This
is a method of voting online with no Internet transmission of
your completed ballot;
you will log in to a website, vote, and print out a completed ballot
you will take to your polling place. This is a work in progress
where ideas can be added or removed.
The
Government Voting Site will be very generic, simple and easy to use.
There will be no Flash Player or any processor-intensive animation.
Only large, easy to read text and still-image tutorials will be used.
A person with a slow connection will be able to get to and see
everything offered. Absolutely no frills. You will be able to see
all current and upcoming elections around the country, big and small.
You can see who's running, election times, etc, etc. All from this
one site. But you cannot participate in any election unless you
register.
(In
addition to voting on the Government Voting Site, a registered voter
can participate in poll questions that will pop-up on a regular
basis. You would log in, read the question and answer—one answer
per registered voter. Polling can literally be done on a weekly
basis with no disruption to daily life. The sample size for the poll
taker will go up drastically which will increase accuracy.)
Just
like when you sign loan documents, sign up on Healthcare.gov, or fill
out credit applications, you must prove who you are to register to
vote. Via a secure, encrypted site, you will input your personal
information. Your SSN will be matched with your birthday, which will
be matched with your name and address to make sure you are a
legitimate person who is entitled to vote. Healthcare.gov does this.
Credit card companies do this all the time when they extend credit.
The only personal information that will be editable after
registration is complete will be your address. Your other
information, which does not change, will be grayed-out and impossible
to change. If your information is made up you will not be allowed to
go any further until your ID is confirmed. There will be phone
numbers to call for assistance.
(To
make sure your address stays valid, once a year, around August or
September, a NON-FORWARDABLE letter will be mailed to your address of
record. This letter will contain information you must enter into the
website after you log in. If you do not enter it, you will not be
able to vote until your address is verified. If you don't get the
letter you will be told to call the phone number for assistance.)
Assuming
your information checks out and you're allowed to continue, you will
go to the user/password section.
Your
user-name will be a valid email address—you will have to click on a
confirming link to validate your registration at the end of the
registration process.
Your
password will be long and complicated. Letters, symbols and numbers
must all be used. (A hard copy should be kept with your important
papers.)
Multi-Factor
Authorization (MFA) security features
will be used. You will have to answer at least three questions you
choose. Cookies will probably not be set, so this procedure will be
input each time you log in. Also possible is to have a security code
sent via text message to your cell phone, where you must input this
security code to officially log in. If you forget everything,
instructions will be emailed to you to reset your information, which
may include calling a rep to prove your identity, a procedure common
with banks. (For those who do not have access to, or have no ability to use, computers, they can request an absentee ballot. As time goes on, more and more people
will use computers and less and less people will vote absentee.)
Log
in to your email, click the link, where you will be asked to log in:
user, password, your MFA questions will be asked and you must provide
the answer. Now you are officially registered—which you will not
have to do again—and logged in.
(The
way voting is right now, a criminal can pay a postal carrier $10,000
for them to steal, for example, 50 absentee ballots. Rare, but
possible. A criminal can also pay voters directly for their absentee
ballots. And the voters selling these ballots are not in danger of
having their identities stolen—just their votes. If you've
registered on-line, however, and you choose to sell your log-in
information and, consequently, your vote, you are essentially selling
your identity as well. You would be complicit in the destroying of
your own credit record. Ask yourself how many people would be
willing to do that?)
Now
you're logged in and ready to cast a ballot. Since your address
determines your qualifying election, your election will be front and
center, no need to search. All you have to do is follow the simple
instructions and vote. After you've made all your choices, checked
and double checked your picks, you will cast your ballot. When your
vote is cast (after you click the 'vote' button), you cannot change
anything. If you come back tomorrow, log-in and try to vote again,
it will say something like 'your vote has been cast. Would you like
to print your ballot, exit, etc.?' You will not be allowed to cast
another ballot because your log in information has already cast a
ballot for this particular election. This is extremely common
technology that is used all the time; online poker, for example,
allows you to register for a tournament, play, and lose. You cannot,
subsequently, late register for the same tournament.
(Incidentally,
when you click the 'vote' button, your vote is logged. It
does not officially count, but it's a very quick way to
see where the voting is at any given time. And when the vote is
officially tabulated by the Registrar, it can be compared to this to
see the disparity, if any.)
After
you click the 'vote' button you'll be asked to print your ballot.
Your choices will print on the ballot, just like they are today, in
small print on one side and one half of the page. There will be a
line with instructions to 'fold here', so the choices will be hidden.
Staple the ballot closed. On the other half of the page, but on the
same side, will be a bar code. This bar code will remain exposed
after the page is folded. This is important.
(If
you don't have a printer you could save your ballot to a USB flash
drive and, with the help of a polling worker, plug into a computer at
the polling place, bring up your ballot and print it out. Then, to
check the accuracy of your choices, you can scan your bar code on
these computers and check that the votes printed on your ballot match
the bar code scanned choices on the screen. I'm assuming you realize
these computers are separated by privacy partitions. These computers
will not be web connected and will be dirt cheap. People recycle
computers every day that would be perfect for this task.)
