Re: Absentee voters

[Paul E Condon <pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I really disagree. Mail-in can be mis-used with some difficulty, 
whereas Open-ballot openly supports mis-use, and facilitates it. 

Whatever the rules, there will be attempts to circumvent them.
The goal, to me, is to find rules that are easier to enforce, so
that they are actually enforced well enough to keep the system
from being broken. Perfection is not an option that is available
to mortal man. But some available options are notably worse than
other available options. 

In fact, I rather like open ballot, but I would like it more if I had
a plausible answer to the vote sale objection.

On Tue, Mar 20, 2007 at 08:16:10AM -0600, Evan Daniel Ravitz wrote:
> 
> Same problem with mail-in voting.
> 
> On Sun, 18 Mar 2007, Paul E Condon wrote:
> 
> >With open-ballot voting there would be a possibility of voters selling
> >their vote. Should we also have a market in votes with open bidding,
> >and payment ( via PayPal, perhaps )? Should income from vote sale be
> >taxed, like income from gambling? Should it be a matter of public record
> >who paid for a vote? Interesting... ;-)
> >
> >On Sun, Mar 18, 2007 at 11:54:25AM -0600, Evan Daniel Ravitz wrote:
> >>
> >>Perhaps we should give voters the choice of secret-ballot voting with
> >>all it's problems, or OPEN-ballot voting, which could eliminate most
> >>fraud by keeping a record of the voter, timestamp etc. like with
> >>credit card transactions. This would also permit voting by internet or
> >>phone. All open-ballot votes could be published on govt websites to
> >>reveal any problems, and to let anyone use their own software to check
> >>the announced vote totals.
> >>
> >>I recall a survey that showed some 2/3 of voters didn't care who knew
> >>how they voted.
> >>
> >>Evan
> >>
<snip...>
-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx