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Voting: The Next Victim of Modernization?
By Matt Margolis | July 24, 2003
Thanks to the The Drudge Report I discovered this story about cybervoting.
I honestly have to say that I am not for internet voting. I believe that voting should no go that route. There’s too much risk for fraud. Does anyone not believe that the first election where cybervoting is allowed for the masses there won’t be hackers out there trying to tamper with the votes?
There is something to be said about taking time out of your day to go to the polls, or having to submit your absentee ballot by a given deadline.
I’ve voted in both fashions.
Voting should never be made easier or more accessible. It is more important for people to make an effort to go and vote. I strongly believe in this. Just as I would be 100% against making Election Day a holiday. People don’t need a day off to go and vote. It just makes it easier for people who normally wouldn’t vote, who probably don’t know enough about the issue to make a well educated vote.
I know some people are thinking, “This is a Democracy, the more people who vote, the better.”
Yes, to a degree this is true. However, I still feel people need to make the effort to go out an vote, and not have their vote reduced to an activity you can do at home in your bathrobe.
People who can’t take the time, or make the effort to break their otherwise repetitive daily routine to make it to the polls are the ones less likely to vote on their own cognizance.
Internet voting can also be the source of multiple votes by one person who happens to have several complacent friends or family members who wouldn’t care to let their friend have their vote.
There are so many problems with this hat I’m sure I can’t even think of all the possible situations.
I’ll always advocate voting the old fashioned way. Tradition does not have to be the victim of modernization.
Topics: Thoughts |
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July 24th, 2003 at 11:04 pm
Votig isn’t supposed to be easy… this cybervoting crap is a potential hacker’s paradise.
The past two elections I haven’t been absentee due to school 9but still voted) I had to get up extra early to vote before work… It’s a responsiblity we citizens have… sometimes you have to work for your responsiblity… it ain’t supposed to be a cakewalk.
July 24th, 2003 at 11:15 pm
I definately think cybervoting is a load of crap… Voting shouldn’t be like taking one of those online quiz things. Ugh.
July 25th, 2003 at 1:18 pm
The potential for fraud is absolutely staggering.
Back to foolproof “make a mark next to the candidate of your choice” paper ballots, I say. No chads, no electrons.
July 25th, 2003 at 3:39 pm
Hey GOP flamers…
tear apart this document:
http://blog.deanforamerica.com/archives/000779.html#more
good luck.
July 25th, 2003 at 6:59 pm
Hey GOP flamers
Eh, if you want flamers, go visit Free Republic. They’ll rip that speech a new one
July 25th, 2003 at 8:51 pm
A few points to ponder regarding Howard Dean’s statement, the link to which was provided by “Bushed”. This is not intended as anything more than food for thought.
Could it possibly be that in some instances Mr. Dean is misplacing the blame, while at the same time giving one man and one administration too much “credit” for something that takes a lot more than a few decisions and a few new programs and a lot longer than a few years to bring about?
First of all, certain domestic policy “failures” in question are the failures of very Dem-style government initiatives, the likes of which are usually upheld by Democrats and other neo-”liberals” (sorry, I still think the true liberals were the laissez-faire liberals, not the big government supporters of today!) and the so-called “compassionate conservatives”.
What if the fault lies not with the President’s action or inaction upon certain initiatives but with the initiatives themselves, i.e. what if the goals sought can not be achieved by the chosen means, namely, by government involvement? What if, in order for these goals to materialize, the government needs to step out altogether instead of stepping in and wasting more taxpayers’ money? What if some things are simply not the government’s business?
Since very many of these programs, in one form or another, have existed before Bush, and failed miserably through their duration (such as public education, government regulation of economy, welfare for both rich and poor and other “paternal-government” programs) maybe it is not his individual fault, but the fault of government overinvolvement per se… What if his only fault is his failure to actually butt out of certain aspects of the life of this nation?
I hate to say it, but regulation creates more problems than it solves (if it ever does)– and history is my evidence. In that case, Mr. Dean is actually reciting a list of failures not of the current President, but that of the policies eerily similar to his own, and, therefore, the failures of a paternal, overbearing, nanny-like style of government that has been regarded as a sort of a “sacred cow” and adopted without question by some representatives of BOTH rival parties.
In addition, what if the steps toward easing the burden of taxes and lessening of government controls over business were simply too small of a drop in too big of a bucket? What if more de-regulation is needed, more tax cuts, more “pet-cause-program” cuts, more cushy bureaucrat job cuts– and then, more than a few years are required to see the positive results. Economic changes take time and economic initiatives should be judged by the long-term, not the short-term effects. Lord Keynes was wrong. Paraphrasing what Ludwig Von Mises said in response to Keynes’ famous “in the long term, we’re all dead” maxim, we may be dead in the long term, but we live too long to worry only about the short-term…