“A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming

Re:“A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming by mtgx on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @09:47AM (#18399418)

I agree this is far from the primary thing Americans should be focusing on, even forgetting about all the horrific and completely impossible to fix security issues that this will bring.

What the US needs to be focusing on is changing the voting system. It's absolutely insane and undemocratic for this to keep happening almost every election:

https://preview.redd.it/lyvqks420vw11.jpg?width=949&auto=web...

If this isn't a broken system, I don't know what is. This is not the "voice of the people" being heard. Oh, and what do you think happens when people see how broken this system is? Do you think they'll still "go out and vote"? Many will be turned-off by it and stay home, whether we like it or not.

And if you're looking for an alternative solution, the multi-winner ranked-choice voting system (for Congress/state legislatures) looks pretty good to me, and it would eliminate gerrymandering, too (as a simple side effect of allowing candidates from multiple parties to win in the same district, thus removing district monopolization by a single party):

https://www.fairvote.org/fair_representation

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Re:“A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming by umanwizard on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @09:52AM (#18399461)

The senate will never change. It was an agreed-upon compromise to entice independent states to join a federation. You’re better off hoping for the state where you live to declare independence and do without the federation completely than hoping the federation changes its entire structure.

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Re:“A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming by jfk13 on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @09:56AM (#18399499)

> It's absolutely insane and undemocratic for this to keep happening almost every election:

> https://preview.redd.it/lyvqks420vw11.jpg?width=949&auto=web....

> If this isn't a broken system, I don't know what is. This is not the "voice of the people" being heard.

If that graphic were for the House rather than the Senate, it would be more persuasive. The Senate is (by design) not about representation directly in proportion to population.

It may be debatable whether the Senate model of equal representation for each state is appropriate, but that's a different issue than changing the FPTP voting system.

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Re:“A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming by masonic on Thursday November 08, 2018 @10:10PM (#18412076)

Beyond that, the data is unsourced, and given that it thinks there are 92 (rather than 100) Senators, is suspect.

Also, raw vote counts are meaningless because the most populous states are dual-Democrat states, excluding Texas.

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Re:“A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming by KerrickStaley on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @09:54AM (#18399473)

One issue with ranked choice is that it's more complicated than some alternatives like approval voting, and certain ranked choice methods (non-Condorcet ones) can encourage strategic voting or produce surprising results.

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Re:“A Horrifically Bad Idea”: Smartphone Voting Is Coming by twtw on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @10:38AM (#18399790)

> if this isn't a broken system, I don't know what is

You are either willfully ignoring the structure of the system or need to study it more. If a billion people vote for democrats in New York and California, it has zero impact on the election of the representative from Wyoming (or any other not CA or NY). Thinking that it should fundamentally misses the point of a federation.

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