Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says we're clearly
Speaker 1: soldiers and petticoats and dauntless crusaders for women's votes. I'm
Speaker 1: Jovin Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going
Speaker 1: to be probing the future of democracy. Yeah, we're specifically
Speaker 1: looking at this, I would say, from the perspective of
Speaker 1: being in the United States, just which because that's where
Speaker 1: we we are from. So a lot of this conversation
Speaker 1: is really kind of gravitating towards that because that's that's
Speaker 1: that's our lives, right, especially in an election year, you've
Speaker 1: got that kind of a spotlight on that. So as
Speaker 1: we record this, just remember that's where we're coming from.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the stuff we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: applies to pretty much any place where there's a democratic processes.
Speaker 1: The question of what is the technology around voting, how
Speaker 1: does that shape voting, What are some potential changes in
Speaker 1: the future, what are some of the risks or benefits
Speaker 1: of that technology? How do people cheat? Yeah, that's gonna
Speaker 1: be a big one. Specifically, Yeah, we are talking about voting,
Speaker 1: So maybe what I said was not strictly correct, and
Speaker 1: that we wouldn't have to be talking about democracy. We
Speaker 1: could be talking about an oligarchy ruled over by a
Speaker 1: small elite of people who vote on what happens to
Speaker 1: everybody else. Again, as long as long as the voting
Speaker 1: procedure is somewhere in there, right, Yeah, But but I
Speaker 1: don't think you can use the movie announcer voice to say,
Speaker 1: like today, we're talking about the future of oligarchy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the same ring as democracy. We're also not going to
Speaker 1: dive into some of the related topics that we could
Speaker 1: have explored, but it would have made this episode even longer,
Speaker 1: things like what about the future of the electoral college?
Speaker 1: Will that always be a thing? We're not going to
Speaker 1: go into that. We're specifically focusing in on the voting
Speaker 1: ASP act, Yeah, because there's there's way too much to
Speaker 1: go into. Otherwise, we could do a whole podcast, like,
Speaker 1: not an episode, but a series about this if we
Speaker 1: wanted to. Yeah, well, I wanna take you listeners out
Speaker 1: there to a place you might not usually go with
Speaker 1: your brains. Okay, so you might participate in some kind
Speaker 1: of no, no, no, some kind of electoral process. And
Speaker 1: you take the voting process for granted, maybe you vote,
Speaker 1: maybe you don't vote, but you know, you know, voting
Speaker 1: goes on you. Basically, voting is something that happens. You
Speaker 1: basically assumed that the elections are fair. I mean hopefully
Speaker 1: they are. But think about trying to organize a massive
Speaker 1: democratic election yourself. I mean especially, I mean, like, have
Speaker 1: you ever tried to order a pizza for like ten people? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like picture that, but with presidents and how many millions
Speaker 1: of people of the pizza I would like taff So
Speaker 1: if you have never yeah, so, so imagine you no
Speaker 1: infrastructure in place, you've never done this before. You've just
Speaker 1: got say, well, we'll shrink the number to a very
Speaker 1: manageable size. You've got ten thousand people and you're trying
Speaker 1: to get them to vote on something to find out
Speaker 1: what they've voted for. How would you do it? If
Speaker 1: I'm going to sit there and have ten people vote
Speaker 1: on things, I want to make sure I have a
Speaker 1: way of distributing uh, ballots of some sort that's fair
Speaker 1: so that everyone has access to it, that does not
Speaker 1: appear to have a bias to it, so it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to wait one option over another or over several
Speaker 1: others to share the type of vote that is easy
Speaker 1: to complete, so that the barrier to actually participating in
Speaker 1: the voting process is low, and that is easy to tally,
Speaker 1: so that I can make certain that I can get
Speaker 1: the results back at a reasonable amount of time, and
Speaker 1: is difficult to game the system. It is not a
Speaker 1: that's not a that's a lot of stuffs and a
Speaker 1: jug several balls, and just for ten tho people. It
Speaker 1: would be really really hard, Like I mean, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to start starting from scratch. Yeah, it's a daunting prospect.
