[TriLUG] OT: OpenVote

Rick DeNatale rick.denatale at gmail.com
Thu Jan 5 09:38:37 EST 2006


On 1/5/06, Greg Brown <gwbrown1 at gmail.com> wrote:


> Personally I don't think we'll see Internet voting any time soon.
> There is just too much that can go wrong and non-techies (the majority
> of the population) still doesn't trust the Internet enough.

Back in November the New York Times Magazine ran an article by the
Freakonomics guys which, among other things, described what happened
in Switzerland when they made it easier to vote.

They introduced mail-in ballots which allowed any Swiss citizen to get
and mail in a ballot instead of going to the polls.  The also did this
gradually over the country, introducing it in different cantons over
time. It seems that the Swiss have frequent votes on various things.
The Swiss historically turned out in large numbers for these votes,
but turn-out percentages had started to slip, and the mail-in ballots
were introduced as a measure to turn this trend around.

Surprisingly the effect was just the opposite of what was expected. 
Voter turnout often decreased, and because of the staggered phase-in
it could be correlated to the mail-in ballot introduction.  The two
independent variables which seemed to correlate with the decrease were
the availability of mail-in ballots and the size of the population of
the canton or community.

One explanation of this might be that the peer pressure to be SEEN
voting in the community encouraged turn-out. Mail-in voting (or
internet voting) removes this pressure.

http://www.freakonomics.com/times1106col.php

Some other interesting ideas about voting in the article as well.
--
Rick DeNatale

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