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

[CrankyOldBugger]

I spoke too soon.. apparently Trump has a solution: he told everybody in NC
to vote twice!

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-north-carolina-voting-1.5710497?cmp=rss



On Thu, 3 Sep 2020 at 19:23, CrankyOldBugger <crankyoldbugger at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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.
>>
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>
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