Speaker 1: But imagine a country of three something million, of whom
Speaker 1: you know a good percentage are of eligible voting age. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's really tough, really tough. And beyond that, in
Speaker 1: the United States, at least, we don't have a single
Speaker 1: like approach to this. It's not like there's one methodology
Speaker 1: that is used throughout the entire country and everyone follows
Speaker 1: it and therefore it's all exactly the same and you
Speaker 1: can be certain that if it's if it's not fair,
Speaker 1: it's at least consistent. That's not the case. You know,
Speaker 1: fun fact, they vote in Iowa by taking a bite
Speaker 1: out of a piece of cheese that represents who gets
Speaker 1: their vote. Good times. What kind of cheese is? One
Speaker 1: is a moonster cheese and the other is plot twist
Speaker 1: head cheese. Oh oh man twist. You've got to really
Speaker 1: be dedicated to voting, especially if you're lactose intolerant. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it depends on how hungry you are, but
Speaker 1: at any rate, yeah, no, there are there are a
Speaker 1: lot of things that you have to kind of sess
Speaker 1: out in creating this sort of system. But history has
Speaker 1: provided us with really quite a lot of examples to
Speaker 1: work from. Yes, yes, So going back democracy itself, if
Speaker 1: you're looking at the representational democracy that we have here
Speaker 1: in the United States, Uh, there have been some examples
Speaker 1: that you could argue from from history. So how how
Speaker 1: would we look at voting from a historical perspective. Let's
Speaker 1: say that we're going back I don't know, Renaissance time period.
Speaker 1: What would be the methodology for voting back then? The
Speaker 1: method the methodology for voting in the Renaissance was actually
Speaker 1: taken from the methodology for voting in ancient Greece. So
Speaker 1: so so this system is is you know a few
Speaker 1: thousand years old to give a take here and joined
Speaker 1: you joined the thunderbirds, right, and you do musical numbers. Lauren,
Speaker 1: please proceed as if he said nothing. Uh. The ancient
Speaker 1: Greek system was was was tokens. You you take a
Speaker 1: token representing your your choice of electorate. No, that's the
Speaker 1: wrong word of of elected official or stuff, and and
Speaker 1: you put it in the appropriate box. Um. And and
Speaker 1: that is where eventually we got the word ballots from,
Speaker 1: because it derives from the Italian bete, which is a
Speaker 1: diminutive form of the word ball, so ballot, ball, ballot. Yes,
Speaker 1: the word ballot was first used in Venice circa the
Speaker 1: fifteen forties, where indeed small balls were used to cast votes.
Speaker 1: So you would just place this like you've got your
Speaker 1: boxes there, you got maybe Candida Day or candidate B.
Speaker 1: And you think, well, Canada Day is a real stand
Speaker 1: that person. I'm going to vote for Canada Day and
Speaker 1: Canada B. I can go take a long walk off
Speaker 1: a short pier. I'm gonna put this ball into Canada
Speaker 1: as box. And then presumably you would just count up
Speaker 1: all the balls in both boxes, and whoever had the
Speaker 1: most winds. Alternately, you might have like a like a
Speaker 1: like a light colored token and a dark colored token
Speaker 1: given to you, and you can you can put you know,
Speaker 1: whichever one you want exactly into a box. So I've
Speaker 1: got a question who invented that type of voting that
Speaker 1: looks like it's a bunch of bull to me? Where
Speaker 1: somebody stands at the front of a room and says,
Speaker 1: all who agree, say I, and some people say I
Speaker 1: and then other people say nay, and it's like you
Speaker 1: didn't actually count you just sound you know, that sounds
Speaker 1: like more That was their screaming matic yes of the
Speaker 1: of the longstanding scream a matic claim. Yes, uh no, no.
Speaker 1: But but voice voting is another form of voting that
Speaker 1: goes back quite a long time, especially in American history. Um,
Speaker 1: it was part of our history up until the eighteen
Speaker 1: sixties at the very least, which kind of is surprising
Speaker 1: to me that ballots didn't catch on everywhere earlier than that.
Speaker 1: But uh yeah. The voice voting is the practice of
Speaker 1: going to your polling location and calling out your name
Speaker 1: and your vote to the recording clerk and that's your vote.
Speaker 1: That sounds cheaper than buying a bunch of balls and boxes.
Speaker 1: It also seems to me that it means that everyone
Speaker 1: knows who you voted for. Yeah, that is extremely true,
Speaker 1: and it also led to a lot of dishonesty in
Speaker 1: terms of of pressure from outside sources. Like if you
Speaker 1: if you knew that your boss was going to be
Speaker 1: in the polling location and your boss really wanted you
Speaker 1: to vote for Canada Day, then there's not a good
Speaker 1: way to get around being like, I'm voting for candidate
Speaker 1: be like that, it's you know, you're it's shouting. This
Speaker 1: is the democracy of shouting. It's the Internet, right, which
Speaker 1: which could then mean I mean the reason why we
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why we value privacy when it
Speaker 1: comes to casting a vote is that it helps you
Speaker 1: get around being intimid aided into voting for something you
Speaker 1: don't truly believe in. Right, you aren't you aren't feeling
Speaker 1: an intense sense of communal pressure to vote a specific
Speaker 1: way if your vote is anonymous. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: if your vote is anonymous in private, that's where you
Speaker 1: start to introduce the question of is it a legitimate
Speaker 1: vote or has someone been putting in fake votes? On
Speaker 1: behalf sure and it was pretty pretty safe in that
Speaker 1: sense because it was you know, in general, if you
Speaker 1: have a if you have a person come up and
Speaker 1: get sworn in by a judge say hey, this is
Speaker 1: my name, I am allowed to vote and I have
Speaker 1: not voted yet. Then the judge goes cool, everyone else
Speaker 1: in the room goes cool, and then you shout your vote.
