4 ms·

Why is everyone so obsessed with automating voting? It seems to me to be a 'solution' to a non-existent problem.

by ninalanyon 7mo ago

throwaway5752 7mo ago
[flagged]
- frumplestlatz 7mo ago
  I'm a Republican in the United States. The only credential I want is proof of identity, just like most other countries, including our neighbors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_identification_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_identification_laws
  - throwaway5752 7mo ago
    That's not really enough, is it? I didn't say we shouldn't have proof of identity. First, do we not have proof of identity? How often should we have proof of idenity? How many cases of fraud are there per year? How large is the problem? Second, who should issue a different proof of identity? How much should it cost? Should the requirements be left to states or the federal government? Third, who would administer this system. Would it be public or private, or left to states? What criminal and civil law should exist for misusing this law for witholding the right to vote on this basis? Would you trust a non-Republican leadership if DHS still was the agency verifying identity documents and storing soft-copies of them? What you want isn't unreasonable, but you leave out so many details that your reasonable statement can be misused for ill intent and denying people their right to vote. A fair follow up question for me to you might be "how do you feel about the additional requirements for married women to get reissued vital documents when they have changed their birth name to their husband's last name in the SAVE act?" When concerns like these aren't addressed in massive changes to voting laws, it makes lots of people uncomfortable that the changes aren't made in good faith.
sonofhans 7mo ago
Control. If you can centralize all voting results in a single place you can control distribution of them. If you are the only entity able to read the results then everyone else has to take your word for it. Paper ballots with physical marks are easy to track and recount. Digital paper trails are ephemeral. Whom does this benefit? The people counting the ballots.
- throwaway5752 7mo ago
  As the article notes, the Swiss do both. The normal system is a paper ballot based system. This was for secure e-voting for those unable to use paper ballots. The separate question, of why people are obsessed with it - implicitly in the United States - is a separate question. sonofhans - to reply to your follow up here, I mostly agree with you. But I would soften it to say it is a tool that can be used for good or bad ends, and I felt the Swiss were using it more towards good ends. But I agreed that the ability to misuse it is intrinsic.
  - sonofhans 7mo ago
    You are suggesting that it is a separate question. I am suggesting that it is not.
  - luz666 7mo ago
    In Switzerland, it is only done in few cantons and only up to 30% of the population.[1] I have no idea how it is intended, but I personally interpret it like this: - It is mostly an experiment so far. - If it fails (thinking about exploitation), Switzerland does not lose a lot and just goes back to 100% paper-voting. - It is a free service to other countries to show what e-voting can be in best-case. - It does not show what could happen in worst-case. - The riskiest part of this experiment is the interpretation. [1] https://www.news.admin.ch/en/newnsb/ZLw6w1GV_UdJKDocuT0sX https://www.news.admin.ch/en/newnsb/ZLw6w1GV_UdJKDocuT0sX
  - rayiner 7mo ago
    > The separate question, of why people are obsessed with it - implicitly in the United States - is a separate question. It’s not a United States issue. Look how Taiwan does vote counting: https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo. They don’t do it this way because of anything distinctive about American politics. Being self-evidently difficult to manipulate, without requiring voters to trust an opaque system, is an intrinsic benefit for voting systems.
hatthew 7mo ago
If it works, it should be much more efficient than the current system. Of course that is a massive "if"
ge96 7mo ago
I'm still annoyed in the US I can't just show up and vote. The one time I wanted to vote "sorry you're not registered" like what? I'm a citizen just let me vote, oh well. And I was too late to register at the time.
- mschuster91 7mo ago
  > And I was too late to register at the time. That's a thing pretty much everywhere. Developed countries such as Germany automatically enroll everyone eligible based on the registration data (you gotta register at the local authority after moving), but even we have a deadline if you think you should be eligible but didn't get a voting invitation to sort that out.
- ghufran_syed 7mo ago
  I think the issue is that you can only be registered to vote in one jurisdiction. So being a citizen isn't enough (though as I understand it, many jurisdictions let you cast a provisional ballot in these situations)
- bell-cot 7mo ago
  Without a real-time, probably national "who has voted & where did they vote" database - how would a "just show up and vote" system block a citizen from voting once in each of multiple jurisdictions?
  - ge96 7mo ago
    SSN? To me this is one of those friction things, why is it hard? Like taxes, I would take an option rather than tallying up just pay a flat $5K fee or something under your expected tax bracket.
  - brainwad 7mo ago
    You can solve that simply by putting all such votes inside signed envelopes, and waiting to count the contents until all the envelopes can be checked for duplicate voter details. In Australia this can be forced on you if you are caught double voting, or you can opt into it if you don't want to appear on the (public) electoral roll (and hence can't be ticked off), or you're voting from outside your electorate (so they don't have a copy of your electorate's roll).
UltraSane 7mo ago
Every vote should be a separate piece of paper. My preferred voting method are the fill in the bubble sheets that get scanned as they go into the locked box. They automate the vote count but can be manually counted if needed.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
IshKebab 7mo ago
If implemented properly it has some significant advantages: faster counting, votes can be verified, more resilient to fraud. Unfortunately it seems like nobody is implementing it properly yet.
rstuart4133 7mo ago
> It seems to me to be a 'solution' to a non-existent problem. Electronic voting has lots of advantages. It can be end-to-end verified, it can be a great help to disadvantaged people (blind, illiterate), it can deliver results faster, it can probably be made more robust to retail-level tampering than paper ballots provided a paper audit trail it kept (as all electronic systems designed with security in mind do). The one question mark in my mind: the current US system resisted Trump's efforts to corrupt it pretty well. I think that was because of the inertia created all the people involved in staffing the ballot stations, counting and verifying the votes. The machinations of the electoral college being highly visible put people doing the wrong thing at high risk for decades after Trump leaves the stage. An automated electronic system could remove a lot of that human inertia. Human efficiency is not an advantage in an electoral system, it's a weakness. You want as many people involved as possible.

