Big Tone wrote:
handy wrote:
That would mean that voting would have to be compulsory, but hey, we could make it easier using web, interactive TV, mobly phones, as well as the ballot boxes? General elections would last longer, rather than all over in one night. The American way of having the election in November but the pres doesn't take office until January may help?
I agree with you Handy and I wouldn't be surprise if that' s how things progress. But then a thought hit me in the face like a wet fish...
With so much hacking into banks etc. I'm sure something as big as an election would be a sure fire target for highjacking the figures.
I think a ballot box has many checks and balances but once you start sending things through the aether all manner of things could go wrong

Maybe I'm just paranoid?
I'm sort of with you on this, although working in IT and slightly involved in security / identity and authentication issues (trying to set some good policy in place for my organisation) I feel that there is scope for making it extremely difficult to "hack". That, along with the increased number of people voting, should make it more difficult to change a vote enough to be statistically significant? Checks and balances, that's the solution ... and good (automated) analytical tools to ensure that any results that have been tampered with are easily identified.
But then "compulsory" probably doesn't work either, as hairyben highlights. I was just freewheeling in thoughts a little. I think there are 2 major problems (well, 3, counting party whips - I wholly agree with the sentiments above):
1. Not enough people vote
2. The candidates do not offer suitable representation or rather the selection of candidates on offer are all as bad as each other.
Actually, 1 is probably driven by 2 but if we fix 2 through the "none of the above" option, how do we rescue or recover the position of 1?
Is there an incentive that can be used instead of compulsion? Free chocolate would work for me, but then I am more of a conscientious voter than others. 1000 Tesco clubcard points for every "Tesco Value" voter? 2000 votes if you use the "Tesco Select" voting booth? I'm probably being silly now, what the heck, it's poets day!
With regards to setting up a petition, I'm going to take that idea on, in a separate thread though.
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