Speaker 1: Uh that that that's a you know, communal effort at
Speaker 1: keeping everybody honest and making sure that no one is
Speaker 1: in their voting seventeen times right, But it does still
Speaker 1: mean that if you feel like I really want Canada
Speaker 1: Day to win, but if I say Canada Day, those
Speaker 1: big people in the back of the room are going
Speaker 1: to totally roll me as soon as I'll here. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got to address something before we proceed in this episode.
Speaker 1: We can't keep saying candidate d A and candidate B.
Speaker 1: So from now on we will say kang in kodos. Okay,
Speaker 1: kang in kodos, don't blame. Moving on to paper ballots,
Speaker 1: the amazing technology that is paper. Uh So, originally ballots
Speaker 1: like this, we're just a slip of paper that you
Speaker 1: would bring in yourself that you had written out your
Speaker 1: your candidate choice onto all right, and so it's just
Speaker 1: a little piece of paper, says Kodos yeah or Kang yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean if you if you want to support a king. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the interested parties, you know, the the National Convention for
Speaker 1: for Kang, would would begin handing out little pre completed
Speaker 1: tickets um, saying like like, hey, like like you probably
Speaker 1: since you're voting for me, you probably want to vote
Speaker 1: for all these other people. You definitely don't want to
Speaker 1: vote for any of the Owes other people. So uh
Speaker 1: and and so so here's Kang and here's all the
Speaker 1: Kang approved down ballot names. Yes. And that's where we
Speaker 1: came up with the word a ticket, like if you're
Speaker 1: voting Democratic ticket or Republican ticket. That that was the
Speaker 1: word for the single piece of paper that someone would
Speaker 1: hand you and go like just drop it in the box.
Speaker 1: It'll be great, we'll have some laughs. Um. And the
Speaker 1: system was pretty private, but it did provide a whole
Speaker 1: lot of opportunities for for ballot box stuffing so fraud cheating, um,
Speaker 1: which led to changes like like the boxes being transparent um,
Speaker 1: which made your vote less private again so hull, especially
Speaker 1: because now the questioning look in your eye. Maybe what's
Speaker 1: that dude with a camera outside of our recording studio
Speaker 1: or it? Maybe why why would why would a transparent
Speaker 1: box make a paper ballot less private? And the answer
Speaker 1: to that is is that a lot of these ticket
Speaker 1: that parties were handing out were on these very distinctive
Speaker 1: bits of paper, so that a party official standing in
Speaker 1: the back of a voting precinct could kind of like
Speaker 1: head tally who was voting for their representatives. So so
Speaker 1: so when you made the boxes transparent, it made everything
Speaker 1: less anonymous and you get back into that that that
Speaker 1: that that group of group of goons out there is
Speaker 1: going to roll me as soon as I get out
Speaker 1: of the polling box. So this this led to the
Speaker 1: idea of secret ballots. Secret ballots, Why haven't been We've
Speaker 1: been using these all the time. The concept of a
Speaker 1: government printing a ballot with all of the running parties
Speaker 1: and providing that piece of paper to every voter who
Speaker 1: comes in. Uh. It was instituted for the very first
Speaker 1: time in Victoria, Australia in eight That's crazy. It's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine, right, yeah, yeah, but but you know it
Speaker 1: had to do with with like funding and just no
Speaker 1: one had thought of it before, I guess, or or
Speaker 1: the very least thought of it hard enough to make
Speaker 1: it so. Yeah, Hey, guys, I'm really tired of being
Speaker 1: beaten up. What if we just made this stuff secret
Speaker 1: so that you know, they stopped beating me up and
Speaker 1: and and even even from eighty eight, Um, in the
Speaker 1: United States, certainly the system was very slow to take hold. Um.
Speaker 1: Some localities still allowed voters to bring in whatever a
Speaker 1: little bit of paper they wanted through nineteen forty at
Speaker 1: the very least, and I'm looking at you, delaware, you're
Speaker 1: messing stuff up for all of us. Uh so so
Speaker 1: so this this system, of course is very private. That's great. Um.
