[kwlug-disc] Say No To Electronic Voting ...

[CrankyOldBugger]

Have we flogged this horse enough, yet?

Ars Technical has an interesting article on why online voting is bad:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/why-experts-are-overwhelmingly-skeptical-of-online-voting/


On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 at 19:57, Mikalai Birukou via kwlug-disc <
kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> wrote:

>
> On 2020-08-25 6:37 p.m., Khalid Baheyeldin wrote:
>
> On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 3:18 PM Mikalai Birukou via kwlug-disc <
> kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> wrote:
>
>> If paper votes were always counted correctly in Belarus in the last 4 to
>> 8 elections, there would be no problem. But they weren't. Mere presence
>> of Austrian paper vote system doesn't guarantee the happy ending. Hence,
>> problem exist, may be not in Canada (note, in Belarus every vote has
>> equal weight, unlike here, leaving only miscounting as a mischief tool).
>>
>> Actual change that now takes place in that country was helped by some
>> tech solutions coupled with mass action. Tech is a tool. Tech is never a
>> solution to a problem that not all people abide by rules. But tech de
>> facto helped the defending side. Let me rephrase it, can we have high
>> tech pitchforks? :)
>>
>
> The problem here is that the system is rigged. It has the appearance that
> it is
> fair and open, while it is neither. The reason is a dictator who refuses
> to cede
> power and manipulates the voting process to get his way.
>
> The problem here is not voting, it is the power grip, which will corrupt
> any
> voting system (paper or computerized) to get the same result.
>
> As an example, Egypt before the 2011 uprising had similar problems: voting
> was rigged at many levels, starting with requiring special government
> issued
> IDs to be eligible to vote, to excluding candidates who are not aligned
> with
> the government but have a chance to win (imprisonment the month before
> the election, and released after it is over), to centralized ballot
> counting (and
> boxes were discarded and swapped en route), to a rigged parliament that put
> obstacles for someone to run for president (must get a majority of votes in
> parliament or other impossible conditions).
>
> Most of that changed over a few weeks, when people rose to depose Mubarak.
> No special voting ID was needed. The regular ID that everyone has was
> valid.
> Everyone was registered to vote by default. No insurmountable conditions
> for
> someone to run for president. Distributed ballot counting (in sito, with
> all
> representatives present), and so on.
>
> That worked for the 2012 elections, which were mostly fair and open.
>
> But quickly the military got their act together and with intimidation and
> exclusion
> managed to leave most of these measures in place, but again exclude
> candidates
> that have a chance to win.
>
> What will happen down the line? Perhaps another uprising, in due time.
>
> But the point here is that: don't expect dictators to follow the rules if
> they
> are the ones making them, and they ones gaming them. Belarus has momentum
> in the streets that may change that. I hope it does, and that it is long
> lasting,
> unlike Egypt.
>
> Let's note that everyone now is trying to have elections, even faked ones.
> Why dictators do this? They want some feel of legitimacy, and for that some
> rules from democratic places are used.
>
> If democratic places adopt even stronger approaches, then it will ripple
> out. Unfortunately, places like Estonia manage to adopt worse solutions.
>
> _______________________________________________
> kwlug-disc mailing list
> kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
> https://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://kwlug.org/pipermail/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org/attachments/20200903/9c35bff9/attachment.htm>