Voting online why not?

[Limewood]

Considering the massive cost of holding elections, having to drive to some hall or school to vote in person in this day and age is really stupid, the ridiculous waste of paper in how to vote blurb and voting papers, yet we can bank, use credit cards, transfer funds anywhere in the world, belong to forums etc. etc., yet we can't have a simple log on and password to vote online.

 

[moa999]

There have been some limited trials, but the issues come down to control, id verification and auditing

 

[Mal]

I agree it is strange but technology will catch up eventually.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using AustFreqFly

 

[Major]

Security would be a huge issue. Imagine someone hacking this site and changing the results

 

[Greggsy]

If it can be done for the census, why not an election?


Greg.

 

[The Rok]

Ireland spent €50 million so far on E-Voting machines which for the last 6 years are lying under cover in a warehouse. From memory the issue was around verification and possibility for interference from 3rd parties...

 

[Limewood]

If it can be done for the census, why not an election?
Greg.

Exactly.

and surely safeguards could be put in place to stop breaches, like you don't see too many financial institutions getting hacked.

 

[anat0l]

Exactly.

and surely safeguards could be put in place to stop breaches, like you don't see too many financial institutions getting hacked.

Considering our governments are as good as corrupt right now, can we even trust them to:

• Consider safeguards as being important,
• Take the implementation of safeguards seriously,
• Value safeguards, let alone our democratic system

Remember, most of our governments have little ethics, would prefer to tender out a process rather than manage it internally, and will do so to the lowest bidder who can push out something that looks OK on the outside at the lowest cost in the quickest time.

Whilst we may not care much about voting (cf. a banking system or payroll), that's still a perfect recipe for disaster.

Not to mention there will be a ton of complaints for an electronic system, e.g.

• Polling booths, vote counters etc. will be drastically reduced, putting people out of a vocation (paid or otherwise)
• A member being photographed dropping his/her folded vote into the polling box has got everything that the same member being photographed pushing a mouse button does not.
• Old people (remember, we are an overall aging population) will complain that they can't do this whole computer online voting fandangled thing, and then copping an injustice of voting fine. Will a broken internet connection or timeout be quotable as an excuse for not voting?
• I suppose whilst we are talking about safeguards and so on, what stops someone from voting in place of another in an electronic system? (Again, I'd argue though that this is not a big deal given our government who won't give a damn)

 

[here2go]

Online voting is not worth the security risk, no matter how small, when it comes to having robust democracy. Places like the PRC would be very interested in hacking this if it were available.
The ACT has electronic voting at major polling booths, but when you look at their voting system (Hare-Clark with Robson Rotation) it speeds up the process of counting when each ballot paper is different (there was 60+ permutations of the ballot paper in the two seats with five members last time.) They also have Intelligent Character Recognition on the ballot papers.

I usually just do a postal vote if I'm busy or can't be bothered.

 

[opusman]

Voting is compulsory and not everyone in the country is online/comfortable with the Internet, so you would still need all the physical voting infrastructure anyway.

 

[seanpodge]

Electronic voting is a solution in search of a problem. I certainly doubt it would work out any cheaper, let alone significantly so, than paper voting given the high security demands of this concept. Not only do all the votes need to be securely stored and properly counted in a verifiable way, they also need to have no identifying information in order to maintain the right to a secret ballot whist also avoiding multiple voting. Even if such a system were devised, there is then the arms race against hackers and viruses along with more benign issues that can still cause havoc such as software updates.

Paper and pencil still work fine. I don't see any real reason why we need to emulate success stories like the US voting machines.

 

[Robert K]

you want a government who can't get a simple T card system working to attempt a e-voting solution? Just give me the money instead.

 

[amaroo]

Remember CHAD - Chad (paper) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Machines & voting:shock:

 

[dajop]

Aside from security concerns, there are some big issues that would also have to be debated and resolved. It could almost evolve into a debate about compulsory voting. So at the moment it's not really voting that is compulsory - it's just collecting a ballot paper - people can chose not to vote at all by collecting the ballot and either returning it blank or with nonsense writing on it, or not return it at all. In an electronic voting situation - what do you do about people who choose not to vote? Do you abolish compulsory voting, or have a facility for people to log on and collect their e-ballot paper, but tick a box that says "I do not wish to vote" or "leave blank" or "Don't care".

 

[here2go]

Aside from security concerns, there are some big issues that would also have to be debated and resolved. It could almost evolve into a debate about compulsory voting. So at the moment it's not really voting that is compulsory - it's just collecting a ballot paper - people can chose not to vote at all by collecting the ballot and either returning it blank or with nonsense writing on it, or not return it at all. In an electronic voting situation - what do you do about people who choose not to vote? Do you abolish compulsory voting, or have a facility for people to log on and collect their e-ballot paper, but tick a box that says "I do not wish to vote" or "leave blank" or "Don't care".

Some info on electronic voting in the People's Republic of Canberra
Factsheet - Electronic voting | Elections ACT

From memory you could vote informal by leaving it blank, however you could not leave a message for electoral officials such as Rolf Harris for grand High Bloke.