Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday April 03 2020, @01:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the eternal-vigilance dept.

The Dangers of Moving All of Democracy Online:

To protect governments as well as people's rights from coronavirus, we need to use tech as a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

[...] Governments around the world are struggling to deal with the public health and economic challenges of coronavirus. While many have pointed to how authoritarian regimes exacerbated the pandemic, we've so far paid dangerously little attention to coronavirus's challenge to democracy.

In a democracy, citizens need to be able to vote, politicians to deliberate, and people to move about, meet, and act collectively. Democratic politics is a mixture of mass involvement and endless meetings. All this is hard when people can be infected with a potentially deadly virus if someone simply coughs nearby. The obvious answer might seem to be to move democracy to the internet, but some parts of democracy translate badly to an online world, while others are already being undermined by emergency powers (for example, Hungary's parliament just passed a law that allows the prime minister to rule by decree) and by the rise of digital surveillance.

[...] Democratic politics also happens in the streets, at political rallies, public meetings, and demonstrations. It is hard to see how such mass gatherings will return any time soon if they continue to be dangerous, or even banned, on grounds of public health.

[...] state efforts to fight the virus by tracking citizens might undermine democracy by concentrating power in the hands of an unaccountable authority. This might even happen from the bottom up. Citizens in fear of contagion might start liking the idea of ubiquitous and decentralized surveillance as a service, as evidenced by the popularity of coronavirus symptom-tracking apps in the UK and elsewhere.

[...] Some pundits argue that information technology is the answer to democracy's problems. There would be no risk of catching coronavirus if physical democracy became virtual.

[...] online voting systems, such as Voatz, which was used in the 2018 midterms in West Virginia, have critical security vulnerabilities. As cryptographer Matt Blaze says, many experts believe internet voting is a bad idea.

Online voting may one day provide the illusion of democracy while actually destroying it.


Original Submission

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @01:15AM (14 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @01:15AM (#978514)

    All you give us is kleptocratic senators and senile presidential candidates. I want a good trustworthy leader like Xi who can cure Covid in three months.

    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @01:52AM (12 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @01:52AM (#978528)

      It's xi jin flu pooh that suppressed the Chinese doctors sounding out alarm for the disease.

      It's xi jin flu pooh that spread ridonculous notion of the virus' us origin.

      Fuck xi the pooh. Fuck CCP. The Chinese needs to rise up. Your illlustriious history don't mean shit when your country move to the tune of jackass regime.

      • (Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:04AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:04AM (#978532)

        Nah those crematoriums are not running full steam. Those are not boxes of urns. They are all better! They have never lied about numbers before to look good. Duh!

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:18AM (10 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:18AM (#978538)

        It is the trump flu pooh that suppressed the severity so that the stock market wouldn't get spooked and hurt his reelection efforts.

        It is the trump flu pooh that spread ridonculous notions about it being under control and will magically go away, and thus didn't get the CDC moving on it early.

        Fuck trump the pooh. Fuck Republicans. The people need to rise up. Your illlustriious history doesn't mean shit when your country move to the tune of jackass regime.

        • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:32AM (7 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:32AM (#978546)

          You can rag on trump all you want, and I won't get in the way, but this virus originated in China, and it's the Xi flu pooh CCP that let it spread.

          It's not the Chinese, certainly not Chinese Americans not even Chinese Chinese (remember, it's the Chinese docs that tried to sound out the alarm), but the CCP that Xi the fucking flu pooh lords over.

          In fact, not just Trump, it's the boomers. Our pitiful medical system got exposed for real. The most powerful country in the world can't even care for its own citizens. Sick people don't even go for medical care cuz it will bankrupt them even with insurance.

          Shining city on the hill my ass, more like smoldering pile of heap that even Soviet Ruskies laugh at.

          • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:57AM (5 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:57AM (#978555)

            All wealthy countries, even those poor countries, have universal healthcare.

            America, the bestest and grestest country in the world? The best we managed was the pitiful obama-care. Who's to blame?

            You boomers. Fuck you.

            • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Hartree on Friday April 03 2020, @03:50AM (4 children)

              by Hartree (195) on Friday April 03 2020, @03:50AM (#978579)

              Remember when the Boomers were saying "Don't trust anyone over thirty" and how things would be different when they were in charge?

