Elections in Germany - absence of voter caging,manipulated machines,disenfrachisement

[kronic]

Probably, but as long as their registration procedure makes sure that only party members have access to the platform/the right to vote, I see nothing wrong with that. Given their background (IT nerds mostly), I'm fairly confident that they have that under control.

[Mise]

I like electronic voting, and I don't see what's so silly about the idea. Surely the opportunity for fraud is greater with pen & paper than with a re-purposed Cash Machine.

[luiz]

Originally Posted by anandus

But who are the ones that are backwards? The ones that are using voting machines or the ones that use pen and paper?

Everyone who doesn't use our super-sophisticated electronic voting machines.

Believe it or not, they actually tell us those machines are a technological wonder and the envy of the world.

[luiz]

Originally Posted by Mise

I like electronic voting, and I don't see what's so silly about the idea. Surely the opportunity for fraud is greater with pen & paper than with a re-purposed Cash Machine.

Indeed, electoral fraud actually decreased around here once we adopted electronic vote. But I suppose the main issue some countries have is the lack of accountability to individual citizens.

That said, I don't mind the system at all. We have results much faster now, usually one hour after vote ended we already know the result. But it's not flaw-proof either.

[innonimatu]

Originally Posted by luiz

Indeed, electoral fraud actually decreased around here once we adopted electronic vote. But I suppose the main issue some countries have is the lack of accountability to individual citizens.

Indeed. Electronic vote is by design unaccountable to most citizens. They're just forced to take the word of experts that the system is working correctly. Not only is there the potential problem of the experts being incompetent, insufficient, or plain corrupt, there is also the problem of results being always open to attack, should anyone make an issue of it, even if those results happen to be correct, because people don't have the ability to check the process for themselves.

Originally Posted by luiz

That said, I don't mind the system at all. We have results much faster now, usually one hour after vote ended we already know the result. But it's not flaw-proof either.

Never saw any value in that argument. In a small country of a few million ballots are easily counted manually in a couple of hours, tops. With good coordination it shouldn't take much longer even in a large country.

[metatron]

Originally Posted by Aroddo

Actually yes, we did. Extensively. Funny you should ask here instead of reading that there.

Oh you mean that? I didn't peg that as an answer.

[Algeroth]

(Couldn't the part about Pirate Party be moved into separate thread? It could be an interesting disscusion on its own.)

[Aroddo]

Originally Posted by luiz

Indeed, electoral fraud actually decreased around here once we adopted electronic vote. But I suppose the main issue some countries have is the lack of accountability to individual citizens.

That said, I don't mind the system at all. We have results much faster now, usually one hour after vote ended we already know the result. But it's not flaw-proof either.

One hour sounds about right for our pen and paper solution. Electronic voting should give you the results instantly ... but I guess your officials need the hour to 'correct' some minor mistakes, eh?

And like mentioned earlier, we had voting computers, too. And they were way more awesome and yours!!!
But they were not perfect enough for us, so we went back to cardboard boxes.

[SiLL]

@Aroddo
It makes my heart buzz with nationalistic nostalgia to see a German brother who is dedicated to teach an international audience the superiority of the German ways. Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen!

Originally Posted by Mise

I like electronic voting, and I don't see what's so silly about the idea. Surely the opportunity for fraud is greater with pen & paper than with a re-purposed Cash Machine.

You need less expertise / connections / silent support to rick election with pen & paper, so yes, more opportunity. Now just as well, the population has more opportunity to check on those elections. Think of fraud videos in Russia, possible because of pen & paper.
With electronic voting, just as there is less opportunity for fraud, there is less to check on fraud. Which means a natural concentration of power over the voting process at the top.
If lower levels of authority in government and society are so un-trustworthy and your central authorities in turn so trustworthy, then this is a good idea (Brazil as luiz claims). In the UK, where I don't see this to be the case, it is IMO an unnecessary concentration of power and hence an unnecessary risk. The same goes for Germany. And the US maybe already showed this risk to be real.

