All of this doesn't undermine the fundamentals of the model I'm approaching the problem of online voting with. What is the potential upside, and is a system that reaps those benefits without compromising on security possible? I believe there are answers to most of these problems, providing you can restructure some aspects of voting.
It's not something I would advocate implementing in the nearish term, but I do think work can and should be done on it's fundamental problems.
One if the best/most frequent arguments against online voting is that there will be exploits and individual votes can and will be tampered with. So, lets take that in isolation for a second. Lets say I have to cast a vote a month in advance. I can change it for another month, but perhaps only in person. Is that enough fraud mitigation? What if that period is a year long? What if my political positions have been known by this app for years, and a dramatic shift in their distribution sends an alert prompting confirmation processes?
Essentially, is there some level of triage/verification process at which the online vote is considered acceptably secure? Well, if so, then can it be made compatible with a system that ensures ballot secrecy?
To flesh out my overall thinking of this problem domain – my kind of dream/ideal future of democracy is a system in which the positions of the electorate are "simply known". Right now we clumsily take a partial pulse every 2-4 years. But, if we had a system where voting (and polling) was "passive", then we could see the shift in sentiment way easier. Tampering would show in the data, or else have to be maintained for long periods of time. Essentially, the further we move from instantaneous votes, the better the process should get across the board.
To get a bit soap-boxy, if representation is a right as opposed to a privilege, then deepening and broadening it is an obligation of the state. More aggressively accessible in-person voting options would be good, but in the long run nothing will beat technologically-enabled democracy... if we can figure it out.
It's not something I would advocate implementing in the nearish term, but I do think work can and should be done on it's fundamental problems.
One if the best/most frequent arguments against online voting is that there will be exploits and individual votes can and will be tampered with. So, lets take that in isolation for a second. Lets say I have to cast a vote a month in advance. I can change it for another month, but perhaps only in person. Is that enough fraud mitigation? What if that period is a year long? What if my political positions have been known by this app for years, and a dramatic shift in their distribution sends an alert prompting confirmation processes?
Essentially, is there some level of triage/verification process at which the online vote is considered acceptably secure? Well, if so, then can it be made compatible with a system that ensures ballot secrecy?
To flesh out my overall thinking of this problem domain – my kind of dream/ideal future of democracy is a system in which the positions of the electorate are "simply known". Right now we clumsily take a partial pulse every 2-4 years. But, if we had a system where voting (and polling) was "passive", then we could see the shift in sentiment way easier. Tampering would show in the data, or else have to be maintained for long periods of time. Essentially, the further we move from instantaneous votes, the better the process should get across the board.
To get a bit soap-boxy, if representation is a right as opposed to a privilege, then deepening and broadening it is an obligation of the state. More aggressively accessible in-person voting options would be good, but in the long run nothing will beat technologically-enabled democracy... if we can figure it out.