remotely, it renders all votes meaningless.

erikpukinskis 6y ago
I generally agree with you, and would prefer we move toward in person voting on paper ballots in as many jurisdictions as possible. With easy exemptions for people with mobility impairments, etc. However I think any pressure towards in-person voting MUST be accompanied by an expansion of rights in terms of how far polling places are from you, a national holiday where everyone gets the day off work, sizeable transportation stipends, etc. Without all of that, requiring people to vote in person is de facto disenfranchisment. And furthermore, with regards to 2020, I disagree with you wholeheartedly. I think everyone had a right to no-contact voting this year due to COVID. It was a special set of circumstances.
- downandout 6y ago
  I agree with you that voting needs to be as accessible as possible, as long as we have steps in place to ensure that only eligible voters are voting, and that they are only able to do so once. I don’t know how you do that with the hard push against voter ID laws, however. With regard to 2020, the changes to the laws that occurred could have been entirely well-intentioned. They probably were. But those changes have led to the current crisis of confidence in the election results, and rightly so.