              I do. And I have the same expectations for the current "Ok, Boomer" quoters. i.e. You'll end up just as jaded, evil and disappointing as they did.

              And I may be dead by then, but maybe some tiny part of you will look into the mirror and ask your age wrinkled face, "When did I turn into my old man?"

              Emperor Palpatine:

              *Muwahahahahahaha!*

              /Emperor Palpatine.

              • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by captain normal on Friday April 03 2020, @05:19AM

                by captain normal (2205) on Friday April 03 2020, @05:19AM (#978600)

                I've been saying for years, "Don't trust anyone under 30". Did anyone listen, nope of course not "cause all have been entranced by celebrities on tv. Just like our "Acting President" who can't remember his lines and keeps missing his marks.

                --
                Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
              • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @05:29AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @05:29AM (#978604)

                And I have the same expectations for the current "Ok, Boomer" quoters. i.e. You'll end up just as jaded, evil and disappointing as they did.

                But judging by previous generations, only the Boomer-X transition has led to an overall decline in opportunity and social mobility.

              • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @06:30AM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @06:30AM (#978625)

                Remember when the Boomers were saying "Don't trust anyone over thirty" and how things would be different when they were in charge?

                You must be really old if you remember when the Boomers were saying that.

                Just between you and me, how did you beat the Spanish Flu?

                • (Score: 2) by Hartree on Friday April 03 2020, @09:56PM

                  by Hartree (195) on Friday April 03 2020, @09:56PM (#978885)

                  "You must be really old if you remember when the Boomers were saying that."

                  Not surprising at all, because I'm technically one of them.

                  I was born in 1962, which means I'm the last year of most definitions of the Boomers. I still remember things like Bobby Kennedy's funeral (I was disconcerted my Saturday morning cartoons were pre-empted. What else would you expect from a 6 year old?) and the first moon landing when I was 7, it's not terribly surprising that I remember things from the late 1960s. I'm all of 57 years old. My oldest brother is 68. though I doubt he ever said that, save as a joke.

                  I know that must seem only slightly less than the pyramids to you. I also had older parents who were both in WW2, dad as a medic in Europe and mom as a War Department employee first in the US and then in Japan during the occupation. So, my outlook is pretty long. Things like when my father's medical battalion setting up outside Dachau just after it was liberated to treat the prisoners are as real to me as things your parents talked about.

                  To those today, the Vietnam War, which I remember the body counts from, the blockade Nixon implemented, etc. must be as far back as the Spanish American War was to me, let alone the 1918 Spanish flu which was 4 years before my parents were born.

          • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @05:25AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @05:25AM (#978603)

            Our pitiful medical system got exposed for real. The most powerful country in the world can't even care for its own citizens. Sick people don't even go for medical care cuz it will bankrupt them even with insurance.

            It's not just the US, but half the countries in Europe that are in crisis. Not because of this petty disease, but because of government interference in our lives. I'm less worried about my parents getting COVID-19 than them getting sick on anything else or hurt, because health facilities are cut off unless the patient shows signs of flu-b. Cost is not much an issue for high risk aged people, because they have Medicare. No, the tragedy is that they're fucking the people out of their livelihoods right now while they are cowering in fear at home in front of the idiot box, with the police on speed dial so they can report people going to the park.

        • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @04:01AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @04:01AM (#978582)

          I really want to know who modded this "insightful.'

          I can only guess the chicom 50 cents army, eh.

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday April 03 2020, @04:47PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 03 2020, @04:47PM (#978791) Journal

          It is the trump flu pooh that suppressed the severity so that the stock market wouldn't get spooked and hurt his reelection efforts.

          At least Trump had the foresight to send all our ventilators and masks to China because he knew we would never need them for something not any worse than the flu.

          --
          The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
    • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:25AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:25AM (#978542)

      Hey, beautiful.

      If you're gonna troll, please your posts.

      The first sentence sounded cynically plausible. You lost me on the second.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:24AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:24AM (#978540)

    Moving voting online will make it easy to vote, and Republicans have outright said that if you make it easy to vote, "you'll never have a Republican voted in to office again", and it wasn't just the president who said that either.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday April 03 2020, @04:51PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 03 2020, @04:51PM (#978792) Journal

      Making conventional, somewhat verifiable voting easy might hurt the Republicans.

