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How would you improve the voting system?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
I just looked up information on the London election to see where the local polling station is - and to my amazement there's not address given just says it's in a Church Hall and doesn't even bother to give the address of the Church.
There's no address, no map, no street name, no post code.
How do they expect people to vote if they don't give the address or is this some kind of scheme by the current people in power to stop people voting because they think most of the people that would vote would vote against them?
Billions are traded everyday by computer in London, Millions of people book flights, buy goods online, and pay their taxes online - I don't see why they can't just computerise it - so we can all vote online without having to go hunting for a polling station.
There's no address, no map, no street name, no post code.
How do they expect people to vote if they don't give the address or is this some kind of scheme by the current people in power to stop people voting because they think most of the people that would vote would vote against them?
Billions are traded everyday by computer in London, Millions of people book flights, buy goods online, and pay their taxes online - I don't see why they can't just computerise it - so we can all vote online without having to go hunting for a polling station.
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How to improve democracy ...privatise it.
Please explain your point further ..
My point is that a lot of people simply don't bother to vote because of the hassle, time it takes to go the polling station, etc.
If it happens to be raining on the day of an election then even less people will venture out to vote.
The government seem to be really quick at allowing us to do things like pay out car tax online but when it comes to online voting the main parties are always dragging their heals.
I think you'll find that you are partly correct and partly wrong!!!
An online voting experiment in the USA 8 years ago saw then number of people casting their vote go up by 676% when given the option to vote online.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1799883.stm
Postal voting in Stevenage in 2002 showed a 28% increase
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1965521.stm
These kind of numbers more then suggest ways to vote other then going to the Polling Station are something voters want and are willing to use.
I walked 10 mins in almost torrential rain last time to cast my vote, if people really cared that much they'd find time to vote. Simple as.
How would I improve it? I'd remove it entirley, let's be honest, our votes do NOT make much of a difference, it only lets us show which of the cretins availible we dispise the least. And they all do the same godawful job of ruining the country. Amazing, change one letter of "running the country" and it turns into the truth.
Sigh. Democracy - The single biggest let down in political History? It has let people like Hitler and Mussolini in power, not fixed any problems for the rest of the world without it (Look at Africa!), destroyed any hope of stability in the Middle East at all, and nearly taken us to Nuclear War several times, and actually dropped one nuke! Oh, and alienated a large portion of Asia by failing to stop totallitarian states running a few countries there. This is just a SMALL list of the things Democratic states have done, and thier failiure to act when needed.
Wow, and they said Saddam was bad.
Then that leaves room for dictatorship which is a hundred times worse than anything we have in the West today. People fought and died for the vote, I wouldn't like to see their efforts wasted.
What's the alternative? Political realism stems from the Nation State which goes all the way back to Westphalia, democracy is simply the means by which we elect our leaders. If we want to change our foreign policy, then we need like minded people to organise and challenge the status quo.
Maybe Tesco should run it ...it would make a change from the banks.
I think Tesco are trying to run the country. They seem to be getting close.
I don't really care who messes things up next.
Maybe they would BUT I'd love to hear HOW fraud would increase?
If it's so dangerous why can Millions of people pay their taxes online without a problem?
If it's so unsafe how come you can buy a lottery ticket online which is potentially worth millions?
Please back up your Fraud comments with links or real life examples.
Of do be sensible. Something like voting, it's hardly taxes or online shopping. You would just be ASKING for some online group to fuck it up for the comedy element of electing the Greens or someshit.
One hacker. Some spare time. Making the funniest election ever. Or a bunch of fuckers on proxies getting everyone's details and multi-voting.
...
Wait, we need online voting.
Also Democracy hasn't done us any better than Dictatorship. We live in an age where people have become brainwashed by the commercial interests of the mass media, so that they care more about who is doing what on East Enders Street, or Big Brother Island, instead of thier own country. Voter aparthy is at a high, unemployment, the NHS is dieing, the Education system is failing miserably, and our Armed Forces are in a state which makes my most upset. (Though there is talk of issuing everyone with sidearms soon! And TWO new Aircraft Carriers!)
Taxes are going up for the poor, commercial monopolies control nearly everything, we have no industry to speak of, andd there are more old people than young.
I see problems ahead Democracy will NOT be able to cope with.
It's old fashioned and I don't doubt advances in online technology - but as far as voting and elections go there should be a proper paper trail. Mark your X on a bit of paper. (And we certainly don't need stupid gimmicky punch card voting as seen in Florida, 2000)
If you electronicly tick fred bloggs ...how do you know that further down the line thats where your tick stays ...very hard trail to follow.
Todays Times has an article about postal voting already being cheated on.
Your laughing at my privatising democracy aint ya?
Think about it ...for the last twenty five years we have had sucsessibve leaders telling us that the only way anything can improve ...is privatisation. So lets take their word for it and privatise them.
What i would then be expecting is increased production ...longer working week ...salary cut ...pensions cut ...performance related bonus's.
Paper votes can be spoiled on purpose or go missing
And what about the scandal surrounding the counting of votes in Florida that lead George Bush to the White House?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/jan/12/uselections2000.usa
As for a paper trail there always is one anyway with government depts.
You have to be posted 2 special codes to let you do things like file your taxes online, each one of those codes has a combination that go into the Billions
There's multiple levels of protection that can be built into any system.
If the stuff we've privatised in the UK sofar is anything to go by...
... I predict a fail for that idea. Public Transport... the NHS having private companies doing things... and look what happens!
Even as a recent example of vote rigging by post:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/4406575.stm
Voting online could be even worse, seeing the amount of blunders with computer systems and data security the government has had recently.
Now this is the thinking I like... I think politicians should have to live under thier own system by thier rules. If they lived like the rest of us, we would soon have a better lifestyle!