Speaker 1: And it kind of it kind of shifted the way
Speaker 1: that people cheat at voting. It shifted it from influencing
Speaker 1: the voter or or having uh having voter fraud, to
Speaker 1: having counting fraud. Now, if you want to influence an election,
Speaker 1: you have to figure out how to influence the counting,
Speaker 1: which people proceeded to do. Although well we will get
Speaker 1: into that a little bit later. But um, but but
Speaker 1: one more, one more technology that I want to talk
Speaker 1: about in order to set up how voting works today
Speaker 1: is the very first concept of a voting machine. UM,
Speaker 1: which were which were lever devices? Um? And and some
Speaker 1: of you guys out there may have actually used these
Speaker 1: pretty recently. UM. Lever Lever voting machines are these geared
Speaker 1: devices that first gained popularity in the eighteen nineties. And
Speaker 1: the way that they work is is there will be
Speaker 1: a bank of switches with all of the candidates names
Speaker 1: in there, and you pull switches over your chosen candidate's name,
Speaker 1: and uh then pull a main lever to cast those votes,
Speaker 1: which turns all of the chosen gears and then resets
Speaker 1: all of the switches. UM. The maker of one famous
Speaker 1: brand of this one Jacob H. Myers of the Myers
Speaker 1: Automatic Booth. So that said that the machines were designed
Speaker 1: to end I quote protect mechanically the voter from rascaldom
Speaker 1: and make the process of casting the ballot perfectly plain,
Speaker 1: simple and secret and loud. This is my favorite. I
Speaker 1: remember these sorts of machines. Not they haven't been in
Speaker 1: use in Georgia for quite some time, but I remember
Speaker 1: you were used until ten Since then, since I'm looking
Speaker 1: at you now, you know, i'd almost I think I
Speaker 1: maybe rather use a machine like this than an electronic
Speaker 1: voting machine. We'll get into those in a in a
Speaker 1: little bit. But I I see where you're going with
Speaker 1: that too. Uh yeah, I remember going into this when um,
Speaker 1: I was with a relative who was voting and they
Speaker 1: were showing me how the voting process works. And uh,
Speaker 1: sadly Cleveland didn't take it. Harrison went back into Uh
Speaker 1: he took over the president twenty third presidency. Uh, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a good day though. Other than that, it
Speaker 1: was really interesting to see how how the voting process works.
Speaker 1: Moving on into this this idea, what about what about
Speaker 1: more current forms of voting, because, like we just said,
Speaker 1: the lever machines, those finally were phased out of the
Speaker 1: United States in two we should look at some of
Speaker 1: the things that we're using now. Sure, because okay, so
Speaker 1: so as as we have been saying here, uh, there's
Speaker 1: no one system there. There are many systems that are
Speaker 1: in use throughout the United States. It it it depends deeply
Speaker 1: on what jurisdiction you're in. Fun fact, did you know
Speaker 1: that under the United States Constitution you do not have
Speaker 1: an explicit right to vote? Kind of weird you'd think
Speaker 1: that that would be up there. Yeah, So it's not
Speaker 1: in the Constitution. There's nowhere it says explicitly that you
Speaker 1: have a right to vote. Now, it's pretty clear throughout
Speaker 1: the Constitution that voting is just sort of an assumed behavior.
Speaker 1: It's the subtext right. It assumes elected officials. It prohibits
Speaker 1: certain restrictions on the right to vote in the amendments.
Speaker 1: The amendments say the right to vote based on race
Speaker 1: or or sex will not be infringed, or something like that,
Speaker 1: But there's nowhere in there it just says by the a,
Speaker 1: you know, adult people in this country can vote. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of strange. Some legislators have actually proposed constitutional
Speaker 1: amendments to fix this, but it hasn't happened yet. So
Speaker 1: still the US Constitution does not say anywhere that you
Speaker 1: can vote. I have another fun fact that's a little
Speaker 1: bit more actually fun. Ye okay, Yeah, Texas passed a
Speaker 1: law that says that astronauts can and should vote electronically
Speaker 1: from space if they are in space during an election.
Speaker 1: That's it really hard to drop a ball from lower
Speaker 1: thorbit into a box that's in Texas. They originally tried
Speaker 1: to do voice voting. That wasn't very good either. There
Speaker 1: were like mistakes were made, so as as astronauts from
Speaker 1: Texas can definitely participate in Texas elections from space, good
Speaker 1: job text. I wonder what that's got to be like, right,
Speaker 1: Like can you just imagine, like, hey Bill, stop looking
Speaker 1: over here, my my right to making a private vote here?
