Re:Shame on Y Combinator
by hueving on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @09:59AM
(#12734370)
Then perhaps you'd like to get rid of anonymous voting?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Voter registration is already public in many states (and searchable online). While that doesn't include actual votes, it does include party affiliation which is obviously a strong indicator. Beyond some extreme exceptions, you can't even opt-out of being listed in this publicly searchable database which includes your home address as well. In other words, voting is hardly anonymous even today.
And even that doesn't account for recent massive scale (191M people) leaks [1].
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/3yinij/entire_us_v...
You don't have to put a political affiliation.
That information is available (historically) from the third-party voting scraper sites (e.g. http://ohiovoters.info/). If there is a way of preventing it from being collected, I'm not sure how to do it.
Re:Shame on Y Combinator
by SapphireSun on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @02:09PM
(#12737131)
Anonymous voting ("the australian ballot") doesn't exist to protect you from your public opinions. It exists to allow people who don't want to express their opinions in public from being coerced when they make their choice and to negate the power of bribery to influence elections. If no one can prove you voted for the right candidate, it's less enticing to hand people money to do so. American elections weren't secret in the past. This was a fix that was put in to throw a wrench in political machines ("vote for this guy or I'll break your legs") and quid pro quo fueled campaigns ("here's $100 bucks if you vote for my candidate").
No, I would not like to get rid of anonymous voting.
Ask a simple question, get a simple answer.
But you would like to punish people who are publicly backing a candidate. Not very consistent.
You'll have to do a better job of connecting those dots for me, because I do not see the connection between criticizing someone for endorsing a member of the Trump campaign and working to eliminate the anonymous vote.
Incidentally? Elimination of the anonymous vote? That's something Peter Thiel probably actually believes in. He believes democracy is a failed experiment, and the extension of the franchise to women harmed society. He believes, in general, that more voting worsens outcomes.