Online voting – the new way for the NSA to run NZ politics.

19
1

c30f03434a6084b5af95

Online voting to be trialled in 2016 local elections
Online voting is set to be trialled at the 2016 local elections in a bid to boost turnouts.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No!

After the Snowden revelations of the NSA spying and hacking into everything they like. After the GCSB was legally allowed to conduct mass surveillance on domestic targets. After the TICS Bill being progressed to force all telecommunications companies to make their equipment NSA compatible, after all that you now want to run elections online where they can be hacked and changed for American corporate interests?

Are. We. Insane?

Beyond the obvious issues of handing the keys of our democracy over to the American Intelligence Complex, the myth that jaded and lazy voters will leap at the press of a button for participatory democracy seems optimistic in the extreme.

Part of the process of voting is the waiting in line with your fellow country people and respecting one another’s public space by putting partisan battles aside, so that the transfer of power is seen to be done transparently, peacefully and as respectfully to one another as possible, even if our disagreement during the campaign has been fierce and angry.

To reduce such a civic experience like taking time out for the process of Democracy down to a text message forced in between snapchats and status updates is a deformity, not a modern compromise.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

The effort of participating on election day is part of the responsibility every citizen takes upon themselves and their friends and whanau.

The day we vote should be a national day of celebration and I believe it should be a Public Holiday. For a Nation so conflicted about its national identity on its national day, we should attempt to build bridges upon the day we can agree on dignified process. We should feel proud that we are one of the few countries where the transfer of political power is conducted fairly and free from violence.

Let us not devolve this unique community intimacy for the cult of individualism, for it is surely the latter that has alienated and disconnected us from the civic duties that demand vigilance and which saw the last election turn out the most apathetic in over a century.

Gallipoli wasn’t drenched in blood for democratic convenience.

19 COMMENTS

  1. “Online” Voting???

    = Manipulated/cheated/controlled.

    But the general public are still innocent/naive/ignorant /deluded as to how the world is really being run.

    They are still like children living in a false /fantasy reality.

    • In Levin we have poor areas like anywhere else in New Zealand i have been canvasing one of these areas for 12 years. We would all like to think everyone owns a computer because we seldom peer outside our little cocoon. Well hear is a wake up call poor people and elderly do not own computers and if they have to go to a library or internet cafe the purpose is defeated. Abuse or mismanagement of an online system is a possibility and considering last major software system this country was involved in forgive me for being sceptical. Compulsory voting is the answer in NZ with all polling booths to be positioned with regard to the poor areas and the elderly. Also if we should get off our arses for one thing in our lives it should be voting.

  2. Because our government has an excellent history with computer systems. I’m sure nothing will go wrong…

    The good thing with paper-based voting systems is that there is a physical record of the vote. While it may take longer to enter all the data onto the computer before you can count it, at least you still have the physical copy, should something go wrong with the computer systems which are used to count the votes. It’s also possible to undertake a manual counting process, as I believe can occur when there are doubts over a particular electorate vote (especially when the candidates are very close).

    In addition, as Bomber said, voting at the polling stations is a real democratic experience. Walking/driving/taking public transport to the polling station, filling in a form, then placing it in the ballot box really does make you feel like you’ve played your part in the democratic process. Clicking a box on a computer screen really doesn’t feel like you’ve done much…

    PS. I should mention that I design computer programs like this for a living. I know just how easy it is for these kinds of things to go horribly wrong…

  3. Just a few clicks of a mouse and some NSA sponsored technician will give the government the result it wants.

    We may as well kiss our asses and say good by to the last shreds of democracy that still exist

  4. It’s possible to do online voting so that it can’t be accessed by the NSA or any intelligence outfit – there’s a reason why they need back doors into ISPs databases after all.

  5. That’s a chilling Post Martyn Bradbury and a very good one so thanks for that .
    I’m a staunch advocate of compulsory voting . I like the psychology of it . If we have to vote , we may as well make an informed vote and I’m hugely suspicious of the way politicians/ MSM seem to propagate a laissez faire attitude to our voting responsibility and yet it’s compulsory to be on the electoral role .

    Why one and not the other ? So we can be studied by marketing experts , researched by the cops etc and added to data bases to sell shit to us perhaps ? Just keep shopping , everything’s fine ?

    And a day off to vote and to celebrate that hard won right is a brilliant idea too . Surly our Corporate Masters could give us one day off every three years to partake in the vote fantasy ? ( Read Chris Trotters excellent post re the Deep State . Freaky-freaky . )

    You’re correct in saying to the effect that nothing via the Net is safe . ( By the way , do we know what Barnaby Jack died of ? The San Francisco Police are quoted as saying they don’t suspect foul play . )

    I nearly wrote ‘fowl’ play . Haha ! Maybe that big , dangerous chicken Peter Griffin brawls with on Family Guy did it ? If it did ? They could give it the electric chair . Deep fried assassin chicken .

