[TriLUG] OT: OpenVote

[Pat Regan]

Greg Brown wrote:
> This would be nice, but we are too far away from this being a reality
> in the near future (sadly).  I've had a vision of an "electronic town
> hall" for quite some time where our elected representatives could post
> a question in his or her town hall to get a feel for what the
> constituents really felt about an issue.
> 

Sounds like a neat idea to me.

> But then I thought since it was so easy (relatively) to hi-jack a
> computer over the Internet I thought that wouldn't it then be easy
> (somewhat) to electronically submit votes to influence a town hall? 
> And if you could do then perhaps it would be possible to submit true
> votes, if such an Internet system existed.
> 

This problem can be solved relatively easily.  You can give everyone
some sort of "voter card."  It could be as simple as a one time use pin
number, or a smart card that encrypts the data.  I assume the latter
would be too expensive unless rolled out nationwide :).

I put quite a bit of thought into this around the time of last years
election.  It is easy to guaranty many things...  You can guaranty that
a vote is accurate, and you can check up on your own vote later.
However, I could not come up with a way to prevent people from selling
their "voter cards" (or whatever you use to identify voters).

> 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.

It really is too bad.  We shouldn't have to trust the wires this data
goes over anyway :(.

I read a comment on Slashdot last night that stated that we have 1
elected federal official for every 375,000 people in this country.  I
didn't do the math myself, but I assume that is close to the truth.  It
would be nice if we could move some decision directly into our hands.

I have lately been thinking that it is quite silly that an election can
be won or lost solely based on a candidates view of a single issue
(abortion, gay marriage, etc).  It would be nice if you could move these
major issues directly into our hands.  Would elections turn out much
differently because of this?

I suppose you already could do this with our current system, but I think
it would work better if you didn't feel obligated to vote on laws
regarding every single issue.  If a law will have absolutely no affect
on you either way, why vote on it?

I suppose I am wandering pretty far off topic, since this is turning
more political than technical...

Pat

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