Speaker 1: Like it's crazy. I mean, it obviously makes sense, but
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where I just didn't occur
Speaker 1: to me until until we started doing this episode. So
Speaker 1: talking about some of the other ways that here in
Speaker 1: the United States people vote, uh, A lot of states
Speaker 1: still use paper ballots in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 1: particularly the upper Midwestern states and New England. Um. They
Speaker 1: paper ballots can take different forms themselves. It's not like
Speaker 1: they're all uh, you know, produced by one company and
Speaker 1: then shipped off to each state. You've got the optical
Speaker 1: scan approach, which is kind of similar to standardized tests
Speaker 1: like the S A T. Where you know, you fill
Speaker 1: in the circle completely so that a scantron type machine
Speaker 1: can tell you the votes later, so that a human
Speaker 1: person doesn't have to sit there and go through all
Speaker 1: of them, right, although sometimes a human person does, but
Speaker 1: that's not the intent. It is to make that automation possibility,
Speaker 1: and then their punch cards, which if you were paying
Speaker 1: attention to the elections back in two thousand, you heard
Speaker 1: a lot about hanging Chad's, especially in Florida. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: you this is where you would you use Usually you
Speaker 1: typically use a little punch hole kind of device thing
Speaker 1: to push. It depends on it depends on whether you're
Speaker 1: in a precinct with a machine where sometimes there will
Speaker 1: be like a like a button thing that you use,
Speaker 1: or um, if you're doing a mail in thing, which
Speaker 1: is what I did in Florida for that election, where
Speaker 1: they like send you a paper clip with your mail
Speaker 1: in ballot, and they and the instructions are like unfold
Speaker 1: this paper clip and punch with it. Yeah, the idea
Speaker 1: being that you So wait a minute, Lauren, you voted
Speaker 1: in two thousand in Florida. Do you know if your
Speaker 1: vote for Kang was counted? You know, to this day,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. It was very confusing the little punch card, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I consider myself like a relatively uh observant
Speaker 1: human person, and I and I definitely was not positive
Speaker 1: whether I was voting for Kang or Cronus to be
Speaker 1: to be fair. I I consider myself a fairly capable
Speaker 1: at at at simulating a human being, and I have
Speaker 1: also I have also found numerous voting devices to be
Speaker 1: unnecessarily obtuse, like to the point where I'm thinking, like
Speaker 1: I understand what first of all, when you read a
Speaker 1: sentence and you think, I understand what each individual word
Speaker 1: in the sentence means, but when you put them together
Speaker 1: and together quite like that? Yeah, oh yeah, Like sometimes
Speaker 1: in Georgia will have we'll have state referendums on an
Speaker 1: issue and standing there trying to read this and it
Speaker 1: has like fourteen negatives in it, the right to not
Speaker 1: do X when unprivileged with X, you know, will not
Speaker 1: be infringe And you're like, I'm not I just did
Speaker 1: a visual gag out of there was a lot of
Speaker 1: there were a lot of faces being pulled at that moment.
Speaker 1: But so the punch cards, you know, obviously, the way
Speaker 1: you vote is that you punch a hole next to
Speaker 1: whatever your choice is, right either it's usually a pre
Speaker 1: perforated type of of ballots, so that you're actually just
Speaker 1: punching out something that's meant to be punched, as opposed
Speaker 1: to having to make a hole in that piece of paper. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course the idea of that is that again
Speaker 1: you could have an automatic tally machine. You could feed
Speaker 1: it through and uh the machine would very quickly be
Speaker 1: able to determine who you voted for based upon where
Speaker 1: the holes are. Yeah. And an interesting story about these.
Speaker 1: They came about in the nineteen sixties when a couple
Speaker 1: of Berkeley professors adapted IBM s like pre cut punch
Speaker 1: cards for computers, and they're they're portable punching machine for
Speaker 1: those cards, um, in order to to make and and
Speaker 1: cast ballots. And IBM briefly owned the company um uh
Speaker 1: the votomatic or the or. Yeah, that's that's the great
Speaker 1: terminology of the day, right, that's the sixties ist term
Speaker 1: that I've heard all day and I love it. Um
Speaker 1: and And actually one of the first tests of this
Speaker 1: technology was conducted right here in Fulton and Decab counties
Speaker 1: in Georgia. Those are interesting to the three of us
Speaker 1: and maybe not to anybody else counties in the metro
Speaker 1: Atlanta area if you were not aware, if you're not
Speaker 1: from Georgia, there's no reason you would be. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: these these uh, the photo of the photomatic and other
Speaker 1: similar punch card devices have generally fallen out of fashion,
Speaker 1: um in a widespread kind of way because of these
Speaker 1: these issues with with jamming and with less than clean punches,
Speaker 1: and with the dangling chads chads, Yeah, the chad by
Speaker 1: the way, that refers to the little piece of paper
Speaker 1: that you've punched out, Yeah, perforated. Yeah, they they And
Speaker 1: you could imagine that these problems with UH processing these
Speaker 1: punched out pieces of paper, they increase as the age
Speaker 1: of the machines that tally increase, things just start to
Speaker 1: break down. Also, you can imagine that if there are
Speaker 1: more people voting, if you have a greater volume of
Speaker 1: votes that you have to process, then you have the
Speaker 1: the potential for more problems happening over time. And that's
Speaker 1: not that's not great. That's not a great way of
Speaker 1: of making sure you have a fair fairly and consistently
Speaker 1: and and speedily run election process. Then you've got ballot
Speaker 1: marking devices, and these are usually reserved for people who
Speaker 1: would have difficulty making marks on paper ballots. UM. It
