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On-line voting is not impossible, but people tend to see the "I marked my ballot" part and ignore the rest of the voting ecosystem. Registering voters implies
by dmckeon 14y ago
On-line voting is not impossible, but people tend to see the "I
marked my ballot" part and ignore the rest of the voting ecosystem.
Registering voters implies maintaining a registration DB, and
handling moves, deaths, changes of name, changes of
civil status that may disenfranchise or re-enfranchise a voter.
Preparing ballots, paper or otherwise, implies matching voters to
the appropriate ballot, precinct, or voting center.
Avoiding or invalidating multi-voting (in the same jurisdiction)
implies knowing whether a voter has or has not voted, and keeping
them from voting multiple times.
Counting paper ballots implies accounting for spoiled and unused
ballots and dealing with faint or unintended marks.
Secrecy of ballot implies that nobody else knows or can find out how
a voter actually voted (currently unless they show someone a mail-in
ballot before mailing it.)
Imagine the result of a smartphone app that wrapped around a voting
app, and offered to pay voters $50 to vote for or against a
candidate or ballot measure - even if the payoff app completely failed to
work, just the purported existence of such a tool might cast doubt
on a election result.
Voting online is not a "greenfield" problem - it would have to
subsume a lot of previous experience and knowledge before being
thoroughly trusted by its users.
I would suggest to anyone exploring online voting that they get a
grassroots look at the current process - volunteer to be a elections
clerk (judge, watcher, etc.) at your next local election, and/or
become a voter registrar if your jurisdiction allows citizens to
fill that role.
If you'd rather just web-browse, I can recommend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi_Rubin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi_Rubin
as a useful and thoughtful source.
PS - my voting preference is that voters mark scannable ballots,
that are scanned immediately in the voter's presence. You get
the persistence of paper, immediate feedback for mismarks or
unscannable ballots, and good reproducibility of count if needed.
Also, if a surge of people arrives at a polling place, paper ballot
marking can be done in parallel, rather than having a bottleneck of a
few (expensive) machines that all voters must use (registration
look-up and ballot scanning are still bottlenecks).
- specialist 14y ago> I would suggest to anyone exploring online voting that they get a grassroots look at the current process... Exactly. I've worked as poll judge, poll inspector, poll observer, central count observer. I have yet to work central count, but I have mean colleagues who have. When I got started on this issue, I had many many misconceptions about election administration. I mark my ballot, drop in the mail, it gets counted. What could be more simple? Now I know that central count and mail ballot processing is like making sausage. And that electronic voting requires a religious style belief that everything just works. > Secrecy of ballot implies... Voter privacy has traditionally meant before and after casting one's ballot. The "before" part is completely ignored by all the proposed online voting systems. Ditto postal balloting (vote by mail). The Australian Ballot system permits marking one's ballot in private and prevents linking that ballot to the voter during counting. It's the gold standard. We may divine something better. Until then, I'm sticking to what works. Like you imply, that's paper ballots cast at poll sites read by mark sense style optical scanners.