      Moving voting online will help someone, and I'm not sure who, other than that it won't be we the voters.

      --
      The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:36AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:36AM (#978547)

    He went to Jared! [thedailybeast.com] There will be no democracy to put online, after this jackass amateur-hour Dunning-Kroeger administation gets finished.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday April 03 2020, @02:57AM (11 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Friday April 03 2020, @02:57AM (#978554)

    I've been working for a while on an idea of a new form of democracy that would be at least resistant to many of the ills of the current forms - including security.

    The basic idea is that instead of (in addition to?) voting for a representative once every few years, you'd "follow" them, and can change who you are following at any time.
    When a legislative vote comes up, it wouldn't be the votes of the Representatives themselves that really mattered, but the votes of all their current followers.

    Potential benefits include
    - Nobody's vote is ever "wasted" by voting for the losing candidate in an election. Every individual (indirectly) votes in every legislative action - so as long as there's even one representative you find tolerable, you can give them the power of your vote.
    - Greater consequences for Representatives caught in a scandal/corruption/incompetence, since followers can immediately follow someone else instead of probably forgetting about it by next election
    - Weaker party politics, since your most like-minded political allies also present the biggest threat of luring away your followers.
    - No more gerrymandering, since every individual indirectly votes in every legislative action.

    I don't see how a truly secret vote could be preserved when you have to be able to change your "vote" at any time - though pseudonymity might be (Any ideas?). However, once you give up on secrecy, one of the easier ways to implement the "follower" system would be to keep a public ledger of who every voter ID is currently following, allowing you to immediately know if your vote has been tampered with. By adding an alert and grace period before a change to your vote becomes official, you could make tampering with the system extremely ineffective. Such a system would also mean that everyone could independently verify how many followers (and thus voting power) each representative has at any time.

    Possible variations
    - allow each voters to follow multiple representatives, splitting their vote between them if they can't decide on one "perfect" representative
    - weight votes by residency or other criteria, e.g. to preserve the Senate's disproportionate representation for citizens of sparsely populated states

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday April 03 2020, @03:15AM

      by Immerman (3985) on Friday April 03 2020, @03:15AM (#978564)

      I should add that while this is clearly directed towards enforcing a truly representative a legislative body, it might also be harnessed to select a President or other single office in an organic manner, effectively acting as continuous official polling throughout a primary season until a final "election deadline" locks in the winning candidate.

      In addition, such a system could also be easily leveraged for continuous "opinion polling" on any number of topics. Support for something like quadratic voting on topics needing legislative action might also serve as an extremely effective petition system to guide representatives in popular directions as they pursue more followers, and the greater personal legislative power they bestow.

    • (Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Friday April 03 2020, @05:16AM (1 child)

      by DrkShadow (1404) on Friday April 03 2020, @05:16AM (#978594)

      It surely sounds interesting.

      What if you apply it to Instagram content producers? Who gets the most followers on Instagram? Would you say it would significantly differ in that respect? (Yes, you can follow only "one", or you said an alternative of "a few"..)

      It may be better, actually. It doesn't fix the propaganda aspect. You'd have to have some way of registering yourself to a candidate, more than just an e-mail address. This would need to be able to be re-registered quickly (to change your vote on an issue).

      The Republicans said years ago that they didn't want the Tea Party to represent them, and that that cost them an election to Obama. They insisted that Democrats were switching parties in order to undermine their primary candidate vote. How would you fix swaths of SJW's, say, from bouncing in large groups from candidate to candidate on a given day to overwhelm a vote in a small focus group? If Such a group could dominate a series of votes or cause chaos.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday April 03 2020, @06:15AM

        by Immerman (3985) on Friday April 03 2020, @06:15AM (#978622)

        I would hope that the fact that your "follow" grants a politician a sliver of real power over your own life, will help to temper a lot of the transient whims that sweep through social media of all sorts. Doubly so when coupled with a grace period that adds inconvenience and delay to the system. Having to subdivide the power of your vote to follow multiple representatives also means that you inherently have to remove power from the candidate you liked yesterday in order to give it to someone new, which I think would have a moderating effect. Who do you actually want representing you in congress this week?