You
will enter the polling place with a folded piece of paper with an
exposed bar code. When ready, you will approach a polling worker who
will do five things:
1-
Scan your bar code. The only information visible on the poll
workers' screen, which the voter can also see, will be the election
and polling place. All voting choices will be hidden. The worker
will assure your ballot is for this particular election and that you
are at the correct polling place. If, for example, your ballot says
'polling place 20' and you are at 'polling place 18', you will be
told you are in the wrong place, perhaps given a map to PP20, given
back your ballot and sent on your way. If your ballot is for the
correct election and you are at the right polling place, the polling
worker will:
2-
look up your name. Similar to how it is done now. The difference is
the database is computerized. It is not Internet connected, but all
the polling workers will be connected, so when a worker marks off a
name on their list, it gets marked off on everyone's list. I'm sure
you will agree this is extremely simple technology. For example, a
worker asks the voters' name, the worker types in the first few
letters of the voters' last name, the name populates, they click on
it, see the identifiable information, quiz the voter, the voter
passes the quiz and is now a valid voter. Just like we do now. The
worker then clicks the box next to the name, the name then grays out
on every monitor in the polling
place. The voter cannot show up later and turn in another
ballot, just like it is done now. (If a worker makes a mistake
and accidentally grays out a voter when they shouldn't have, a
supervisor must get involved to override.) An important part of
this database is the counter. The number of voters registered at
this polling place is, for example, 200. When the polling place
opens, every workers' database counter will say '0/200'. Which
simply means 0 voters have cast a ballot out of 200 voters who can
possibly cast a ballot. After 7 voters have cast their ballots,
every workers' database counter will say '7/200'. You get the idea.
After the worker assures the ballot is for the right election and the
voter is at the right polling place and the voter has checked in, the
worker then does the third task:
3-
Stamp the ballot. This stamp makes every ballot unique to the
polling place and makes the ballot official. Only ballots with this
stamp are valid ballots. There will be one ballot stamping machine
at a polling place—in full view of the voter standing at the
counter. This machine will be similar to a time-clock machine, where
you put your time-card in a slot and the machine punches a unique
stamp. The stamp will make a deep indentation on the paper so you
can feel it, and will print the polling place number, perhaps a
supervisors' name, etc. The important thing to know is this stamp
will be unique to the polling place and will certify the ballot is
valid. A
ballot without a stamp is not a ballot; it is a meaningless piece of
paper. Only after it has been stamped does it become an official
ballot.
Every time a ballot is stamped, the stamp machine counter will tick
up 1. So the number of voters who have checked in will be exactly
the
same as the number on the stamping machine. The workers will check
these numbers throughout the day. (If
the stamp machine stops working, the supervisor will manually stamp
the remaining ballots, assuring the number he/she stamps matches the
number of voters checked in and ballots cast.)
The worker will then:
4-
Scan the bar code. This casts the ballot into the non-Internet
connected computer. In full view of the voter. Then the last step:
5-
Put the stamped, cast ballot into the slot in the ballot box.
These
five steps will take about 30 seconds to carry out.
The
stamp machine, ballot casting computer and the ballot box are located
next to each other. The voter can see everything. The polling place
supervisor sits here and makes sure the workers do the correct thing
in the correct order. When the ballot is cast, the supervisor will
not see on the monitor the choices of the voter. They will only see
that a valid ballot has been cast and how many have been cast at this
polling place. (And of course the ballot computer is read-only at
a polling place; a supervisor could not make an edit if he/she wanted
to. I'm a proponent of a security camera in this area.)
At
the end of the day at every polling place, the number of voters who
have checked in will precisely match the number on the stamping
machine, which will precisely match the number of votes scanned into
the computer, which will precisely match the number of stamped
ballots in the ballot box.
After
the voting computers and ballot boxes are taken back to the Registrar
of Voters, workers can sample ballots from the ballot box, scan them
in, and make sure the bar code choices match the paper ballot
choices.
(Don't
forget, this method will be tested over many elections to work out
any bugs before it is put into practice for a live election. The
information in the bar code will be checked that it perfectly matches
the actual votes. At this point in 2014, bar codes are very trusted
and no longer a work-in-progress.)
In
the event of a recount, the stamped ballots from the ballot box are
scanned into the computer. Workers can then check that the votes on
the ballot match the votes on the monitor, from the bar code. And
they will. This makes recounting very quick.
In
addition, I want to see election weekend instead of election day.
Polls should be open all day Saturday and Sunday, with Sunday night
being election night. This makes voting a leisure time activity and
not something you scramble to fit in as you rush to and from work.
voting should not be a chore you resent. It should be as simple and
enjoyable as buying stuff on Amazon, then driving to the market.
I
would like to see this method used for voting:
And
I would like to see this method used to draw district lines:
My
dream is to take as much partisan bias out of the voting process as
possible. And with the proliferation of computers, the likes of
which our Founding Fathers never imagined, this is more possible than
ever.
Is
this a complicated process? Let me ask you this: is depositing a
check into an ATM machine complicated? Most will say no. Now write
out every single step necessary to deposit that check. Don't skip a
thing. Now hand it to someone who has never used an ATM. Does it look complicated now?
What
does all this mean? Why use computers if you're still using paper
ballots? Simple. Participation. We want maximum voter turnout with
minimum inconvenience. This method does that. Your time at the
polling place will be less like taking a test at the DMV and more
like dropping off a video at Redbox. You can drive up, leave your
car running, drop off your ballot, and be on your way. All your
voting was done in the privacy of your own home on your computer.
Literally everything else in life has evolved with computers. Why
exclude voting? Money is not the problem, no matter how often they
say it is. The only answer that makes sense is they want to keep
turnout low. Which allows manipulation to occur, which allows fringe
candidates to have a shot at stealing elections. Because if everyone
voted, they're dead and they know it. Eventually we'll all wake up
and admit this to ourselves. I did a long time ago.
