Making people spend hours assembling in person in the middle of winter, with all of the potential weather catastrophes that time of year can entail, may not be the most democratic way to approach democracy.
But it’s the way the founding fathers did it! Surely there haven’t been any advances in technology and travel since then to allow for more sane and modern voting systems
Eh… I don’t think the current system is without flaws, but a fully remote digital system would be so much less secure than even our current system.
Even going completely mail in has issues. Especially if someone does something stupid like put someone in charge of the mail system that seems hostile to the idea of… well, mail.
Agreed. There definitely needs to be a balance. But there are, imo, middle ground paths. If we just started with automatic voter registration for all adults, expanded the drop off ballot system, instituted a vote verification system for voters themselves (i.e., I get a slip receipt at my voting place and can verify how it was counted anytime with ability to dispute and challenge), mandated non-political population based districting and poling location placements (vs. allowing politically elected representatives to dictate), made voting day a mandatory holiday where everything shuts down, and got rid of this archaic stand in a group in a church caucus system, I think we’d see public trust in our election systems restored quite a bit. That being said, I recognize that this is, in our current environment, a pipe dream.
I can see that as a valid counter argument. To be honest I’m not informed enough on the data to be able to weigh the two properly against each other personally. Out of curiosity, do you think there could ever be a system (or have any been proposed that you’re aware of) that would help provide the transparency but not at the cost of loss of privacy and freedom of vote?
Making people spend hours assembling in person in the middle of winter, with all of the potential weather catastrophes that time of year can entail, may not be the most democratic way to approach democracy.
But it’s the way the founding fathers did it! Surely there haven’t been any advances in technology and travel since then to allow for more sane and modern voting systems
Eh… I don’t think the current system is without flaws, but a fully remote digital system would be so much less secure than even our current system.
Even going completely mail in has issues. Especially if someone does something stupid like put someone in charge of the mail system that seems hostile to the idea of… well, mail.
Agreed. There definitely needs to be a balance. But there are, imo, middle ground paths. If we just started with automatic voter registration for all adults, expanded the drop off ballot system, instituted a vote verification system for voters themselves (i.e., I get a slip receipt at my voting place and can verify how it was counted anytime with ability to dispute and challenge), mandated non-political population based districting and poling location placements (vs. allowing politically elected representatives to dictate), made voting day a mandatory holiday where everything shuts down, and got rid of this archaic stand in a group in a church caucus system, I think we’d see public trust in our election systems restored quite a bit. That being said, I recognize that this is, in our current environment, a pipe dream.
This one would enable vote-buying and voter intimidation
I can see that as a valid counter argument. To be honest I’m not informed enough on the data to be able to weigh the two properly against each other personally. Out of curiosity, do you think there could ever be a system (or have any been proposed that you’re aware of) that would help provide the transparency but not at the cost of loss of privacy and freedom of vote?
Paper ballots. Counted by hand.