[throwawayIndian]

One of the foundations of democracy is "secret ballot". If it's possible to algorithmically deduce who you're going to vote for, a tyranny can easily take you down or try to influence* you in ways you shouldn't be.

I think you have no idea about what you're taking here. Other option being you benefitting off of surveillance in some form (Don't want to be rude, only addressing the concern.).

* We experienced this first hand in the 2016 elections -- which is why it always felt weird to most of us all the time.

[tslug]

It already is possible to algorithmically deduce who people are voting for.

I am not benefiting from surveillance. I am a game developer and engineer. I see things from that perspective.

We can't make compelling multiplayer games by hiding information from the server. We need as much information as possible to make sure everyone has as good a time playing the game as possible. We also need to know if some players are actively "griefing" to ruin the good time others are trying to have.

I think the mistake we make is in keeping this information to ourselves or selling it to third parties (that happens). The information should be broadcast to everyone, and if it's of some use, then it should benefit the people who the information is about directly, and by benefit, I don't mean they should be targeted for more appropriate advertising. I mean benefit, like get paid if they're having trouble paying bills, or get love if they're feeling down, or get food if they're hungry, or medical attention if they're sick.

Unfortunately, we are currently too culturally immature and litigious to be respectful of that kind of information, which is why developers don't broadcast it.

We just ceded our government to a guy who won by way of asymmetric information. We had his opponent's taxes and emails, but we didn't have his. How can candidates be judged fairly in a situation like that? One of the repercussions of this is that we now have Republican-controlled Legislative and Executive branches, and it sounds like the Judicial branch will be next. That's what asymmetric information does. It creates imbalances in power. If we can see what they're doing just as easily as they can see what we're doing, it becomes a lot harder to throw stones in our glass houses.

[throwawayIndian]

> It already is possible to algorithmically deduce who people are voting for.

YES, it is! Therefore, in all honesty, the foundations of democracy have already been eroded -- thanks Obama/Osama/Bush/Clinton/Trump/whoever -- it will take a few years for ordinary people to grok this.

While that happens it is our duty to make people around us understand this without getting them all hassled up or making anyone feel left out in the conversation.

> I am not benefiting from surveillance. I am a game developer and engineer. I see things from that perspective.

Good to hear that. There is nothing wrong if you were in fact. Smart entrepreneur et al. ;)

> We just ceded our government to a guy who won by way of asymmetric information. We had his opponent's taxes and emails, but we didn't have his. How can candidates be judged fairly in a situation like that?

Totally agree!

I'm glad that this discussion is even happening right now. Judgement of candidates (fair/unfair) is still due -- we're clearly in a bet right now. I believe that each comment here is a step towards making more and more people aware about where things really are today.

It's clearly a mess.

[hga]

One reason to utterly and totally oppose mail-in and on-line balloting. That non-secret ballots also allow paid and coerced voting are other traditional reasons.

[Frondo]

Oregon has had vote-by-mail for years and it's been nothing but a positive thing. Their turnout is consistently higher than the national average. There are simply no issues around access to voting (like long lines at polling places, people who can't get time off work, etc), because every registered voter gets a ballot and a couple of weeks to fill it in.

The claims and fears around voter fraud have been studied, and have been found to be entirely without basis in reality. Voter fraud and coercion simply hasn't been an issue in a vote-by-mail state.

It's also a lot of fun to take part in voting parties, where you get to hash out the issues with your friends and fill in your ballot as you do so.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

You are aware that there are countries that manage to run elections on sundays and with sufficient polling places to not have any lines to speak of at all? That might be too advanced a technology for the US, but, unbelievable as it may sound, countries like that do indeed exist!

[Frondo]

Well, good for them, but why should I have to go anywhere? What's the point?

From experience, I enjoyed vote-by-mail for years, and I can tell you it's a huge step backwards to have to go somewhere again to vote.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

First of all, I didn't say that you should, I just pointed out that your argument didn't make a whole lot of sense.

But also, the reason why voting by mail is problematic is, as has been mentioned, the potential for pressuring people into voting a certain way, including buying of votes.

Now, you said that this had been studied and it had been found that it's not really been a problem. But that's completely missing the point. You cannot judge the security of a system against attacks simply by looking at how many attacks were successful in the past. A voting system being reliable is most important when shit hits the fan. That it works fine when stakes aren't (perceived to be) all that high isn't really all that surprising, the most easily corrupted voting systems would probably work fine, and it tells you absolutely nothing about how it would hold up under different circumstances.

Also, mind you, objectively giving an accurate result is not the only function that a voting system has in a democracy, equally important is that the public trusts the system and thus the result, and trust erodes really fast under the wrong circumstances, which is when you can consider yourself lucky if you have a voting system where fraud is not just not happening, but where you can demonstrate that it's not happening.

To maybe get an idea of how stuff that's not actually secured is going to be exploited once the incentives are there: In the US, the relevant laws generally don't specify how to divide the country into voting districts. Because nobody thought of that as a problem when writing the law. Nowadays, gerrymandering is a reality. It's obviously undemocratic (I suppose you would agree?), but it's not illegal, and the incentives are there, and so it happens. There is almost nothing that people don't do for power. Trusting that people will be responsible when there is an opportunity to gain power is essentially the recipe for every major disaster humanity has ever created.

[Frondo]

There are theoretical problems with any system of voting, everything's a trade-off one way or the other. Vote-by-mail increases turnout, it's easier and more convenient, and the problems you're afraid of simply don't happen in practice.

At the end of the day, I'd much rather have the increased participation in the democratic process than cater to the unfounded/theoretical fears of a few folks.

[throwawayIndian]

Absolutely! It is possible to deduce pretty accurately who somebody is going to vote for without even looking at the ballot or peeping into the booth box.

All actions people do online like sharing a newspiece on their Facebook walls, likes or dislikes, chats, mails, texts, add up to something that makes the person -- and that information is quite valuable.