For the record, part of the deal with the local phone companies was an agreement for them to lower the access fees paid by long distance carriers for terminating LD calls across their networks in Florida. The agreement to allow the 20% increase (over some number of years) was simply to keep the phone companies revenues whole.
That is not to say that it was a good agreement, but it would be inaccurate to suggest that it was simply pork to reward local phone companies.
Then let me add to what I originally posted. This bill also provides for the following:
[ul][li]A repeal of telco quality standards. The phone companies can no longer be held accountable to the state for poor service.[/li][li]If and when the state removes access charges for VoIP, the local telcos rates go up automatically.[/li][li]Lifeline, a program that provides low-cost phone service for the indigent, will not be expanded to cover the increased rates.[/ul][/li]The argument presented was that we would save money on our in-state long distance calls to make up for the difference in local phone charges. In all honesty, the only people who would come out even are people who make a large number of in-state long distance calls. I simply find it suspicious that at a time when the telcos are losing income from in-state long distance (due to the increase in cell phone and e-mail usage) the Legislature is standing at the ready to let them raise their local rates to make up the difference. People like me (and most of the people I know) will reap no benefit from this law, because we call long distance on our cell phones.
No, that would not work at all. Once you encrypt and digitally sign the information it is worthless as a “feel-good” thing and it becomes useless as a measure of control. Do you think it would make people feel any safer if after voting they were handed a couple of printed paged of meaningless characters? That would really make them aware of how little they understand. Giving them nothing is better that that. And what are you going to do if a recount is called? Ask the voters to bring their sheets back and scan them all? This is a terrible idea. What good is a small slip of paper just saying they voted? They don’t get that now. I just can’t see what good it would do.
Again, I think people will feel confident when the leaders of the party they want to vote for tell them the system is safe. That is the main thing. When the parties agree it is safe the people will follow. the parties will just have their experts who will review things and make sure everything is as it should be.
There are several issues here. One is voting over the Internet and another is voting in Electronic booths. All this could be discussed for days. Of course, voting over the internet allows the buying of votes but so does voting by mail. A few single votes bought and sold are not going to make a difference and, like now, laws penalising it would prevent it from becoming widespread. Voting by Internet is safer than voting by mail.
And with voting machines, the main issue is that the system has to be open so that anyone and everyone can examine it and be satisfied it is safe. There are millions of ways to design a safe system and, again, without need to trust anybody (I mean at the party level). The machines can be complete transparent in their operation. Each party and observer can install their own trusted electronic observer in the machine. Suppose you have a voting machine and it has 5 (electronic) observers installed. The machine does not “trust” the observers nor the observers “trust” the machine nor each other. Suppose at the end of the day the 5 “observers” report the same results, as is foreseeable, then those are the results for that machine. If one observer gives a different result it can be discounted and, furthermore, it can be analyzed.
Again, the system can be as simple or as complex as you want. It is possible to have every vote digitally validated by every “party observer” and yet have the vote remain anonimous. It can all be done but the person in the street is not going to understand the mechanics any more than they understand the encryption of secure web pages. They just trust the system is secure because they have been told it is secure by people they trust.
We have had past threads discussing the more technical and scientific aspects of this but soon people leave because it is just more complex than they want to get into. BTW, I spent quite a while trying to find the Scientific American article in my computer. I remembered having scanned it but I could not remember the name I gave it. That’s what happens when you use cryptic names. _ Understanding the concepts of encryption, digital signatures and blind digital signatures is a good start for anyone interested in understanding the security of e-voting systems and that article is a good start.
In the more distant future all voting will be via Internet, even if you go to the precinct. You can encrypt your vote with the public key of the precinct and have the vote digitally validated with the blind signature of every observer. The system allows anonimity (like digital money) even if other parties are in collusion. And every vote is digitally signed and validated by every observer.
Internet voting systems have already been used in quite a few of elections like for corporations, unions, etc, although they are not yet widespread for government representatives for the reason that the government is generally behind in these things. Several police unions have been using them in Spain already and don’t seem to have a problem. The Swiss Canton of Neuchatel is in the process of implementing such a system where the citizens can vote from home and it will be effective later this year.
While I think a discussion on the benefits/drawbacks of e-voting systems is good, I would prefer it to be a separate thread, s’il vous plait. I’d especially love to see a comparison of the existing systems with the Open Voting Consortium’s open-sourced, paper-trail-enabled, fraud-proof system as well.
And hearing Bambi talk about the Florida Legislature creeps me out. Is there anything the voters can do, short of staging riots at the capitol building?
With pardons to rjung, a couple of quick responses, and I will let it go.
Bambi Hassenpfeffer, understand that the landscape of telecommunications is one of deregulation, where local phone companies eventually will no longer be regulated. The provisions you cite are specific to this issue, with current support for the idea of letting free market forces find the optimal solution. FTR, the local telco rates will not necessarily go up, they may go up. And raising rates at a time when your competitor’s cost structure just dropped dramatically (by not having to pay access to terminate calls) probably won’t make business sense. Your politics may vary, but the agreement wasn’t pork.
sailor, no, I’m not going to defend the “receipt” architecture here, specifically because I don’t support moving to electronic voting at this time! But you can read The Economist article for more details about how the receipt would work.
I fear it may come close, to be honest. I have never seen an American government move in such blatant contempt of its people. The open refusal of the Legislature (with the governor’s backing) to enact two constitutional amendments is antithetical to the spirit of government. There has been talk of dragging Jeb into court to make it happen, but I think that’s unlikely. With the term limits we have in place, legislators needn’t worry about being re-elected during their last term, and therefore will do whatever the hell they want. In addition, the districts more or less guarantee that their successors will be similar. I don’t really know what we’re going to do, but this can’t continue.
AZCowboy, let’s agree to disagree, and I’ll stop hijacking rjung’s thread with my opinions of the specifics of a phone rate bill.
I concur.