        As for special interest groups overwhelming a focus group - my preferred solution would to simply make it impossible by having every focus group, committee, etc. mimic the operation of the whole and represent the entire citizenry - you are able to select a committee member to follow in each committee, independently from your choice of Representative and preferred members in other committees. If you abstain, you follow your Representative's choice by default. That way every citizen is equally represented in every committee - the only question is whether you made the choice yourself (perhaps as part of that special interest group), or trusted it to your Representative. We could even leave out the option to make the choice yourself for simplicity - but I think the overhead would be low and it would be a good way to keep some fingers of democracy deep in the political machine.

    • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday April 03 2020, @05:24AM (1 child)

      by captain normal (2205) on Friday April 03 2020, @05:24AM (#978602)

      If that were wee to come about, then why would we need "representatives"?

      --
      Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday April 03 2020, @01:55PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Friday April 03 2020, @01:55PM (#978694)

        Because we have good reason to hire other people to do the job for us - government is a whole lot of tedious work, and trying to get 300 million people to work together to hash out the verbiage for a bill, etc. just isn't practical. Not to mention not many people are going to give it the time and attention it needs when they're only wielding 1/300millionth of the total power. And of course, sometimes there may be legitimate need for secret hearings and deliberations whose details can't safely be shared with everyone.

        Of course we don't necessarily need to elect Representatives independently from the system - you could possibly let your vote follow *anyone*, and then only give the N most popular a seat on the council that gets paid to do the job. If your chosen representative isn't actually on the council they could still wield power by guiding their follower's votes to the council member that best reflects their position. That could put council members at the top of a fluid hierarchy, having to continuously cultivate the support of numerous lesser representatives, each of which is able to better represent the will of a smaller group of voters.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @04:11PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @04:11PM (#978766)

      I'd be really curious how much political theory was known when this proposal was put forward. Some immediate issues I can think of are:

      1) Voter apathy. People don't even opt-out of receiving spam emails and phone calls (and then complain about all the spam they get). That has a direct impact on their day-to-day quality of life. How many people will just pick somebody and forget about it? For that matter, how do you know who the default pick is?
      2) Voter transparency. A key point of voting is not only that a decision is made, it's convincing everybody that the decision was correctly made. ("The most important thing of an election is convincing the losing side that they lost.") How would this be at all understandable to the average person? How would the average person audit it, or know it is being properly audited?
      2b) It wasn't clear in your proposal, but it sounds like everybody could see who everybody else followed. You only need to look at how mobs controlled Chicago in history (or how company towns ran, etc) to know why allowing people to know who others voted for at the individual level is a bad idea.
      3) Susceptible to knee-jerk reactions. Look at all the flood of donations after a natural disaster. I imagine that the majority people who cared (not most people, see #1) would whiplash between follows after each newspaper headline, which would lead to a lot of instability in governmental policy.

      These aren't necessarily problems, but they seem problematic and would need to be considered, among other things.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday April 03 2020, @06:30PM (2 children)

        by Immerman (3985) on Friday April 03 2020, @06:30PM (#978821)

        Well, I'm working on it as I go, and have no special background in political theory - I'm just trying to come up with the skeleton of something that could address the endemic abuse of power in basically every "democratic" institution out there, and hoping to get others both inspired and to pick it apart. My goal is to capture much of the corruption resistance of direct democracy, while sacrificing as few of the benefits benefits of representation as possible.

        1) You don't need to vote any more often than you already do - but if your chosen representative pisses you off you can *immediately* pick someone else. Or similarly you ccan follow someone else more inspiring at any time. I suspect voter engagement would be considerably higher being able to vote whenever the mood strikes you, rather than every couple of years at the end of a political circus. Not to mention politicians would have far more incentive to engage with their (potential) constituents on an ongoing basis, rather than pandering to them during election season with promises they have no intention of keeping, and mostly ignoring them the rest of the time.

        As for the "default choice" - I'm assuming you're referring to committee members I mentioned in a later comment - in which case I'd say that *every* representative's vote on every issue should be a matter of public record, so that anyone can independently verify that all the "follower votes" were tallied correctly, and so that you know who your Representative is supporting and can choose to back someone else on the committee if you don't approve of their pick (and are paying enough attention).