So @kronic, I personally would trust our authorities to correctly handle electronic voting as well, but the thing at stake - sound elections - is so essential that I don't want any measure taken which gives authorities greater power to screw us without an actual need to do so.

[SiLL]

Originally Posted by anandus

What I find weirdest about the German pirate party is that they decide on their party views on issues through internet polls (if I understood correctly).
Unless it's mandatory for all members, don't you get a certain 'rule of the vocal minority'?
Ironically through so-called democratic methods you get a very undemocratic party.

That is to my knowledge total bullocks and at least the German media does a lot to spread such bullocks. Binding decisions are made in person on party conventions where every party member can come and vote.

I must agree with GoodSarmatian that the current high of the Pirates is not good (I wouldn't say undeserved, though). As he correctly notes, they need a lot of time to get their policies straight. Right now, it appears to be a mess and not suitable for the majorities they poll.
However, I personally plan to vote for them anyway. And not just "out of protest". This is a cliché, the world isn't (I am not anyway ... I hope..). I vote for their style of politics, not their policies. And I do that because their style is not just a cool image, but hard party policy. Fluid democracy, direct democracy, transparency. Those are precisely not just buzz words, but concepts the Pirates already implement. And quit revolutionary so. They deserve major credit for this and I want to see this flourish. I got no clue in what form exactly (sort of like the Pirates), but that is most of all because it is so new and as said revolutionary. This is what I'll be voting for.

[Mise]

Originally Posted by SiLL

@Aroddo
It makes my heart buzz with nationalistic nostalgia to see a German brother who is dedicated to teach an international audience the superiority of the German ways. Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen!


You need less expertise / connections / silent support to rick election with pen & paper, so yes, more opportunity. Now just as well, the population has more opportunity to check on those elections. Think of fraud videos in Russia, possible because of pen & paper.
With electronic voting, just as there is less opportunity for fraud, there is less to check on fraud. Which means a natural concentration of power over the voting process at the top.
If lower levels of authority in government and society are so un-trustworthy and your central authorities in turn so trustworthy, then this is a good idea (Brazil as luiz claims). In the UK, where I don't see this to be the case, it is IMO an unnecessary concentration of power and hence an unnecessary risk. The same goes for Germany. And the US maybe already showed this risk to be real.

So @kronic, I personally would trust our authorities to correctly handle electronic voting as well, but the thing at stake - sound elections - is so essential that I don't want any measure taken which gives authorities greater power to screw us without an actual need to do so.

I don't see the difference between trusting the state to ensure that paper votes are secure and trusting the state to ensure that electronic votes are secure. I don't see why you think that power will be concentrated, or why this is a problem... In short, your post makes absolutely no sense to me on any level. Sorry...

[SiLL]

Originally Posted by Mise

In short, your post makes absolutely no sense to me on any level. Sorry...

Oh don't worry, I take this as the result of my incomprehensible genius.

Okay, look: Think of skills. Now here are some skills:
A) Counting ballots, watching someone counting ballots, watching a ballot box being filled by citizens
B) Programming a voting computer, to check on the computing progress

As you will notice, A) refers to pen&paper, while B) to electronic voting. As now becomes obvious, A) is in principle accessible to everyone, while B) is not at all. What follows is a natural accumulation of power with the few which then naturally means a greater power of state authorities because only those few can still challenge them.

Any sense so far?

edit: And if we get less abstract, we don't only have fewer people who hold the skills to check, but even those have with electronic voting a harder time to get access if not explicitly asked to do so by authorities. With pen&paper you can just walk into the place and make a sneak video. Hence my example with the Russian clips.

[Akka]

Originally Posted by Mise

I don't see the difference between trusting the state to ensure that paper votes are secure and trusting the state to ensure that electronic votes are secure.

You can't see the difference between the skills and knowledge required to check that someone isn't messing with a bunch of papers, and checking the inner working of electronics and software ?
Are you serious ?

