Out With E-Voting, In With M-Voting 161
InternetVoting writes "The ever technology forward nation sometimes known as 'E-stonia' after recently performing the world's first national Internet election are already leaving e-voting behind. Estonia is now considering voting from mobile phones using SIM cards as identification, dubbed 'm-voting.' From the article: 'Mobile ID is more convenient in that one does not have to attach a special ID card reader to one's computer. A cell phone performs the functions of an ID card and card reader at one and the same time.'"
How about this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that mean I get 8 votes?
Re:How about this... (Score:3, Insightful)
no secret ballot = vote buying and coercion (Score:2, Insightful)
For example, your boss can tell you to vote while he is watching. If you don't vote
the way that he wants he will fire you.
For this reason I am against internet voting and mVoting.
Cards, and privacy in voting [Re:How about this] (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that SIM cards would have to be registered with the government carries with it some degree of invasion of privacy. However, as long as the government allows people to own SIM cards that weren't registered with the government as voting-enabled cards.
In the US, we would also have to have a mechanism for people not owning mobile phones to vote (I know it's hard for a /.'er to envision any reason a person would not have one). The trivial way to do this would be to have people who don't own phones be able to go to a voting place and get a assigned a SIM chip, which could either be used as an insert into any phone (hey, can I borrow your phone to vote?) or else could be taken to a polling place and used in a specially equipped voting booth.
The annoying problem I see with this is that it pretty much removes the last traces of privacy for voting. It's actually really useful to democracy that ballots should be secret. This is, unfortunately, already becoming a thing of the past, with the proliferation of absentee ballots that have no longer become the voting method of last resort, but the voting method of (in some cases) first resort. Voting should be private, not public-- not your boss, not your friends, and not the friendly guy who says "I'll give you ten bucks if you vote the way I ask-- none of these should not be able to say, "hey, let me watch while you vote so I can see who you voted for."
Re:This is a terrible idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise "Volunteers" would still be people who really want to exert control over others. This is the big problem already. Anyone who wants to be in charge is going to be suspect. Better to set up a system to pick a random sampling of people from all over and MAKE them serve...That should keep the majority from having any desire to be there at all. Then make all laws have to be renewed every decade, and all new laws need a supermajority to pass, and are subject to ratification in yearly nationwide elections.
Always amuses me to see how many people correlate education with superiority. I'll side with Heinlein on that one...Better to have military service as a prerequisite for citizenship, because then, at least, the citizens would have to have shown themselves willing put themselves at the service of the country, even to the point of losing their lives, before they could exercise their franchise. Education says nothing about the person so educated.
Re:Cards, and privacy in voting [Re:How about this (Score:3, Insightful)
considering Russian hackers (Score:5, Insightful)
voting should be on paper. even mechanical voting is too susceptible to tampering. electronic voting? cell phone voting? are you kidding? yes, simple paper ballots can be messed with too, but anything more technological than simple paper ballots merely introduces more attack vectors... orders of magnitude more attack vectors the more unnecessarily technofetishized you get, such as with electronic voting
democracy is too important and voting is really striaghtforward. there is no need to make it more complicated than scribble a mark on a piece of paper and dropping it in a box, especially when you risk the generla public losing confidence in their own government. all countries, no matter how technophilic and rich, should vote with paper ballots
stupid, bad idea Estonia
Re:How about this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe you need to check out some sites other than DailyKos and get out of Mom's basement to visit reality every now and then.
People are still overawed by technology (Score:4, Insightful)
"What! That's outrageous! Why the possibilities for corruption are so..."
"The guy will use a computer."
"Oh, well, that's okay then."
Re:How about this... (Score:1, Insightful)
There are two ways to manipulate facts... lies of omission and lies of distortion. I'd rather see a distorted story that lets me know there's a problem so I can research it myself than not be told about a story at all. Also, I particularly take offense at your implication that the Republicans are the KKK party... we aren't the one with an elected Grand Dragon serving in Congress and the KKK (back when they were actually something to fear and not something to laugh at) was largely southern Democrats.
So... as long as you're telling people to shut the hell up, maybe you should shut up while you're defending the party of KKK Byrd while accusing the other party of being the racists.
Re:This is a terrible idea. (Score:2, Insightful)
Better to have military service as a prerequisite for citizenship, because then, at least, the citizens would have to have shown themselves willing put themselves at the service of the country
Wow, what a good idea. You've got to prove that you're willing to be killed for the government of the land you live on. I mean, you can't prove your citizenship by any other means, right?
skips the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Since when did democracy need to be convenient? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm serious. We know from experiments in Estonia and Switzerland and elsewhere that e-voting is convenient. M-voting will probably be even more so.
We also know that there are fundamental, perhaps irremediable problems with voting electronically and remotely. In particular:
Is democracy like shopping on Amazon, to be judged by its convenience and efficiency? Or is it something more important, and precious, than that?
I think that if people take democracy seriously, they should slow down and ask these questions a bit more. If it means a few more years of voting the boring manual way, perhaps that will be for good reasons.
Democracy = secret ballot (Score:2, Insightful)
But the secrecy of the ballot is equally important. It is not just a side-issue. Even postal voting defies the right to secret ballot. How do you ensure the right to secrecy from your family or peer group, or undue pressure therefrom, if the place of voting is not controlled?
I may be a Luddite but such fundamentals are best left un-technoligised. Go back to paper ballots.