https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/_en, This is the initiative I am talking about. You have to prove you are an EU citizen and then you can sign for the initiatives you want and if a million signatures are reaching within a year then it must be brought to the EU commission.
So if citizens of EU member states can sign online, why can’t they vote online for elections or referendums? If possible, this would decrease the need and power of representative democracy and move closer to direct democracy, which I argue is a good thing
Because signing a petition isn’t voting. First and foremost voting should be anonymous. Secondly voting should be secret. Combine these with online voting from an unsecured location where your spouse could coerce you into voting for their candidate and it becomes a security nightmare.
On top of that voting should be transparent. With simple paper ballots any child, idiot and elderly person, every citizen can understand how it works. YOU can keep an eye on the whole process to make sure everything is counted and reported correctly. This isn’t a theoretical possibility. People actually do that. And that way irregularities do get spotted.
Don’t mail in voting concepts kind of contradict a lot of these points?
Mail in votes requires physical access to tamper with, anyone in the world can hack an internet connection and tamper with online votes.
Simple clear ballots right!?
Although yeah I agree with most of the points.
Well, we do know that the US isn’t a functioning democracy.
Voting from home makes voting under duress easier, which is a thing I’d argue that should be avoided.
I hadn’t consider that. I wonder if there is a way around this. Thanks for the answer!
I’d also like to link to this Tom Scott video
Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
The strongest argument for me: trust
Even with our paper ballots, hand counting, and many checks along the way, people now have doubts about the accuracy of the results. No matter how good the tech is, it will be impossible to convince the general public that the online votes are accurate.
Also this classic xkcd
Relevant xcdc https://xkcd.com/2030/
It’s fine, the blockchain is now augmented with some AI and runs serverless in the cloud!
Signing a petition is public, who you cast your vote for is private.
If there were any doubts on the signatures, officials can contact the people who signed and verify that they did sign. How do you verify a secret vote without ruining the secrecy?
I mean you can have online voting if you cast a ballot thats public, and it’d be verifiable, but then we go back to the 1800s in the US where threatening voters is a thing.
You have 3 elements:
1: Internet voting
2: Secrecy
3: Verifiable
Pick 2.
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mass mail-in voting, which has the same downsides as online voting
What exactly do you mean, the same downsides?
Mail ballots require physical presence to tamper with, so if you have armed guards + security cameras watching the drop box, most tampering threats can be prevented, at the same time, no one knows who the voter really voted for since envelopes are sealed.
In contrast, internet connections are really easy to tamper with. Most people just blindly click past https warnings, and thats just the most basic attacks, there are more sophisticated attacks. Not to mention, you dont even need physical presense. Anyone, anywhere around the world can hack an online vote.
Because
A: electronic voting is an awful idea in so many ways
B: direct democracy is an awful idea in so many ways
C: voting is supposed to be secret which the petition signaures aren’t
