Like so many topics here, this is more of a GQ, but my gut feeling is that Great Debates would be more appropriate.
This morning, on NPR, I heard about California starting to experiment with voting using the Internet. I guess it’s a logical extension of voting by mail. Properly safeguarded I’m sure it would work just great. At the end of the report they mentioned that democrats and independents were generally for it, and republicans were generally against it. My question is twofold: What impact would e-voting have, and why the political split.
[Standard disclaimer that I searched for this topic here and couldn’t find it]
Take responsibility for your actions, but only after begin shamefully dragged out from under the bed.
The general consensus seems to be that the online community tends to be more politically independent, and more libertarian-leaning, than the population as a whole.
Consequently, it surprises me that the GOP isn’t more split on e-mail voting: the religious conservatives would stand to lose by it, but the economic conservatives would stand to gain (except on issues of welfare for the rich, I suppose).
Democrats have always been for widening the pool of potential voters, and for removing artificial barriers to voting; the GOP has always been against such widening and removal, at least since the Democrats became the party of civil rights. Historically, the GOP does better in low-turnout elections; the Dems do better when the turnout is high. So there’s a certain amount of reflexive action going on with both sides here.
Actually, after watching Leno last night, I’m going to have to start siding with Lib and thinking this is a bad, bad idea. I don’t think I want the guy who thinks there are 50 Supreme Court Justices including Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, or the guy who thinks “taking the Fifth” means taking a vacation day, exercising their right to vote.
“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather
I disagree with you. No matter the intelligence level or grasp of trivia, I strongly believe that all US Citizens of voting age should be encouraged to vote.
If internet voting generates more participation, they I say it’s a good thing.
Sure, if by “elitist attitude” you mean “joke.” I mean, I know most people base their thoughts on the body politic on what they saw on Leno, so I figured I’d go with that.
Cripes.
“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather
Personally, before approving Internet voting anywhere I lived, I’d want to make sure that they’d put in all the safeguards that they could think of, then turned the hackers of the world loose on the system during a dry-run test.
After all, if the system could be hacked, the level of potential fraud would be massive.
As a comment on my level of confidence in the ability of the Board of Elections of the State of California to to insure the integrity of the voting process in general, not to mention internet voting-
My brother moved back from California to New York about 16 or 17 years ago. Every fall since then he has received a notice from California, to his New York address, confirming his voter registration and enclosing an absentee ballot application! And this despite the fact that he has never once responded or sent in a ballot request.
If these are the people monitoring the internet voting experiment, I believe that experiment will indeed increase voter participation- up to, say, 300 or 400% of the eligible voters.
Republican politicians, in general, oppose expansion of easy voting because, in general, core Republican voters tend to be more educated, more affluent, more likely to go out to a polling place and vote, more likely to take the effort to register, etc. Someone can look up the statistics, but generally, a larger percentage of registered voters who register Republican actually vote. Therefore, it is supposedly in the best interests of the Republican party to keep exercise of the franchise hard.
Some disclaimers for those who don’t read carefully: Republican voters don’t necessarily share this view, ‘conservatives’ are not necessarily Republicans, and don’t necessarily share the view, and even Republican moderates in office walk softly here.
As to internet voting, well, it can’t be done until you can be as certain that a vote receieved electronically is cast by the person registered as you are when it is done either in person or by absentee ballot. This, I am thinking, requires some sort of electronic identification, an inevitability I think in the e-world eventually.
Any system can be hacked, whether it is electronic or manual. Past evidence of extensive voter fraud will attest to this fact. I would think that an electronic system would require a little more sophistication to hack than an absentee ballot.
DSY:
I think it would be simple to implement an internet voting system on the federal level. Simply snail-mail an extremely long random letter password to everyone of proper age with a SSN and require that they use a secure browser. I am restricting it to the federal elections as it would require some resources that local goverments wouldn’t necessarily be willing/able to allocate.
(1) We now have a pretty good handle on preventing more than the most modest electoral fraud with paper ballots. The only time it becomes an issue is when the difference in some major race is a few hundred votes or fewer.
(2) While most of us would have no idea how to hack into a computer, the small minority that does is pretty damned good at it. When hacking into a major database or computer network becomes a rare event, let me know, and we can start talking. Until then, I’d just as soon do more conventional reforms, such as allowing one to vote during a period of a few weeks ending with ‘election day.’
One thing this will do is make it easier for those who have computers and internet access to vote. Those who can’t afford computers can still vote, but it will take more effort (getting up off there asses and going to the polls).
This will skew the election towards those with higher incomes being more represented, wouldn’t it?
I guess we can start talking. It is a rare event now, providing that the server and browser use 128-bit security. Even 64-bit security is tough to hack without some MAJOR horsepower (like Cray supercomputers). Most of the “hacking” that you read about is done on servers with little or no security because it doesn’t handle e-commerce.