37 ms·

The problem isn't in the technology, the problem is with people. The idea of voting is that 2 groups with opposing views agree on a compromise - a fair set of r

The problem isn't in the technology, the problem is with people. The idea of voting is that 2 groups with opposing views agree on a compromise - a fair set of rules that determines which side won. So if the losing is convinced that they've lost fair and square, they will focus on a better campaign next time, rather than on starting a revolt. Except for the past half-a-decade the media is increasingly pitting people against each other. Each side considers their rivals evil or crazy and is not ready to respect their opinion, listen or compromise. This creates incentives to cheat and legitimate reasons to suspect cheating. No matter what algorithmical or organizational approach you take, there will be always human factor, and hence reason for doubt. And the only way to resolve it is to make sure that you can always recheck the results in a way that satisfies the losing party, rather than screaming "blasphemy" to shut them up.

squarefoot 4y ago
The damage is done. Currently I don't think there are ways to convince people that vote results are legit, short of eliminating secrecy and have every single person put their preference on a record that can be accessed anytime from anywhere. That however has its pros and cons, and is considered anti democratic.
- luxuryballs 4y ago
  I think the only way to improve things is to have a representative based system. Local community picks a rep, sends them to a higher level meeting, all the chosen reps pick a rep from among them to send to the next level, repeat and scale the number of layers as needed. Then there’s no mystery because everyone at each level knows who they agreed to send to represent them. Your party should just be your literal party, your local community. This whole top-down thing where powerful established groups that already have their own agenda tell you and your neighbors that you can only choose between a few of their chosen people to represent you has got to go, the agenda should be your agenda, the rep should be your rep. This is totally doable, repeal the 17th amendment for starters. Add more meeting houses next, counties/districts can have their own house that each elect the state Congress, etc, micro-service distributed architecture!
  - squokko 4y ago
    This was how the US Constitution was designed by the smart people, before various idiots screwed it up with the 17th Amendment and Permanent Apportionment Act. Your US representative was supposed to represent about ~30,000 people and your state representatives even fewer than that. Now each representative represents close to a million.
    - kylebyproxy 4y ago
      So glad to see others calling-out the Permanent Apportionment Act. Maybe it made sense in a world without communications technology, but today we're able to scale to the numbers needed to support that ratio of representatives:constituents.
      - hawkesnest 4y ago
        Would the House be more or less effective if there were 10,000+ representatives to meet the 30,000:1 ratio in the original Constitutional setup?
        squokko 4y ago
        More, because the House is not a deliberative body. Reps could stay in their districts and just vote online.
  - sfifs 4y ago
    The episode "Power To The People" in the satirical comedy Yes Prime Minister deals with exactly this. It also looks at the trade-offs, which explains why this will almost certainly not actually happen. Well worth a watch :-) https://archive.org/details/yes-prime-minister-power-to-the-people-1991-uk-vhs https://archive.org/details/yes-prime-minister-power-to-the-...
- sarahsbasar 4y ago
  Can't this system work: - You publish a public list of randomly generated numbers/IDs (the number of IDs corresponding to the number of eligible voters, guess you need a reasonably accurate census data for this) - Divide up into subsets and distribute these IDs to each voting booth. - When you go to vote you draw on of those numbers and attach it to your vote. - Election results are published as "ID X voted for Y". Now everyone can check that their vote was counted, and everyone can check that the original list of of IDs matches the final results (or in reality, count(final list) < count(original list) since not everyone votes).
  - deelowe 4y ago
    The problem is that people still won’t trust it.
  - atoav 4y ago
    .. in a country where many people think ¼ is bigger than ⅓. Seriously. We are talking about people who would claim rain is not wet, while it pours down their face if it was somehow helping them "owning" the other side. No clever system is going to fix people not wanting democracy anymore. This is an issue of decades of uncontrolled "news" media and a lack of education and the US is going to harvest the fruit of that neglect for the next decades at least. It might be my education about the roots of fascism that I got by growing up within the borders of former Nazi Germany, but US democracy is in an extremely dangerous spot right now. The specific mixture of economic pressures, media bubbles, lack of education, corrupt political actors and processes and split culture is a volatile explosive mix.
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    This is an open ballot, which has it's own set of problems like vote buying and voter intimidation.
    - zwily 4y ago
      Nobody but you would know your id though.
- swader999 4y ago
  If votes are on the public record it becomes too easy to directly buy or even coerce votes from people.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  It is anti-democratic to have open ballots, because then people are not free to vote their conscience.
devindotcom 4y ago
Placing the blame on "the media" over the last five years is not really correct. People have been undermining basic election rights and processes for quite a while and while both parties engage in it the right is far more active and devious in gerrymandering, eroding legal protections, etc. Trust in government in general is low but elections have been quite fairly run and provably so to a reasonable doubter. But doubters have been given free rein to be unreasonable, hence they doubt the auditors, and the auditors of the auditors, all the way up. Losing fair and square is no longer something many people think is possible for their party. The media has covered this with varying effect but we hardly conjured it into existence. In fact the media can barely keep the lights on, let alone fund the lawsuits, "grassroots" redistricting efforts, organized disinfo campaigns, etc that have shaped politics at the state level — including anti-media campaigns that paint the elite mainstream media as the authors of the present electoral crisis.
cm2187 4y ago
That's why you need a process so transparent there is no possible suspicion of cheating. Software is exactly the opposite of transparency. Paper ballots opened locally and counted publicly is the only solution.
- robotnikman 4y ago
  IIRC that is basically what Ukraine did last election to avoid tampering by the Russians

squarefoot 4y ago

The damage is done. Currently I don't think there are ways to convince people that vote results are legit, short of eliminating secrecy and have every single person put their preference on a record that can be accessed anytime from anywhere. That however has its pros and cons, and is considered anti democratic.