Speaker 1: usually involves something like a touchscreen interface and an audio
Speaker 1: output to help voters navigate the ballot. So if you
Speaker 1: have like UH problems with your vision. This might be
Speaker 1: something that you use so that you can still participate
Speaker 1: in the voting process and still have a private, you know,
Speaker 1: a secret ballot, as opposed to having to rely on
Speaker 1: someone else to put the that in for you, which
Speaker 1: would necessarily mean that you have to share your it
Speaker 1: with someone else. Kind of goes against the spirit of
Speaker 1: the thing. UM and there's votes by mail. A couple
Speaker 1: of states UH conduct their their votes by mail UM
Speaker 1: Washington State, Oregon, and Colorado. Do you you could imagine
Speaker 1: that any state where you have a pretty UH sparse
Speaker 1: population or people just tend to live very far apart,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to create polling places that are centrally
Speaker 1: located for enough of the population so that they can
Speaker 1: actually participate in the process. So that's a that's a
Speaker 1: possible solution is doing the votes by mail UH and
Speaker 1: paper ballots, like we said, could be tallied manually or
Speaker 1: by machines. So in some cases you actually had people
Speaker 1: whose job it was was to go through each of
Speaker 1: those paper ballots and mark down what the various UH
Speaker 1: votes were for. But various types of scanners have have
Speaker 1: come out are recently and and lots of different ones
Speaker 1: like different states use different companies. It's not again, it's
Speaker 1: not like there's an impartial producer of voting machines and
Speaker 1: tallying devices and that's where all of it comes from. No,
Speaker 1: they're they're companies from across the United States that make
Speaker 1: either the voting machine or the telling machine or both,
Speaker 1: and different states by different ones, So you don't have
Speaker 1: a consistent kind of experience from one state, sometimes not
Speaker 1: even between one county and another. You can come across
Speaker 1: some very different systems and that can be a little. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know if daunting is the right word, because
Speaker 1: you're not typically going, as an individual, going to encounter
Speaker 1: more than one system, because you're going to be in
Speaker 1: whatever county you you reside in. But it seems perhaps
Speaker 1: counterintuitive if you're trying to have what if you need
Speaker 1: to go to the next county to vote again, so
Speaker 1: you live in So you live in Illinois, So you've
Speaker 1: been dead for fifty years, and you want to vote
Speaker 1: as many times in the Chicago elections, you've only got
Speaker 1: until dawn because they turned to dust. And then we
Speaker 1: have fun with Chicago, but we love you. Uh. This
Speaker 1: moves us over into pretty controversial but also extremely common
Speaker 1: method of voting. They the last few times I've voted,
Speaker 1: I've voted on one of these, the direct recording Electronic
Speaker 1: Voting system. Yeah, the d r E s, these are
Speaker 1: the the Essentially they're like touch screen computer typically it's
Speaker 1: like a touch screen computer interface. Uh. In Georgia, that's
Speaker 1: been the case for a while, and in fact, Georgia
Speaker 1: is one of the states that happens to have some
Speaker 1: of the oldest d r E s currently in use.
Speaker 1: I think the ones that were purchased in Georgia were
Speaker 1: purchased before two thousand six. D r E s typically
Speaker 1: have a ten to fifteen year long lifespan and they
Speaker 1: have not been replaced purchased. More more on that in
Speaker 1: a minute. A quick historical note though, Uh, patents for
Speaker 1: electric ballot machines not electronic quite yet, but but but
Speaker 1: electric like like tell Graham or telegram telegraph based machines
Speaker 1: started appearing in eighteen fifty, but nobody ever used them
Speaker 1: until nineteen. Uh, just just everyone was like electricity, it's
Speaker 1: a passing phase. Yeah, it's not as reliable as good
Speaker 1: old mechanical work. I can just imagine someone over and
Speaker 1: an office just kind of you know, a clerk with
Speaker 1: like the little the little visor on his head and
Speaker 1: he's he's guys chin in his hand. He's just sitting
Speaker 1: there looking at a little light bulb and then suddenly
Speaker 1: blinks twice. Another one for for Kang Mark, another one
Speaker 1: down for Kan. But but but when we when we
Speaker 1: did eventually get electric devices, they were like push button
Speaker 1: kind of things, sort of like sort of like a
Speaker 1: keyboard or an old phone pad, if anyone ever pushed
Speaker 1: a phone button in their life. Yeah, and these these
Speaker 1: are meant to record votes electronically, right, Like, that's the
Speaker 1: idea is that if you can record your vote electronically,
Speaker 1: it's speed of light. I mean, it's really easy to
Speaker 1: tell you because you put it through a computer program
Speaker 1: that just sorts the votes on its own, and the
Speaker 1: user interface is easy, right, And in theory it protects
Speaker 1: the person's privacy and like that. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of things that on the surface are very easy to
Speaker 1: point out as pros uh to be fair, though they're
Speaker 1: not all equal. Right. There's some d r E s
Speaker 1: that generate a hard copy of every single vote that
Speaker 1: is cast, and this is meant so that you can
Speaker 1: compare the hard copy against the electronic copy, makes certain
Speaker 1: that the machines are accurately recording the votes as they
Speaker 1: were cast. Uh. In some cases, we would allow even
Speaker 1: the voter him or herself to see immediately after casting
Speaker 1: the vote if the paper ballot that is generated reflects
Speaker 1: what they actually chose, so they can be certain that
Speaker 1: their vote was recorded the way they wanted it to
Speaker 1: be recorded. There are other places that have absolutely no
Speaker 1: hard copy produced, so the only copy is electronic. I
Speaker 1: just get a little card, stick it in the machine.
