This is the Internet, and the technical solution would be correct. You can make sure they use an email address from work, their university, or the person that provides their Internet access. Verify they are who they say they are, and make sure they have a unique address. Mail them a sealed postcard with a secure code to enter to access their vote. Do this for *everone,* not just late registers. Use statistics to assure that no one user is signing up from more than one domain. Don't allow gmail, hotmail, or any free email accounts to sign up.
Also, make sure only a few people are able to access it from one address. Instead of writing them the access code, you could set up an auto phone calling system. This is easy, and very much needed to ensure this is a successful project.
Unity '08 could be a good idea, but if the system is not better, or more *accurate,* than what we have currently have, then this candidate won't be what the people want, regardless of how much it's hyped.
Peace
We must have faith in our fellow man/woman that they are registered voters as they may be asked to attest to. Because the Help America Vote Act 0f 2024 is still trying to shape a standard for voter registration and eligibility we are faced with trust in our fellow man when it comes time to vote. Some states, including mine, have same day registration at the poles. And in Maine even if you cannot provide the proof that you are eligible to vote you cannot be refused a ballot. It would be considered a challenged ballot until proven otherwise. Therefore, I believe we have to accept the word of the individual as difficult as it may be.
The anonymity provided by the Internet has made trust nearly impossible. Hundreds of not tens of thousands of votes can be cast by computer programs written to simulate human voters. This gives computer savvy programmers and those that would hire them a possibly huge advantage in any vote. Ballot stuffing has been and is a serious problem for attempts at honest elections and especially so for electronic elections.
Many political action groups have proven they are more concerned about the ends rather than the means. Thus online ballots, polls, and popular votes are overwhelmed by groups pushing their agenda.
These are serious enough problems in current paper ballot elections. Chicago and Detroit have always been known for rigged elections in which many people vote multiple times. Vote buying has been a persistent problem throughout America’s history.
The idea that we must JUST TRUST our fellow man is amazing naive. Anyone that has read any history knows there have always been those that would FIX an election. That has not changed.
The alternative to naivety is that you are a shill with an agenda. There are those that would push an agenda that would allow them to more easily rig an election. We know China and Vietnam campaign and work to influence elections in America. They have their best interests in mind, not ours. How am I to know you are not working for them? Ask you and trust your answer? If you are a Chinese communist party member sent to influence an election are you going to tell the truth and fail in your mission, fail YOUR country?
Trust without verification is beyond naivety.
I doubt Unity 08 has the funds to use such a verification process.
Even if it only required one postcard per delegate, the cost would be astronomical.
However; if you inversed this, it might be possible. Provide delegates with a page to print out and mail in. The cost to the individual delegate would be quite small. It would make it much harder to have a script of some sort register many people.
unfortunately it could put some people off, because of the hassle.
What hassle? We are attepting to overthrow the mess our government has become. And believe me, these crooks are entrenched. We are going to have much hassle. But filling out and mailing a "voter registration" form is not hassle!! And, imagine the hassle of finding out that the ballot box has been stuffed, or some other scandal surfaces over failure to secure this effort.
How about a digital signature from verisign. I am sure we could get a discount, and any such discount would be tax deductible to verisign (and good advertising, as well)
Some people don't have anything other than the free e-mail addresses they use. Some internet providers don't necessarily offer e-mail addresses, and some people are students living at home and have a university address they don't use or rarely use. I think that there are other ways of verifying delegates. I do think verification needs to happen because I think that there are a lot of people who probably want to join just to go against us. But yeah, some people wouldn't be able to join if the afforementioned idea was put into place.
Free email addresses are a business tool for those that provide them. Primarily it gives them eyes to look at advertizing they sell. These businesses work to keep their cost down. They do not verify the owner of an address is really who he says he is. That would be too much work (cost) and would decrease their audience.
This means I could have any number of free email accounts. If Unity08 were to email each person a ballot with a special bar code (something like online postage stamps) I could get several.
Your point to avoid excluding people that use those addresses is well taken. But to avoid massive abuse of those addresses something has to be done.
Either Unity08 takes on the task of figuring out how to verify people using those addresses or they must exclude them. I think vetting free email addresses is a nearly impossible task. I’ve seen not a process that avoids abuse. So, unless someone comes up with a good, cheap, simple, workable process, I say free email addresses have to be excluded.
Is it really too much to ask that those wanting to participate find a way to do so without burdening the rest of us?
The vote at Unity08 must be able to withstand any challenge of voter fraud.
All voters must be verified. There are simply too many that would like to subvert an honest election.
In our current elections we pay for them by taxing citizens. Unity08 does not have that ability to levy taxes (that is a good thing). But there is no reason that some fee cannot be charged to register to vote. The fee can be used by Unity08 to promote the effort or even refunded or partially refunded. The credit card validation process would verify the individual.
There may be a PR angle and some new signups may see the fee as only a way to make money. We have to decide how that is going to be handled. I think that those unwilling to support their verification without paying something probably should not be voting. The founding fathers required more than just citizenship to be eligible to vote. I think that was overly restrictive but complete eligibility is overly permissive.
So, participation at all levels within the Unity08 site except for voting can be free. Donations can obviously still be part of the effort.
There is the problem of businesses with credit cards in the company name and billing to a company address. This would easily allow a business owner two votes. I think a business credit card could not be allowed a vote.
I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news, but any ad-hoc solution to the security problem can and will be subverted. The e-voting question has been raised in various countries this decade, but it is quite challenging to guarantee the authenticity of the voters and their votes, and allow for recounting. Estonia uses an e-voting system, but their citizens all have national ID-cards with a state-supported public-key infrastructure that verifies authenticity.*
I'm not sure that this solution will come easily or cheaply, but I urge immediate action, as without a secure voting mechanism this system cannot function. I don't have the technical understanding to offer a solution, nor would any non-expert. Is it possible that a security consultant might be willing to donate time to Unity08?
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastructure
Also see http://www.aceproject.org/ace-en/focus/e-voting/countries for a list of e-voting projects in various countries.
Barring a national bio-ID database, we'll never be positive that overzealous voters aren't being counted multiple times. It's not tough to have multiple IDs, multiple addresses, or multiple registrations, especially across state lines. Increased use of mail-in or electronic ballots increases this problem. You can set up some hurdles until everybody agrees it's good enough, but as long as there's a incentive for corruption, the possibility exists.
This is a longstanding argument between the two major parties. Historically, the larger the turnout the more likely the winners will be Democrats. Therefore, Democrats argued for lax standards of registration, while Republicans argued for stringent limitations. This is less true since Republican corporations took over making the machinery of electronic voting...
- Vernon Huffman