[Mise]

EDIT: Nevermind, I don't really care enough to argue about it. Maybe one day you people will join us in the 20th century.

[Aroddo]

Originally Posted by Mise

Finally, it's really freaking easy to rig a pen & paper ballot; it's much more difficult to rig a computer system. If I trust a government commission with something that they can easily rig, why shouldn't I trust them with something that's really hard to rig?

That's the thing: It's absolutely NOT easy to rig a pen&paper ballot! At least not in a way that's not too obvious.
It all depends on your civil rights and voting process, of course. In our case, the officials are fully accountable and the voting and the counting of the ballots have to be public and transparent.
So imagine you want to swing the vote your way and you know that you will lose badly without fudging the results. How would you do that?

1. Report the wrong number of votes.
   Works until citizens insist on a recount, which will show a stark discrepancy.
2. Fake all ballots beforehand.
   Great idea. Prepare 100.000 handwritten ballots for a single medium sized town. Millions for a whole state. That many manhours are quite an investment ... and every single helper has the power to blackmail you. Not to speak of having to pay the helpers.
3. Fake some ballots beforehand.
   Reduces manhour and thus blackmail opportunities and money. However, the ballots are still being counted and it is recorded how many people came to vote. So you have to remove as close as possible the exact number of ballots before inserting your fake ones. Otherwise there is a significant discrepancy between actual voters and ballots counted, which can lead to a public recount. And a couple of thousand ballots with the same vote and the X in the same style will be noticed.
4. Let your own people do the counting
   Ballots are not counted alone, so you have to replace all the election helpers in a significant number of polling stations. If successful however, they are in a good position to deliver believable fake numbers that actually add up without arousing suspicion. Still, routine sample recounts can pick up the manipulation since the ballots differ from the reported numbers.
5. Fake the ballots, let your own people do the counting and report the numbers you like.
   If you manage to do that then you don't really need to bother with elections anyway.

Now electronic voting.

1. Manipulate the voting computer to count the correct number of votes and generate a result in your favor.
   Done. Without a paper trail to proof otherwise, there is no way to prove that the result is wrong.

I'll stick to paper ballots, no matter how archaic that might seem.

[SiLL]

Originally Posted by Mise

EDIT: Nevermind, I don't really care enough to argue about it. Maybe one day you people will join us in the 20th century.

Again? I thought 100 years quit enough.
And I must say, I am disappointed. The argument wasn't that complex.

[Akka]

Originally Posted by Mise

EDIT: Nevermind, I don't really care enough to argue about it. Maybe one day you people will join us in the 20th century.

Sorry, we're in the 21th century now, and waiting for you to catch up.

[kronic]

Originally Posted by SiLL

So @kronic, I personally would trust our authorities to correctly handle electronic voting as well, but the thing at stake - sound elections - is so essential that I don't want any measure taken which gives authorities greater power to screw us without an actual need to do so.

I wasn't advocating to introduce electronic voting in national elections. I only commented on the decision making process within a party. My point was mainly to refute anandus' claim that the Pirates were somehow less democratic than other parties. Not to mention that I find it deeply ironic that our main parties, where decision-making most of the time happens top down, i.e. leaders setting the agenda and framing the entire debate by pushing their position, are considered democratic.

[SiLL]

Of course, I am not quit sure how I read it otherwise. Too much in a hurry.
And yes, "democratic" is a term raped good. Though not necessarily only for illegitimate reasons (while that, too, of course). It's the freak child of a bi-polar-dynamic. The image this word represent and it's actual down-to-earth use.
To pick up your example: The image that parties are the result of collective will. The use that collective will is only there to constrain individual will (party elite). Die Piraten tries to bring image and use closer together. Conservatives will claim that this is naive, that use and image are supposed to be as different as they are. I am not so sure and it seems you are neither.

[Mise]

Originally Posted by Akka

Sorry, we're in the 21th century now, and waiting for you to catch up.

You really are bad at irony aren't you.