Posts by Alfie
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to izogi,
Sure, electoral officials can presently trace ballot papers back to a person if they try hard, but those ballot papers are kept in a strictly controlled and secured system, and then destroyed.
I'm sure that a secure protocol could be implemented to guarantee anonymity. Mind you, the NSA/GCSB already have access to everything anyway, so big brother could record your voting preferences if he/she/it was so inclined.
Internet voting has been trialled in a few countries already.
Internet voting was first used for binding political elections in 2000 in the U.S. in a pilot across several states targeting overseas voters. Since then, 13 more countries have used Internet voting. Two use Internet voting nationwide (Estonia and the United Arab Emirates); five use Internet voting in some parts of the country or for certain members of the electorate (Australia, Canada, France, Mexico and Switzerland); two have ongoing pilots (India and Norway); three have piloted Internet voting and decided not to continue its use (Finland, the UK and the U.S.); and two adopted Internet voting, but decided to discontinue it (Netherlands and Spain).
The costs of administering elections would drop considerably -- that would also apply to referrenda, even if the government of the day chooses to ignore the wishes of the majority of its citizens.
I agree that there are certainly secrecy/privacy issues which need to be addressed. But anything which makes voting easier has to be worth considering.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Stephen R,
But if you nick someone's EasyVote, and they actually go down to vote, then you end up with two votes for that name, and the wheels of ... I was going to say justice, but shall we say "electoral law" start to roll.
I think that does make the current system slightly more secure than the proposed one.
Point taken. But using RealMe would get around that issue, wouldn't it?
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Kumara Republic,
If online voting is implemented, it would have to be backed up with a paper trail to minimise electoral fraud, if not eliminate it.
IP address and time recorded... possible login and authentication via the iGovt or RealMe sites.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to izogi,
I think I could happily accept electronic voting booths as long as they met strict criteria. They’d have to produce a voter-verified paper trail, not let the voter take away any evidence of their vote. Also in the case of any inconsistency between electronic and paper counts, the voter-verified paper version of the vote would have to be authoritative.
They're not talking about electronic machines in voting booths. It's already been proved in the US that they're easily gamed. The security issues are dealt with in the PDF (downloadable via the NBR article). Basically ElectionsNZ would post a unique code to every registered voter, in the same way they post out EasyVote cards now.
Sure, someone could steal the code from your letterbox, in the same way they can steal your EasyVote card now. The proposed system is no less secure than the current one.
There doesn't seem to be much point for it in NZ, though. Our current paper and pen system seems to work really well, and it’s not like it takes longer than a few hours for the result to be counted
Horses also work perfectly well... we don't need those stinkin' automobiles. And as for those new-fangled computer thingies...
I don't personally know anybody who didn't vote this time, but I'd wager that most of them will have computers or mobile phones and know how to use Facebook. We're talking a quarter of registered voters here. Anything we can do to help them engage in the democratic progress has to be a good thing.
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Hey... Jason Ede has finally surfaced. Or not. Key confirmed this morning that Ede has 'resigned' from the National Party.
...He's given 11 long years to the party and loyal service to the party. There are some comments made in the book that I think we would all strongly disagree with. His primary role really started out as a media person for us and part of his role was talking to bloggers.
"I think after 11 years he's decided, look, the time's come for him to leave."
Mr Key said he didn't suggest Ede should leave his role with the National party.
I'm sure Ede will already have a comfortable PR job lined up, possibly working with the same group of people he's already familiar with. After all, their main client can offer another three years of guaranteed work.
A curse on our slack media who didn't track down Ede after the release of Hager's book.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Low voter turnout (apathy) is a very big worry in academic circles/literature that I've been associated with. Just goes to show how many adults of voting age are disenfranchised, and of course they are raising children who will be similarly disengaged and disenfranchised.
The Online Voting Working Group released a report last month examining the feasibility of online voting and it's generally positive. Paul Matthews, CEO of the Institute of IT Professionals writes that he was initially skeptical but is now convinced that they can produce a workable system. They propose trialling the concept in the 2016 local body elections.
I believe that online voting could massively increase voter turnout. After all, it's not really "turnout" if you can do it while you're sitting at home in your underpants.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I wonder what Louisa Wall would have to say about that, Alfie
Is she in the current All Black squad?
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to mark taslov,
In the first debate I recall John Key mentioning there was already a tax for whatever/property, how does this apply?
My understanding of that argument is that if you have a company which engages in property speculation, the company will be taxed on its profits. However if you do exactly the same thing as an individual, you won't be taxed.
Now if you were wealthy enough to speculate on NZ's property market, as many people obviously are, which approach would you choose?
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Katharine Moody,
I'm hoping against hope they stay Internet Mana. Laila and Hone are great together...
I was very impressed with Laila Harre throughout the campaign. It would be great to have her in parliament... a staunch but compassionate woman, unlike the Nats' frontline of staunch and notably uncompassionate women.
And I'm also hoping that Dotcom's legal team keep him in NZ and he stays with IMP in that visionary role. We have an internet-age Einstein on our shores here. I hope we can benefit from him building one tech company after another, based in NZ and wildly successful worldwide.
Dotcom might have been a real asset to the potenial tech industry in NZ, but I fear that his brand has attracted too much vitriol from the powers-that-be to make that happen. Watch out for the "Deport the Fat German" law to be passed under urgency in the near future.
And I ask again... 'where is Jason Ede?'
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Jack Harrison,
The politicisation of the all blacks is another example of an environment which stinks. Fuck up current international players, that shirts not yours to fuck with.
I felt the same way when McCaw posed for selfies with Key and Dan Carter tweeted that he would be voting for National this election.
I can see why some of our top paid (newly rich) sportpeople might be inclined to vote for National. But if you're an All Black, try to keep your public image clean and non-political, for God's sake.