        2) A public ledger of who every (pseudonymous) citizen is currently following means *anyone* can just sit down and count the votes for themselves, as well as verifying that their own is properly credited to the right representative. You'd probably want to use software to do it, but it'd be simple software with many alternate sources, so you can verify that they all reach the same counts. Also, there are no losers, just people backing more or less popular Representatives.

        2b) I agree, at least some sort of strong pseudonymity is probably important - and it's something I haven't come up with a good solution to, especially where organized crime is involved and the threat of severe felony charges for mere possession of de-anonymizing data is unlikely to be a major deterrent (though that would likely at least discourage most employers, ministers, etc. from abusing it) One possibility that might help is to have "following" facilitated by some sort of hardware dongle that proves your identity - and then going to "dongle-swap" parties to trade voting IDs. Though that would probably only be really effective if done right before you were all planning some major changes in who you were supporting. On the other hand, there are a lot of people arguing that vote secrecy and vote integrity can't both be preserved, especially with digital voting. So if we're going that way anyway, we may as well get some real value for the loss.

        3) Mob mentality is indeed a potential risk inherent with any move toward more direct democracy (though there's not actually much evidence to show it'd be a problem at national scales), but as you say yourself I suspect most people wouldn't engage in such behavior, due to either apathy or wisdom, which means it would only create an ongoing minor shift of power between representatives rather than major instability. It could make for strategic headlines to gather enough temporary support to win a close vote, but I'm not sure how big a problem that would really be - especially if rules were altered so that even a modest supermajority is required to win."Yeah, they managed 60% support to pass the bill, but only 50% of the populace truly supports it" sounds like a*huge* win in my book, espeailly compared to the current state of affairs where bills are routinely passed despite 70+% popular opposition, while other's languish interminably despite similar levels of popular support.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @07:53PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @07:53PM (#978846)

          Fair enough. It's good you acknowledge your limitations and that you are still working on it. Definitely keep poking around. There's definitely some good ideas in your proposal.

          I would recommend you look into some of the ideas behind political theory, though. Going into any field blind with the mentality of "how hard can it be?" is making things harder than they should be, and risks the "but have you considered what happens if you flash a flashlight on a moving train?" type mistake [xkcd.com].

          • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday April 03 2020, @08:15PM

            by Immerman (3985) on Friday April 03 2020, @08:15PM (#978849)

            That's a fair point, though my impression is that political theory, like economic theory, is largely a mutual admiration club - it only works well to describe what happens within the system created by adherents to the ideology, and is primarily promoted by those who benefit dramatically from that system. And even there, its predictive power is extremely limited to the point that it would be laughed out of the room by competent scientists.

            Still, no reason to deny the wisdom that can be gleaned from their narrow perspective.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @04:27PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @04:27PM (#978778)

      That sounds good. Now go look up why we eat bacon for breakfast. Or why women until ~1950 did not smoke. You will find it eye opening. Then consider they have had 70+ years to get better at that very thing.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday April 03 2020, @06:19PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Friday April 03 2020, @06:19PM (#978819)

        You think they're any less aggressive at marketing the current candidates? The difference is that *keeping* people's opinion swayed is a much bigger ongoing expense than swaying it long enough to get you to vote for a candidate that will pander to their desires until they have to put on a good show for the next election circus.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:59AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:59AM (#978556)

    Lucky you.

    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday April 03 2020, @12:23PM (2 children)

      by acid andy (1683) on Friday April 03 2020, @12:23PM (#978669) Homepage Journal

      You believe we had real democracy before the virus?

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @01:54PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @01:54PM (#978691)

        when we stand to lose everything.

        • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:30PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:30PM (#978706)

          And then "Trump Replaced White House Pandemic-Response Team With Jared Kushner".

          This is like the turning point in a bad horror movie, like when the woman is opening her front door and a hand appears on her shoulder.

  • (Score: 2) by Hartree on Friday April 03 2020, @03:41AM (1 child)

    by Hartree (195) on Friday April 03 2020, @03:41AM (#978576)

    Ah, the days of yore when Jeff "Hemos" Bates, long ago of the green site, was the panel leader for a meeting on the future of internet voting at The Foresight Institute.

