I've registered to vote by proxy. This issue matters to me a lot more than previous recent referendums. But then, as an expat scientist, I'm heavily biased.
About six million residents have yet to register to vote on 23 June, more than a million of them are under the age of 25. Lord Kinnock said the outcome of the referendum was "vital to the future of British people of all ages" but "the longest and strongest effects will be felt by you - the young generations". "The risk is, if we get a low turnout, regardless of what people's background politics is, that by default Leave could win."
(Non-British readers should be advised than in general, the only people in Britain who care about Europe are the ones who hate it. That's why most of our MEPs are UKIP; not necessarily because most Brits are anti-Europe, but because they are totally apathetic about it.)
But was there no condition imposed on voter turnout ? For referendums I feel there should be some lower limit below which they become void. Then again I'm becoming disillusioned with the idea of direct democracy. It might work if a large proportion of people were actively interested and rational, but they are neither. Which may be the fault of the media or entirely natural, I don't know.
Party leader Jeremy Corbyn - who has previously expressed Eurosceptic views - has been accused of being "half-hearted" in his backing for Labour's position to campaign to stay in the EU. This week he said there was an "overwhelming case" to remain in, citing issues ranging from mobile phone charges to clean beaches and protecting bees - but also called for sweeping reforms.
Right, yes, because these are a) tremendously important and b) really matter to voters. Aaaargh. I'm also pretty much done with Corbyn. I like the guy, but he has the leadership skills of a bag of hedgehogs. He'd be a fantastic deputy Prime Minister though.
The major advance of the E.U. is freedom of movement. This should be praised to the stars at every opportunity. It is a wonderful, fantastic advance compared to the xenophobic, isolationist, imperial policies of pre-war Europe, and I simply do not understand those who see that horrible era as "the good old days". For this reason alone we should stay in, not that there aren't many others also. And while like any other bureaucratic political institution the E.U. is not without major flaws, I see nothing that couldn't be better fixed by us staying in to help fix it.
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2016/05/i-quite-like-eu-lets-keep-it.html
(Disclaimer : these sorts of posts have the tendency to attract racists and occasionally mysterious hordes of UKIP supporters with whom I've never interacted; if that happens I will simply delete comments because I've utterly lost patience with bigoted idiots)
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36447926
Neil Kinnock is still around? Good god, I thought he was just a Spitting Image puppet.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe we still use bits of paper to vote with. The government should launch a competition to create a robust voting system to improve turnout. We trust bank login systems enough to be secure enough to protect our money, surely someone can duplicate something for a voting system.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple could jointly design and host the system... you know, since we've already paid them with low tax rates.
Oliver Hamilton That came up in a recent discussion. Here in the Czech Republic even voting by proxy or postal voting is not a thing. The only way to vote when out of the country is by going to an embassy !
ReplyDeleteI guess the only way to make electronic voting secure would be to abandon anonymity. Electronic banking works in part because if something goes wrong, you can spot it, someone is accountable, and the error can be corrected. I can't see any way to do that in an anonymous electronic voting system - the system could make assurances that your vote had really gone to the candidate/option of your choice, but there'd be no way to verify this since all that matters is the final numerical count. Although it's certainly not impossible to cheat the paper system, it is difficult. The process gets a lot of oversight from multiple witnesses through the entire stage of proceedings.
Personally I wouldn't have any objection to making my vote public, but I can imagine situations where this might cause problems.
Maybe there could be a voluntary system to vote online in parallel with paper system. Let's face it people voice their opinions pretty freely online anyway.
ReplyDeleteOliver Hamilton Rhys Taylor Indeed, Dead Tree Format is the only system that is both secure and anonymous. Any electronic system can - and will - be compromised.
ReplyDeleteElie Thorne but is that risk worth it for getting a greater turnout?
ReplyDeleteThe paper system isn't fool proof "Thousands wrongly sent polling cards" - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36446521 notice it was a 'software' issue, could this system ever be compromised?
I wonder if you could link votes to voters via ballot papers. It'll be a lot of effort but I'm sure it could be done. Using phone track data to determine time/location of vote, handwriting analysis to assess the X angle/size/pressure, oil/sweat/finger print residue on the paper.
I'm sceptical that anything is actually ever anonymous. Some things are just more difficult to extract than others.
For greater turnout I would recommend adopting the Puerto Rican system of making polling days public holidays and possibly making voting compulsory with an "abstain" option.
ReplyDeleteFor preserving anonymity, the question isn't whether the system is foolproof or not - that's impossible - but which is best, i.e. which is the most difficult to cheat. Though you could dodge the handwriting issue completely by replacing it with a stamp. Provided there are multiple witnesses at all stages of the proceedings, processed tree carcasses are a remarkably robust system. The downside is that they're hugely inefficient and expensive.
An electronic system is much more efficient and convenient, but without abandoning anonymity I'm not seeing a way to make the system safer than the paper ballot. In effect everything happens behind closed doors - even if the code is open source, how do you know what code is really being run ?
I'm not sure about a fully transparent electronic voting system, even one that's voluntary. Currently the only way to bribe voters is to make crazy election promises you can't keep, but there's no point in literally giving them money for their vote because you'll never know what it was. Similarly, if people are conscious of how their peers are voting, they may change their vote to agree with them. Or worse, people may suffer abuse for not voting the "right" way.
All in all, I'd rather stick with paper.