Why is everyone so obsessed with automating voting? It seems to me to be a 'solution' to a non-existent problem.

throwaway5752 7mo ago

[flagged]

frumplestlatz 7mo ago
I'm a Republican in the United States. The only credential I want is proof of identity, just like most other countries, including our neighbors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_identification_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_identification_laws
- throwaway5752 7mo ago
  That's not really enough, is it? I didn't say we shouldn't have proof of identity. First, do we not have proof of identity? How often should we have proof of idenity? How many cases of fraud are there per year? How large is the problem? Second, who should issue a different proof of identity? How much should it cost? Should the requirements be left to states or the federal government? Third, who would administer this system. Would it be public or private, or left to states? What criminal and civil law should exist for misusing this law for witholding the right to vote on this basis? Would you trust a non-Republican leadership if DHS still was the agency verifying identity documents and storing soft-copies of them? What you want isn't unreasonable, but you leave out so many details that your reasonable statement can be misused for ill intent and denying people their right to vote. A fair follow up question for me to you might be "how do you feel about the additional requirements for married women to get reissued vital documents when they have changed their birth name to their husband's last name in the SAVE act?" When concerns like these aren't addressed in massive changes to voting laws, it makes lots of people uncomfortable that the changes aren't made in good faith.

sonofhans 7mo ago

Control. If you can centralize all voting results in a single place you can control distribution of them. If you are the only entity able to read the results then everyone else has to take your word for it. Paper ballots with physical marks are easy to track and recount. Digital paper trails are ephemeral. Whom does this benefit? The people counting the ballots.

