[LINK] Electronic Voting

Chris Maltby chris at sw.oz.au
Fri Nov 17 13:53:30 AEDT 2006


On Fri, Nov 17, 2006 at 12:24:27PM +1100, Stewart Fist wrote:
> 3. The third major reason is that some people are daunted by strange
> mechanical devices, while few are pencil-phobic.
> 
> 3a ... the subset of this argument, is that people need to trust the
> electoral system for democracy to work, and from experience, people know
> that they can't trust machines.

This is a really important factor that is often overlooked. People
are already mistrustful of the political system. It's reasonable to
assume that that mistrust is often expressed as dis-engagement from
the political process, and that disengagement encourages the kinds of
political behaviour that feed mistrust of the system. In shorthand,
most people can tell when they are being treated like mugs.

As has been argued elsewhere, the case for machine based voting is
never expressed in terms of how it will increase confidence in the
voting system - it's predominantly how it will provide benefits
to various interest groups and insiders (right-wing think tank
terminology "new class elites"). Those insiders include the pollies
who want to seem like forward thinkers by embracing new technology
whether it's appropriate or not for the purpose (and it makes $$$
for their business backers).

Political trust is not a linear system - there's a point where
distrust reaches a critical level where democratic participation
as a moderator of populist extremism breaks down. Who knows how
close various "western" democracies are to that point.

Chris



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