    I pointed out that Hank The Angry Drunken Dwarf had just won the online poll for People Magazine's Most Beautiful Person in the World.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_the_Angry_Drunken_Dwarf#Most_Beautiful_Person_poll [wikipedia.org]

    I think he was less enthusiastic about the idea after that. I know that I'm still utterly unenthused with the idea of a centralized internet voting system. It's just asking to be hacked. We've already seen quite enough of break ins by foreign actors in the rather distributed systems already used in some related election tasks (voter roles, etc.). Do you really think they, or the candidates and parties, could resist such a juicy target? Perhaps they could, but I don't want to tempt them.

    • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday April 03 2020, @05:33AM

      by captain normal (2205) on Friday April 03 2020, @05:33AM (#978605)

      All's I can say is "No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." H.L. Mencken
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken [wikipedia.org]

      --
      Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
  • (Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Friday April 03 2020, @09:06AM (2 children)

    by Mojibake Tengu (8598) on Friday April 03 2020, @09:06AM (#978641) Journal

    You do not need a Republic to get a Democracy, see how many European and Asian Democracies are actually Monarchies.

    Maybe voting is overrated, just vote up your democratic leaders for life and that's it. Less effort, too.
    Examples: U.S. Congress works in that mode for ages. House of Lords too.

    Street life is over anyhow, in this Newest World Order. No more demonstrations available.

    --
    Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @02:31PM (#978707)

      And then.... "Trump Replaced White House Pandemic-Response Team With Jared Kushner".

    • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday April 04 2020, @04:58PM

      by dry (223) on Saturday April 04 2020, @04:58PM (#979073) Journal

      Governments get complacent and corrupt when in power too long, so one of the most important parts of democracy is changing the government regularly. Seems to be needed every 8-10 years.

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday April 03 2020, @01:55PM (1 child)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday April 03 2020, @01:55PM (#978692) Journal

    Oregon votes by paper ballot that you can mail in. My friend's family sits around the dining room table and debates issues while they fill out their ballots. It seems to work well.

    If we want to really secure the vote, we should treat it like a double-blind study.

    Voting online is asking for tyranny as the votes are hacked.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday April 04 2020, @05:14PM

      by dry (223) on Saturday April 04 2020, @05:14PM (#979082) Journal

      Mail in ballots sound scary as too easy to hack, if only by losing all the envelopes from certain parts of town.
      One thing I like about our (Canada) system is splitting the elections up. There's a Federal election where I vote for one representative, likewise with the Provincial election on a different day (usually different year) and municipal elections, also on a different day. The municipal elections are more complex, but at least here in BC, all but the 2 biggest cities don't even have parties. The Provincial parties also are often different then the Federal parties and the system seems to allow new parties to emerge.
      Two of the territories also don't have parties in their legislatures and form government by consensus rather then by party. This is as much culture as those territories are mostly natives.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @03:48PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @03:48PM (#978752)

    Online voting may one day provide the illusion of democracy while actually destroying it.

    I've long been an opponent of any form of electronic/black box voting. But from what I see Democracy in the USA is already in a bad state... And no the problem is not the Electoral College.

    https://newrepublic.com/article/146884/america-stuck-two-parties [newrepublic.com]

    It wasn’t always like this. There was a time in American politics when it was relatively easy to jump-start a new political party and get it into the mainstream. That was how the Republican Party—the only third party in American history to become a major party—displaced the Whigs (along with several smaller parties) between 1854, when it was founded, and 1860, when it propelled Abraham Lincoln to the presidency.

    That’s no longer possible: Today, third parties can’t mount their own presidential bids after they learn whom the two major parties have nominated—there simply isn’t enough time between the end of primary season and the general election to gain meaningful ballot access in enough states to win an Electoral College victory.

    Like a magician letting the voters mainly "choose" between Tweedledee and Tweedledumber.

    But I guess being able to choose between Two Parties is still one better than China's elections where voters can in theory vote for different candidates but there's effectively just One Party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China [wikipedia.org]

    Still more choice right?

    • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday April 03 2020, @06:41PM (8 children)

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Friday April 03 2020, @06:41PM (#978826) Journal

      I'd like to see:

      • Mandatory national paid-by-the-feds-via-fed-taxes day off for voting day
      • Voting spread over multiple days so critical-role people can back each other's roles up
      • Mandatory requirement to vote if you're over 17 and...
        • Not in a hospital or hospice bed, or...
        • Don't have a notarized certificate from an MD attesting to your immobility
      • Failure to vote resulting in a very hefty fine starting high and thereafter proportional to your income
      • Failure to pay the fine resulting in jail time

      Other than that, by this point, votes should be on submitted paper, the paper should be saved until the election is complete, and you should have both a receipt and a code where you can verify your vote online.

      IMO, the only way to more-or-less-dependably make US citizens act responsibly is to firmly tie the responsibility at hand to their financial circumstances.

      --
      Want about to a race conditions? hear joke

      • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @09:30PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @09:30PM (#978874)

        Verificable votes means anyone can break your fingers if you do not vote as they want. Legs would be a problem with your mobility idea, but fingers, not so much, you only need to carry the paper they give.

        Public count of the paper votes should be enough. Anyone that wants to check, just stay around until the box contents are counted.

      • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday April 04 2020, @07:26AM (4 children)

        by Common Joe (33) <common.joe.0101NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday April 04 2020, @07:26AM (#978981) Journal

        Mandatory requirement to vote if you're over 17 and...

        And what if you feel none of the candidates deserve your vote? It's my preference to vote "for" someone and not "against" someone.

        • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday April 04 2020, @12:34PM

          by fyngyrz (6567) on Saturday April 04 2020, @12:34PM (#979012) Journal

          You should be able to vote for whoever you want. Write-ins should always be allowed.

          The "party" system where they control who can be a candidate is what got us in the horrific mess we're in today.

          --
          Democracy: Where any two idiots outvote a genius.

        • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday April 04 2020, @05:22PM (2 children)

          by dry (223) on Saturday April 04 2020, @05:22PM (#979085) Journal

          Leave your ballot empty or otherwise destroy it or have a none of the above vote. For a long time we had a joke party, the Rhino's who were a good choice if you didn't like the real ones. Occasionally they even came in second.
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_Party [wikipedia.org] take note of their promises.

          • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday April 05 2020, @07:47PM (1 child)

            by fyngyrz (6567) on Sunday April 05 2020, @07:47PM (#979471) Journal

            For a long time we had a joke party

            ...and now we arguably have two of them, but even though that's the case — they aren't the same, so the choice continues to matter.

            --
            You can lead a horse to water, but that doesn't
            mean it won't just wade in and shit in it.

            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Sunday April 05 2020, @09:02PM

              by dry (223) on Sunday April 05 2020, @09:02PM (#979482) Journal

              Yea, your political system is even more broken then ours.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2020, @02:32PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2020, @02:32PM (#979032)
        Why'd you want mandatory voting anyway?

        If many voters don't want to vote despite a day off, it's better that their nonexistent votes don't outweigh my vote ;).

        I'd be tempted to allow campaigns to tell people NOT to vote, so that the ones who fall for such tricks don't actually vote but that's probably too evil and prone to other problems.
        • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday April 05 2020, @07:34PM

          by fyngyrz (6567) on Sunday April 05 2020, @07:34PM (#979467) Journal

          Why'd you want mandatory voting anyway?

          Because representative government without at least some input on what "representation" one actually is subject to is functionally identical to fiat rule over those who do not contribute to choosing said representative(s.)

          --
          "You the bomb."
          "No, you the bomb."
          ...
          A compliment in the USA.
          An argument in the middle east.

    • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday April 04 2020, @05:17PM

      by dry (223) on Saturday April 04 2020, @05:17PM (#979084) Journal

      Well you can have different wings of the one party, which I believe described China's party up till Xi, where the more liberal wing and the conservative wing took turns governing. One party split into 2 wings isn't much different then America with 2 parties.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @06:22PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2020, @06:22PM (#978820)

    "Democratic politics also happens in the streets, at political rallies, public meetings, and demonstrations. It is hard to see how such mass gatherings will return any time soon if they continue to be dangerous, or even banned, on grounds of public health."

    good thing the right to assembly and travel does not have an exception that says "anytime some parasite says otherwise".

(1)