throwaway5752 7mo ago
As the article notes, the Swiss do both. The normal system is a paper ballot based system. This was for secure e-voting for those unable to use paper ballots. The separate question, of why people are obsessed with it - implicitly in the United States - is a separate question. sonofhans - to reply to your follow up here, I mostly agree with you. But I would soften it to say it is a tool that can be used for good or bad ends, and I felt the Swiss were using it more towards good ends. But I agreed that the ability to misuse it is intrinsic.
- sonofhans 7mo ago
  You are suggesting that it is a separate question. I am suggesting that it is not.
- luz666 7mo ago
  In Switzerland, it is only done in few cantons and only up to 30% of the population.[1] I have no idea how it is intended, but I personally interpret it like this: - It is mostly an experiment so far. - If it fails (thinking about exploitation), Switzerland does not lose a lot and just goes back to 100% paper-voting. - It is a free service to other countries to show what e-voting can be in best-case. - It does not show what could happen in worst-case. - The riskiest part of this experiment is the interpretation. [1] https://www.news.admin.ch/en/newnsb/ZLw6w1GV_UdJKDocuT0sX https://www.news.admin.ch/en/newnsb/ZLw6w1GV_UdJKDocuT0sX
- rayiner 7mo ago
  > The separate question, of why people are obsessed with it - implicitly in the United States - is a separate question. It’s not a United States issue. Look how Taiwan does vote counting: https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo. They don’t do it this way because of anything distinctive about American politics. Being self-evidently difficult to manipulate, without requiring voters to trust an opaque system, is an intrinsic benefit for voting systems.

hatthew 7mo ago

If it works, it should be much more efficient than the current system. Of course that is a massive "if"

ge96 7mo ago

I'm still annoyed in the US I can't just show up and vote. The one time I wanted to vote "sorry you're not registered" like what? I'm a citizen just let me vote, oh well. And I was too late to register at the time.

mschuster91 7mo ago
> And I was too late to register at the time. That's a thing pretty much everywhere. Developed countries such as Germany automatically enroll everyone eligible based on the registration data (you gotta register at the local authority after moving), but even we have a deadline if you think you should be eligible but didn't get a voting invitation to sort that out.
ghufran_syed 7mo ago
I think the issue is that you can only be registered to vote in one jurisdiction. So being a citizen isn't enough (though as I understand it, many jurisdictions let you cast a provisional ballot in these situations)
bell-cot 7mo ago
Without a real-time, probably national "who has voted & where did they vote" database - how would a "just show up and vote" system block a citizen from voting once in each of multiple jurisdictions?
- ge96 7mo ago
  SSN? To me this is one of those friction things, why is it hard? Like taxes, I would take an option rather than tallying up just pay a flat $5K fee or something under your expected tax bracket.
- brainwad 7mo ago
  You can solve that simply by putting all such votes inside signed envelopes, and waiting to count the contents until all the envelopes can be checked for duplicate voter details. In Australia this can be forced on you if you are caught double voting, or you can opt into it if you don't want to appear on the (public) electoral roll (and hence can't be ticked off), or you're voting from outside your electorate (so they don't have a copy of your electorate's roll).

UltraSane 7mo ago

Every vote should be a separate piece of paper. My preferred voting method are the fill in the bubble sheets that get scanned as they go into the locked box. They automate the vote count but can be manually counted if needed.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

IshKebab 7mo ago

If implemented properly it has some significant advantages: faster counting, votes can be verified, more resilient to fraud. Unfortunately it seems like nobody is implementing it properly yet.

rstuart4133 7mo ago

> It seems to me to be a 'solution' to a non-existent problem. Electronic voting has lots of advantages. It can be end-to-end verified, it can be a great help to disadvantaged people (blind, illiterate), it can deliver results faster, it can probably be made more robust to retail-level tampering than paper ballots provided a paper audit trail it kept (as all electronic systems designed with security in mind do). The one question mark in my mind: the current US system resisted Trump's efforts to corrupt it pretty well. I think that was because of the inertia created all the people involved in staffing the ballot stations, counting and verifying the votes. The machinations of the electoral college being highly visible put people doing the wrong thing at high risk for decades after Trump leaves the stage. An automated electronic system could remove a lot of that human inertia. Human efficiency is not an advantage in an electoral system, it's a weakness. You want as many people involved as possible.