Speaker 1: Vote how I want, take the card out, give the
Speaker 1: card to somebody. Yep, And I don't see any It's
Speaker 1: not a paper card, it's a little it's plastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how it works. In Georgia, we do not have
Speaker 1: a paper copy that gets generated. There's no way to
Speaker 1: compare a hard copy against the electronic copy and make
Speaker 1: certain that in fact the votes match up. Uh. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about that in greater detail. But you
Speaker 1: could see that that creates some that could create some
Speaker 1: some controversy at the very least. Yeah. Uh. And but
Speaker 1: like I said, most of the time, the interfaces for
Speaker 1: these machines, they typically are touch screens, but you can
Speaker 1: also find some that are mechanical buttons like you know,
Speaker 1: the screen tells you which button corresponds with which choice
Speaker 1: and exactly twigs and k ing Man, I remember that campaign. Uh.
Speaker 1: And again since twenty ten, we haven't had any mechanical
Speaker 1: lever voting machines, but those were still in use up
Speaker 1: to that point. Um. So in the United States, Congress
Speaker 1: passed the Help America Vote Act in two thousand two
Speaker 1: to make reforms to the voting process. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: that long ago. And that act required states to invest
Speaker 1: money in updating and upgrading voting equipment for because as
Speaker 1: as this equipment ages, than it has more potential for
Speaker 1: inserting errors. And when you're talking about voting, obviously the
Speaker 1: the stakes are very high, right, you don't want there
Speaker 1: to be errors in that sort of thing. Uh. The
Speaker 1: Act was actually drafted in a response to problems people
Speaker 1: encountered in the two thousand election, and that brings us
Speaker 1: to a section about problems with voting and voting technology. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of the big ones is accessibility. Making sure that
Speaker 1: the system you have designed is accessible by the population
Speaker 1: at large, and that you're not excluding anyone through the
Speaker 1: design of your voting system. Yeah, because imagine everyone has
Speaker 1: a legal right to vote. But say there's only one
Speaker 1: building in the entire United States of America where you
Speaker 1: can vote, and it closes at six pm on voting day,
Speaker 1: and it's up five flights of stairs. Yeah, the voting
Speaker 1: places up five ft no elevator. Yeah, So anyone with
Speaker 1: mobility issues, anyone who can't get to that building. You know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different dolleks. You can you
Speaker 1: can have somebody granted explicitly the right to vote. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the conditions make it such that they really can't. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and this is sadly a thing that is that
Speaker 1: is contested in several places in the country. Absolutely. One
Speaker 1: of one of the one of the other elements of
Speaker 1: that act I was talking about, had a section in
Speaker 1: it about how states had to come up with a
Speaker 1: voter i A D system so that they could prevent
Speaker 1: fraud from happening. In other words, you can't just have
Speaker 1: someone show up and claim that they are eligible to
Speaker 1: vote in that jurisdiction and then cast a vote and
Speaker 1: then leave. There has to be some way of of saying, yes,
Speaker 1: this person does have the right to vote in this jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: According to that act. But what if they are eligible
Speaker 1: to vote and they don't have the appropriate I D. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a and that that is a continuing issue here
Speaker 1: in the United States and multiple jurisdictions, A very a
Speaker 1: very challenging problem because there are two very important aspects
Speaker 1: at play here. The idea of let's make certain that
Speaker 1: we don't create a system that allows folks to gain
Speaker 1: that system, and also, let's make sure we create a
Speaker 1: system that allows the people who are eligible to participate
Speaker 1: in it to actually participate in it, that the people
Speaker 1: who are eligible to actually vote. Yeah, and not than that, right,
Speaker 1: it's and no one who is intelligible, right, this is right,
Speaker 1: no one who's dead or yeah, exactly. Uh. And we
Speaker 1: could get into voter eligibility stuff too, but that would
Speaker 1: just be an enormous can of worms, because there are
Speaker 1: different states that have different definitions of that. Like if
Speaker 1: you have committed a felony or been convicted of a felony,
Speaker 1: don't even have to have committed a felony, you just
Speaker 1: have to be convicted of one. That that could be uh,
Speaker 1: that could strike you from ever being able to vote
Speaker 1: again in certain states, not in all of them, but
Speaker 1: in some of them, So that's another issue entirely. Then
Speaker 1: there's problems with tallying votes. This gets back to that
Speaker 1: hanging chat issue. So that was when in Florida these
Speaker 1: ballots that had the punchhole variety. That wasn't the only kind.