    • Yes Countryboy, it is chilling.
      But hardly surprising if you look at it from my point of view…. Which is that the democratic system is bought and paid for anyway and that elections are just an elaborate form of window dressing.
      I’m a staunch non-voter. And I would encourage as many people as possible to withold their participation in the farce.
      Voting merely allows these corporate lackeys a veneer of legitimacy as they continue their relentless drive to sell our country out from under us.
      The sooner we acknowledge that this system is a joke, the sooner we can go about getting rid of it and replacing it with something that actually does work. Perhaps with a system that isn’t dictated to directly by finance.

      • The question is, what? Does a system better than democracy even exist?

        If you have a good dictator, then a dictatorship could be better. However, the vast majority of dictators are horrible people who only have their own interests at heart. Monarchy? Same issues, except you’re also effectively controlled by one rich family.

        Democracy has massive flaws, I agree. For one, you have “tyranny of the majority”, whereby the largest groups of people are able to discriminate against the smallest ones. You also have the opposite problem where particularly powerful elites are able to hold a disproportionate influence on the way society is run. Generally, most democratic systems try to find a middle ground between the two.

        However, unless you (or anyone else) can come up with a better system, we’re stuck with democracy. The best we can do, to counteract the problem you’ve raised, is to vote for those groups whom we believe are least likely to be influenced by wealthy corporates. Not voting at all is going to have no impact on that problem. All it means is that the most corrupt parties (National) are more likely to get in and screw us all.

        • Francis, your response is all very rational and reasonable. But it’s predicated on the belief that the system we currently have should actually be called a democracy.
          I don’t believe it should be. I think it’s a corporate sham.
          The act of voting is meaningless if the system is designed to continue with a preordained course of action regardless of which representatives are voted in. All we ever get as a result of voting is at best a temporary reprieve before things carry on as before.
          I don’t need to come up with a better system than democracy. In fact, I’d be more than happy participating in an actual functioning democracy.
          But until we get one, I’m going to exercise my right to a vote of “No confidence” in the entire system and abstain from taking part.

  6. Alistair, and Neil… WTF???? s’cuse me, Are you just deliberately being Ironic? (Gasp..)you shouldn’t joke like that..( this is too much a Serious issue to just joke and be frivolous about.!!!)

  7. Except in rural areas, I’m not convinced that for what is many areas only a very short stroll to the nearest voting booth is all that hard. Definitely should go to compulsory voting.

  8. Yes, because paper voting is actually magic, and once you make your scribble with ink, actual ink, nothing in the universe can do anything nefarious at all! And it’s permanent! There’s no way to destroy and get rid of paper, after all, it’s the most resilient substance known to man!

  9. Obviously the possibility of online voting being digitally tampered with is cause for concern. It’s not just the NSA who could do it. There are other hackers out there too.

    I wonder if certain checks could be used. Maybe some people could volunteer to secretly vote via post as well as the internet, and link their votes with a randomly generated number perhaps. The idea being any that don’t match up would indicate the election is a fraud. There might well be plenty of issues with that method, but I guess this is not the place to brainstorm too much. More than anything, I feel like this is inevitable, and it’s a matter of doing it in a way that works.

    I’d expect there to still be the option to vote via paper ballot as well.

    I doubt it’s going to mean that everyone who doesn’t vote is going to do so (by the way, I’m thinking ahead to when this applies to the general elections). But I really think that there’s a lot of people who are somewhat aware that the policies of certain parties are better for them, but somehow, they’re just not motivated to go and vote. I’ve seen it in a few people around my age (in their 20s) and I don’t know exactly how prevalent it is but it exists.

    Thinking a little further ahead again, this could open the door to more direct forms of democracy. I quite like the idea of recoverable proxy, where representatives vote for/against decisions on your behalf, but you can revoke that and vote directly at any time, perhaps on particular issues where you don’t agree with your rep. Parliament would work a little differently under such a system, but to put in simple terms, it might allow someone who voted National in the general elections to then vote against something like the GCSB bill, and if enough National voters do the same, the bill would be defeated regardless of what their MPs want. That sort of thing would be a lot of money and impractical for every decision by parliament if using paper, but would be a whole lot cheaper and easier online.

  10. Apart from the fact that Gallipoli was drenched in blood because Churchill was an idiot who thought the Turks wouldn’t stand stalwart against Anglo-Saxons, internet voting is a shocking idea. Not everyone has access and it will be tampered with.

  11. How to get the voters out to the polling station? rather than the compulsion ‘stick’ With all of the associated enforcement bureaucracy -why not a ‘carrot’? After the election result is posted, some winning electoral numbers could be drawn. Prizes could be TVs, PCs, a house, money, car. There would be queues to record their vote! Election Day could be one to look forward to. It’s been said, “it doesn’t matter who we vote for, we still get a government” – this way there will be another incentive to vote. Scheme to be well advertised on TV., no worries about the NSA or GCSB fudging the results (unless of course, they wanted a prize)

  12. why can’t we just vote online for everything? for example we could have voted online for the gcsb bill and then the 85% of New Zealanders who opposed the bill could have put in their say.. If we could all just vote on individual bits of legislation online then we wouldn’t need a parliament to make our decisions for us, we could do it our selves and have a true democracy where the people vote for what bills they want to pass instead of just voting corrupt people into ruling positions in a corrupt system to make corrupt decisions. We can make our own decisions as a country with the internet. There is no need for politicians.

Comments are closed.