It is sort of hypocritical that in a democracy, We the People ARE the government, and we demand transparency of government, but then we want to step into our private little voting booth, pull the curtain, and participate in a secret ballot. Cowardly.              

Without positively IDing each voter, there is no way to prevent one from casting multiple votes. In the absence of an ID system I could go around to several polling places and vote on behalf of several people of similar age and appearance, who show up as valid local residents, as long as I got there before the person I was claiming to be at the time.  Positive IDs are necessary, and elections would be a joke without them.

But back to my point.  A voter ID is necessary but still not enough to uphold responsibility.  Remember, in a democracy we want to have transparency and also BE the government, right?  Our secret ballot is incompatible with those principles.  It is so easy to just bash politicians, who without fail, claim to be following "the will of the people" or a "public mandate" or something collective like that.  But then the chain of responsibility just dissolves into the secret ballot.. to nobody.  That's bullshit.

If someone wants to alter the government in ways that affect me, I have a right to know who did it.  If you want to vote, your vote should go into a searchable public record.  I want to be able to ostracize (or praise) those responsible for government decisions that affect me.  It's simple.  Any person who wants to act as an agent of a transparent government should be identifiable as one.

In the spirit of the Tall Table I will now wish in one hand, sh*t in the other and see which one fills up first.

Ya lose that anonymity when ya walk up & sign in on the voter registration booklet, The Secrecy isnt THAT you voted, its HOW you voted.. Or, are you saying you want people to be able to vote in place of dead people so no one will know they voted?

IDK hoot about Bammys religious preferences,,
You wanna know who otta not vote? Anyone who supported Nafta, & anyone who wasnt able to read NDAA & see it meant Americans could be hauled away.,.Those people havent the ability to grasp what theyre looking at,OHH & BTW, I still get to vote,

Serowbot wrote on 07/27/12 at 22:35:37:

The advantages of the secret ballot are not lost on me, I do understand and appreciate them.  But we still can't have our cake and eat it too.  As long as there is a secret ballot, there will always be doubt, conspiracy theories and complaints about stolen elections.. pick your poison.

You raised the concern that people would be coerced into voting a certain way, and if not, at least the fact that you can choose to vote (or not vote) would lead to a reduced number of voters.  In the case of open votership, the reduced votership would of course leave more voting power to the people who have the balls to vote and let their votes be known.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing.  There is nothing about an open system that would select for bad votes. If anything, it would shine a light on them.  I get it that open voting would facilitate ostracism among family members, neighbors, etc. and that is the point.  The risk of ostracism is the price of power.

I think Webby just agreed with me...
Gulp!... ...

All right I got the 'ol bat's stuff moved  Awesome, now I can change the oil in my truck and hang out with my daughter. Life's good.

So unless anyone disagrees, I guess we can conclude that vote fraud is a consequence of loose or nonexistent ID checking, but levels are low enough for most people to accept.  While most people want their ID verified upon voting so no one can pose as them, they would not go so far as to make the fact that they voted (and certainly not the WAY they voted) an open public record.

I think a decent compromise would be for voters to be able to go online, provide a username and password, and be able to see that the way they voted is how it stands (as in, their vote was not tinkered with).  I'd go a step further and say everyone should be able to check anyone's vote, but I guess that idea aint gonna fly.

Starlifter wrote on 07/28/12 at 15:32:39:

This is not a technical proplem, it's a human cheating problem.  The machines are not "broken" and in need of "fixing."   Surely you have heard the saying "The problem with computers is, they don't do what you WANT, they do what you ASK."
 
You can have the best voting machine in the world.. redundant mil-spec hardware, open-source software checked by 1001 eyeballs (that is, 500 software engineers and a pirate) and a final check by NASA. That won't prevent the thing from being delivered to the polling place pre-loaded with votes for one candidate or another. Or messed with after the election.  Because the bureaucrat who handled it took a bribe, or simply favored a candidate and wanted to cheat.  And so we're back to the original problem of the secret ballot facilitating some level of fraud.

It's a hanging CHAD!!  


We don't know who's vote this goob is looking at.  But.. if each name and vote was posted for all to see, fraud would be soon busted.