The New Vote

Every year and usually around November it becomes your civic duty to vote.  VOTE!!!  Primaries...VOTE!!!  I'm constantly inundated with pleas to vote.  I have a few thoughts about this.  

1.  Don't vote.  Just stop.  Lets pretend your vote is money (worth about 5 dollars last I checked) If I bet you 5 dollars against you being able to pick on a list of platform planks which ones your candidate stands for.  How many of you would take that bet?  Double or nothing on the opponent?  Now how many?  Only those of you that are politically savvy or motivated would risk 5 dollars.  The rest of us are either team players (straight ticket) or we just don't believe that voting does much (I vote but I'm in that camp).  People shouldn't vote if they aren't educated about what they are voting for.  They do a lot these days to help with that, but it still requires the voter to actually read and that might be too much.  Not voting is at least allowing your position to not hurt you.  If you vote uneducated, its very possible you are going to vote for someone you didn't know held a position you REALLY don't agree with.  If you don't know and don't vote you are leaving it to people that hopefully know what they are voting for.  Your voice shouldn't be heard if you don't know what you're saying.

2.  Can't we have defaults?  I know one of the biggest poisons in this country is the 2 party system.  We are not given any real choices.  there are MANY voters that just vote for their team.  I disagree with this in a lot of ways, but it's a reality.  Can't I just have a default vote that happens in case I don't go and vote?  It only works for Candidates and not referendums but at least then more people would be voting.  You can go in and override your default vote by voting for people you want only.  Any vote you don't make will default to your party choice.  Wow, I really hate this option but it seems the most likely to give people their representation.

3.  Lets dump the whole thing.  Reboot?  Why not.  Voting is not constitutionally designated on the federal level.  Individual states may vary.  It was all based on a system of representation out of convenience and compromise (it's land v.s. population).  So now that we have moved beyond all that,  lets scrap the dumb primary system and the even dumber political debates (what a snore fest).  If I have to listen one more fake enraged politician claim they aren't going to take it anymore, I'll write in vote for drywall.  I've mentioned this change in voting before in social media I think it will work.  Our country is fairly well connected internet wise.  Not great, but fair.  Every voter should have a qualified registration for a unique (block-chain) voter ID and password.  The software itself would be open source and analyzable by anyone.  Absolute transparency of how it is created and maintained is essential.  We don't have this now.  A voter would be able to bring up a list of all Federal, State, and local voting issues.  These issues will be published and vote-able for a designated amount of time prior to the vote deadline.  Then you vote for your issues and candidates on the internet.  At any point in time you can change your vote up to the deadline.  If you find out something about your vote you want to change, you can go ahead.  You can also write a note to yourself why you are changing your vote (if you want) and you can look up the history of your vote positions.  Where it came from and what your position was at that time.  No more polls, no more deadlines.  You can vote as many times as you change your mind to the last day.  Maybe end of November would be nice or maybe finish on black Friday.  That way if you know how you are going to vote you have it registered and there it is.  No muss no fuss.  

I hear some people complaining 'bhut whut about hakzors?'  yes yes.  Hackers.  Let me ask you a question.  Do you trust that your credit card goes to Amazon and moves money sufficient for the things you want to buy?  You do?  Good then this is good enough for the vote.  It can be refined and corrected over time.  We have a fair amount of experience about how to keep hackers away from simple software systems and voting would be extremely simple.  one ID, 2 factor authentication (yes it still works) and issues/candidates to vote on.  It would be tracked by ID but not by who is validated against that ID so your vote would be anonymous.  The hardest part would be validating a given voter.  I'm not saying it would be impossible to hack, but our current system is like a swinging screen door in the face of a tornado.  

The benefits of this method are obvious in flexibility and ease of use.  no more polling booths.  No more 'I voted' stickers.  No more going out of your way to have your voice heard.  Anywhere, anytime, you can vote.  Access is simple for anyone that has a connection to the internet somewhere (Libraries, coffee shops, stores)  if there are access issues I believe there are many ways we can create access for those that don't have any possible method for getting on the internet (a different problem).

This change in the way we vote would be revolutionary.  We can opt to keep or not the electoral college or we change to a complete democracy instead of a representative republic. The primary system would work automatically in the vote system.  The early votes would include all candidates,  the same voting system would automatically cull the candidates to one.  You don't have to be bothered by voting any more, you can do it as easy as paying for your Starbucks.  You also eliminate a LOT of false votes based on other systems.

I feel like these are valid ideas that can successfully apply technology to the voting process and give power back to the people.  Sure it's not perfect, nothing is.  But what we have is constantly failing in different ways that seem to have easy answers in our technology.