luxuryballs 4y ago
I think the only way to improve things is to have a representative based system. Local community picks a rep, sends them to a higher level meeting, all the chosen reps pick a rep from among them to send to the next level, repeat and scale the number of layers as needed. Then there’s no mystery because everyone at each level knows who they agreed to send to represent them. Your party should just be your literal party, your local community. This whole top-down thing where powerful established groups that already have their own agenda tell you and your neighbors that you can only choose between a few of their chosen people to represent you has got to go, the agenda should be your agenda, the rep should be your rep. This is totally doable, repeal the 17th amendment for starters. Add more meeting houses next, counties/districts can have their own house that each elect the state Congress, etc, micro-service distributed architecture!
- squokko 4y ago
  This was how the US Constitution was designed by the smart people, before various idiots screwed it up with the 17th Amendment and Permanent Apportionment Act. Your US representative was supposed to represent about ~30,000 people and your state representatives even fewer than that. Now each representative represents close to a million.
  - kylebyproxy 4y ago
    So glad to see others calling-out the Permanent Apportionment Act. Maybe it made sense in a world without communications technology, but today we're able to scale to the numbers needed to support that ratio of representatives:constituents.
    - hawkesnest 4y ago
      Would the House be more or less effective if there were 10,000+ representatives to meet the 30,000:1 ratio in the original Constitutional setup?
      - squokko 4y ago
        More, because the House is not a deliberative body. Reps could stay in their districts and just vote online.
- sfifs 4y ago
  The episode "Power To The People" in the satirical comedy Yes Prime Minister deals with exactly this. It also looks at the trade-offs, which explains why this will almost certainly not actually happen. Well worth a watch :-) https://archive.org/details/yes-prime-minister-power-to-the-people-1991-uk-vhs https://archive.org/details/yes-prime-minister-power-to-the-...
sarahsbasar 4y ago
Can't this system work: - You publish a public list of randomly generated numbers/IDs (the number of IDs corresponding to the number of eligible voters, guess you need a reasonably accurate census data for this) - Divide up into subsets and distribute these IDs to each voting booth. - When you go to vote you draw on of those numbers and attach it to your vote. - Election results are published as "ID X voted for Y". Now everyone can check that their vote was counted, and everyone can check that the original list of of IDs matches the final results (or in reality, count(final list) < count(original list) since not everyone votes).
- deelowe 4y ago
  The problem is that people still won’t trust it.
- atoav 4y ago
  .. in a country where many people think ¼ is bigger than ⅓. Seriously. We are talking about people who would claim rain is not wet, while it pours down their face if it was somehow helping them "owning" the other side. No clever system is going to fix people not wanting democracy anymore. This is an issue of decades of uncontrolled "news" media and a lack of education and the US is going to harvest the fruit of that neglect for the next decades at least. It might be my education about the roots of fascism that I got by growing up within the borders of former Nazi Germany, but US democracy is in an extremely dangerous spot right now. The specific mixture of economic pressures, media bubbles, lack of education, corrupt political actors and processes and split culture is a volatile explosive mix.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  This is an open ballot, which has it's own set of problems like vote buying and voter intimidation.
  - zwily 4y ago
    Nobody but you would know your id though.
swader999 4y ago
If votes are on the public record it becomes too easy to directly buy or even coerce votes from people.
WalterBright 4y ago
It is anti-democratic to have open ballots, because then people are not free to vote their conscience.

devindotcom 4y ago

Placing the blame on "the media" over the last five years is not really correct. People have been undermining basic election rights and processes for quite a while and while both parties engage in it the right is far more active and devious in gerrymandering, eroding legal protections, etc. Trust in government in general is low but elections have been quite fairly run and provably so to a reasonable doubter. But doubters have been given free rein to be unreasonable, hence they doubt the auditors, and the auditors of the auditors, all the way up. Losing fair and square is no longer something many people think is possible for their party. The media has covered this with varying effect but we hardly conjured it into existence. In fact the media can barely keep the lights on, let alone fund the lawsuits, "grassroots" redistricting efforts, organized disinfo campaigns, etc that have shaped politics at the state level — including anti-media campaigns that paint the elite mainstream media as the authors of the present electoral crisis.

cm2187 4y ago

That's why you need a process so transparent there is no possible suspicion of cheating. Software is exactly the opposite of transparency. Paper ballots opened locally and counted publicly is the only solution.

robotnikman 4y ago
IIRC that is basically what Ukraine did last election to avoid tampering by the Russians