Open Thread

I’m making what is probably a heroic assumption: that the current stupidity over mail ballots will be abandoned for some new nonsense, probably as soon as Trump is no longer around to stoke it. Or, failing that, that California will continue to make widespread use of mail ballots.

My latest experience is from last Tuesday (the California primary). The polling place I worked covers some 5,000 registered voters. I was one of 7 poll workers at that location. We were open for 13 hours (7 AM until 8 PM). In that time, we had about 125 people come in to vote in person, and another perhaps 180 dropping off their mail-in ballots. Whole lot of nothing happening.

It seems pretty clear that we are going to have to rethink how we do Eection Day in-person voting. The county had only 5 locations for Early Voting. Do we cut way back on the number of physical polling lications on Election Day? We have already cut back from one polling place per precinct; now each polling place has from 3-6 precincts, with ballots for each. So that wouldn’t be particularly radical.

Or do we do in-person voting at all? Other places have shifted to 100% mail voting — several states, the entire country of Australia. There don’t seem to have been major problems. Certainly continuing to expend the resources currently required for the tiny number of voters using in-person is not reasonable. It may be that the biggest issue getting in the way is inertia: we’ve always included in-person voting; how could we change???

But I’m wondering if a bigger problem might be the incoming generations of voters who are accustomed to doing everything electronically. Do they demand getting rid of physical ballots altogether? Not to put too fine a face on it, but electronic communications just aren’t as secure, and the audit trails (e.g. for recounts) are less robust. You may assume things are secure. But an amazing variety of supposedly secure systems use cryptographic methods that were long since deprecated because they have known flaws. Plus, quantum computers will break even the best current cryptography. PQC (Post Quantum Cryptography) is being worked on, but is still in its infancy.

“Great and frightening changes.” Count on it.

If you want people to vote “in person” you have to come up with effective incentives. So, being of the lefty sort, here’s my “litmus test” (LOL!):

Voting should be a national holiday (three day weekend). There should be a precinct on every block….we should increase dramatically the membership of the House of Representatives. First past the post rules should be abandoned. End the Senate filibuster. Expand the Court…tax the rich, expropriate the expropriators…one big union, one big strike….wait, wait…stop me before I go over the edge into “unpopular” policy positions.

Voting should be a national holiday (three day weekend). 

At which point voting plummets, as people leave town. Just as they always do for 3 day weekends. If you’re going to make it a holiday, make it mid-week. Ideally Wednesday.

Not to put too fine a face on it, but electronic communications just aren’t as secure, and the audit trails (e.g. for recounts) are less robust.

xkcd has a comic where airplane engineers explain why airplanes are indeed the safest form of travel, and civil engineers explain why it is almost literally impossible for an elevator to fall down the shaft, and software engineers… run screaming from the idea of online voting.

Colorado’s system sometimes loses points when evaluated by experts because a very small number of disabled voters are allowed to submit their ballot online. I don’t know the details, but believe there’s significant effort in qualifying each election and individual one-time credentials are delivered by US mail.

“If you’re going to make it a holiday, make it mid-week. Ideally Wednesday.”

Needz moar “block party” also too.