Can Online Voting Ever Work? - Comments Page 1

It would work if we use the Chicago way of voting

online voting "WILL" be secure, only when you eliminate crooks, thieves, swindlers, con-artists, cheats, AKA "politicians".
When "politicians" are completely eliminated out of the equation, it MIGHT work !!!

A dream come true for the Democrats. Much easier to promote fraud and abuse.

On-line voting has been common in eastern Ontario at the municipal level for about a decade. I've worked on two of the elections, it has been trouble free.

Better is the Australian way,everyone must vote.
Ricardo,your partisan remark was addressed to the wrong group. Which party is trying to remove the right to vote from certain groups and locations

Since humans create the security, humans can breach it. And, since political job security depends on the outcome of elections, as does politically awarded government contracts, there will be tremendous pressure to win at any cost. Close elections will always go to the most corrupt player. Only landslide victories can stop the corruption of our elections when the outcome is so obvious that stealing an election would result in revolution.

I already question the use of some absentee ballots. They are easier to sell. Buying votes is (unfortunately) part of the electoral process. I think online voting would just make this easier to do and harder to get caught. That's not even considering the technological problems you mentioned above. With our current system, if something doesn't pass the "Smell test", you can go back and count it. If a hacker completely changes votes, you may be able to see that it happened but you won't know what the original vote was. I hate to dis my own country, but I don't think the USA is ready for this.

As far as military votes go: This is where we the people should be shouting. We should be able to come up with a standardized ballot, then have ballot machines in multiple bases around the world. Counting there before mailing in would speed up the count.

Online voting is, like most "good government" schemes, an impractical pipe dream. You cannot have both "secure" and "anonymous" voting; you might achieve one or the other, but BOTH is a logical impossibility. As an IT consultant and professional for over 30 years, I continue to believe that only PAPER ballots offer at least the possibility of "secure" and "anonymous" voting.
I vote by mail; I have plenty of time to research the issue, mark my ballot carefully, and send it in in plenty of time.

What is the point of trying to increase the number of people casting ballots? If you can't be bothered voting, it is unlikely that you have any deep appreciation of the issues, and your uniformed opinions are worthless anyway.
With 50% of the population under average in intelligence, and a huge number of religious crazies voting on the basis of their faith alone,
we need to *discourage* the ignorant and the insane from taking part in elections.
Voting should be made more difficult, not easier.

Our entire voting system is outdated. We need to shift the day to vote to weekends so most people are not inconvenienced by missing work. We can reduce the waiting time by spreading the voting period over two or more days, rather than only one. Online voting won't work unless there is enough government control of the internet, including registration of all computers, etc., used in the process. Who would vote for that?

The Estonian system of on line voting might work, but it would entail issuing Federal ID cards of the type that Estonia uses. I do not think that this will happen because of privacy objections.

I have long been an advocate of secure online voting. With Hilary around we had best use the present system. A black gentleman openly admitted that he voted for Obama 4 or 5 times so I hope honest secure voting can someday be a reality . I would also love to see a SUPER COMPUTER replace the biased unconstitutional supreme court !

Article would have more credibility if the writer used the correct expression "cut the muster" instead of the misquote "cut the mustard". If he can't get this right how can we trust anything on which he comments.

EDITOR'S NOTE: If I'm wrong, then O. Henry and others have been similarly wrong, for at least 100 years. See http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/e24.html Either way, I don't see how the use (or colloquial misuse) of this idiom affects my credibility on the subject at hand.

The article is about the feasibility of voting via the Internet. If you take it a step further, a representative form of gov't. could possibly be unnecessary if every registered voter could vote on bills & legislation via the Internet. And if someone fails to vote, their voice doesn't count....just as when our senators and congressmen are sometimes no-shows when voting time comes(and most of us never hear about it). Internet voting would more accurately reflect the will of the people. Lobbyists would hate it because now they couldn't just wine & dine a few elected officials to get their way. OF COURSE, POLITICIANS AND LOBBYISTS CURRENTLY DOMINATE & CONTROL - THEY WILL FIGHT HARD AGAINST CHANGE! AND IF THEY CONTROL THE MEDIA, THEY WILL NATURALLY SAY THAT IT COULD NEVER WORK!!! Of course it CAN work....a heckuva lot better than our antiquated systems that allow for "hanging chads" and the like.

A little history here. It's never the left wing that comes to take your freedoms (Voting, Guns Secure in ones home etc). It's always the right wing and they will do it in the name "Security". As a founding father once said "Do not give up freedom for security for in the end you will have neither freedom or security.

All methods of voting are subjective to fraud.

There has to be a better method of choosing your leaders.

We vote public held company stock by proxy with a unique control number.

Geoff, you're being silly.

You wrote, "Article would have more credibility if the writer used the correct expression 'cut the muster' instead of the misquote 'cut the mustard'. If he can't get this right how can we trust anything on which he comments."

True, "cut the muster" is the correct expression. But probably MOST people say it incorrectly. I don't think you would write most of the population simply because they misspoke a cliche, would you?

You're saying that if a person doesn't work hard to correct his misuse of a common cliche, you don't trust them on anything?

That's awesome, Geoff. It sure makes your life easier, when you can judge everyone based on something as black-and-white as that!

Mac

Regarding on-line voting:
Easy? Absolutely!
Secure? Never
(Bob, thank you for everything you do for us!)

I can see the ISIS do some hacking and taking over countries with hacked votes rather than fighting. Now if Geoff doesn't mind I'm making some lunch, maybe a balogna sandwich with MUSTARD.