CS Professor Announces Run For VT State Senate On a Platform of Internet Polling

Cynic writes "Having read pretty heavily on the topic, weighed the pros and cons, and seen a few relevant slashdot articles, I wondered why an elected representative couldn't use online and in-person polling of constituents to decide the way he or she votes. Though we are living in the 'information age' and have rich communications media and opportunities for deep and accessible deliberation, we are getting by (poorly) with horse-and-buggy-era representation. In the spirit of science and because I think it's legitimately a better way of doing things, I recently announced my candidacy for Vermont's State Senate in Washington County." How do you think such polling could be best accomplished? Do you think it's worth trying? Whether or not you buy into it, it's something that's only been made feasible in recent times with modern technology.

slashdot polls

[anonymousNR]

Need I say more

Re:A fantastic idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we can all vote on criminal trial verdicts too.

Week 1: "Zimmerman's guilty, hang him!"
Week 10: "Oh, maybe he wasn't, unhang him. We can't? Oh..."

Re:It's Possible

[rtfa-troll]

You'd have to set up the system so people can't vote multiple times.....

There are so many other possibilities.

• people who aren't supposed to vote, manage to vote
• people who are supposed to vote get stopped voting through tricks (like in Canada)
• the right people vote, but a trojan changes their online vote to a different thing from the one they wanted
• a computer manufacturer or OS vendor uses their control to modify votes, just like the trojan
• a minority of people has time to vote, the rest of the people have to work to keep their families together
• a "special" minority of people go round people's houses and make sure they vote the "right" way.

Election security is difficult and makes voting processes slow and difficult. This is why democracies moved from direct voting to "representative democracy" in the first place.

Computers just make it much easier to get a wrong system into place. They don't actually make it easier to make a good system. Maybe in the long long term, once everybody has access to a properly vetted secure device from a trustworthy manufacturer then we might be able to start thinking about online voting. Until we have that, such ideas are just asking for disaster.

Re:It's Possible

[icebike]

Election security is difficult and makes voting processes slow and difficult. This is why democracies moved from direct voting to "representative democracy" in the first place.

The state of public/private key technology today suggests to me that the system could be reasonably safe from each of the points you list, other than the purely social ones, (people with interest and time). You can't expect a polling system to solve social issues, such as disinterested voters, or organized vote buying. But duplicate or authorized users should be able to be controlled by a system of public/private key pairs.

Other than state actors, I believe an Open Source on-line polling system where registration was still handled (or at least vetted) by election authorities, would be at least as safe as any system currently in place.

Remember that the professor is looking for feedback from his constituents as to how he should vote, he is not looking to replace the ballot box.
Perhaps this is where your worry about direct voting went off the rails. That is NOT what he is proposing.

Direct democracy provides the people with a direct, unfiltered voice in that government. Stopping somewhat short of that, Hansen proposes a system of direct democracy in combination with our current system of representative democracy. He suggests that, “A representative should be elected who would work strictly as an advisor and make all policy and voting decisions based on the will of his or her constituents, regardless of personal opinion.

So the bar is much lower than replacing the voting system. He is perfectly capable under current law to do exactly as he proposes, simply by setting up a web site and collecting opinions, and then voting that way.

And in this regard such a system (if done right, or even approximately right) is probably better than the current method of lobbyists and letter writers, and campaign contribution fueled decision making. It at least has the potential of being more open, and more transparent.

The risk is more from "anonymous" denial of service attackers taking down the system during polling periods when ever an issue they didn't like was under discussion. Even this could be somewhat mitigated by making so many targets (ip addresses) available that anonymous would run out of bot-power. But that solution is probably beyond the capabilities of any given representative and would have to be run at the state or at least county level.