Speaker 1: They're also the butterfly ballots that also that had issues.
Speaker 1: They were related to the punch hoole ones where it
Speaker 1: wasn't clear which indicator areas were related to which names. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a real issue with the punch hole ones.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the paper wouldn't completely tear from the ballot when
Speaker 1: you get that hanging chat, it's still something, it's still
Speaker 1: partially attached to the ballot itself, and that could end
Speaker 1: up creating errors when the when the votes were being
Speaker 1: tallied by machine. So there was a very close race
Speaker 1: in the United States in two thousand, I mean it
Speaker 1: was it was really coming down to Florida, and so
Speaker 1: everyone was really paying close attention. And while many were
Speaker 1: calling for a careful recount of the votes to make
Speaker 1: certain that the votes that were cast accurately reflected the
Speaker 1: results that were being posted, the Supreme Court ruled that
Speaker 1: George W. Bush had won the election over al gore,
Speaker 1: and that caused its own controversy that lasted for quite
Speaker 1: some time. Uh So in the wake of that, that's
Speaker 1: when that act was drafted, saying we want to make
Speaker 1: sure that you know, we're not saying that something wrong
Speaker 1: definitely happened in two thousand, but we want to make
Speaker 1: sure that that possibility doesn't arise again. Yeah. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: even if you're the person who won, it's not fun
Speaker 1: to be uh entering public office with suspicion hanging over
Speaker 1: you that you're not actually the people's choice, right, and
Speaker 1: to say nothing of the person who didn't win and
Speaker 1: are wondering if maybe they should have. Right. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it is not healthy for the country as a whole.
Speaker 1: So then we get to d r s without a
Speaker 1: paper trail like here in Georgia, the type that we
Speaker 1: have here in Georgia. The concern here is that there's
Speaker 1: since there's no physical piece of evidence of a vote
Speaker 1: and it's all just a file, this could easily be
Speaker 1: misrepresenting the actual votes of the populace, which we can't
Speaker 1: check because we don't have anything to check it against.
Speaker 1: Right if we even if we had a paper trail,
Speaker 1: the let's say that's Uh, that's sending out a hard
Speaker 1: copy printed version. Unless the voter him or herself is
Speaker 1: able to look at that paper trail and say, yes,
Speaker 1: this does accurately reflect what I chose. Uh, then the
Speaker 1: paper trail is kind of meaningless, right, because the paper
Speaker 1: trail could say the exact same thing that the electronic
Speaker 1: results say. Unless you relate it back to the individual voters,
Speaker 1: there's no way of saying that it is verified or
Speaker 1: fraudulent because if if I sit there and like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: the twenty tho pages of votes I have here exactly
Speaker 1: match up against the electronic file, but it turns out
Speaker 1: that if you pull those people and they all voted
Speaker 1: something else, then you're like, well shucks. You know, there's
Speaker 1: nothing that links it to the actual intent of the voter.
Speaker 1: And it's really challenging to change that without bringing that
Speaker 1: privacy concern back up and saying, well, unless we're specifically
Speaker 1: linking very specific votes to a very specific people, how
Speaker 1: do we verify this? And if we do that, then
Speaker 1: we remove the privacy from the vote. It's no longer
Speaker 1: a secret ballot, and that's very important in this process. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's been pretty ugly um. And also it's very easy
Speaker 1: to lose electronic votes. It's a file. It's not hard
Speaker 1: to completely disenfranchise an entire population from from any sort
Speaker 1: of voting process by quote unquote losing on purpose an
Speaker 1: electronic file. Not that that necessarily even even by accident.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to you don't want votes to be lost, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just that it's one of those things that it
Speaker 1: lends itself to conversations where you start to make cynical
Speaker 1: assumptions that the parties that are perhaps administering a vote
Speaker 1: have invested interest in the outcome of that vote, and
Speaker 1: therefore they are working toward that purpose. That's not necessarily
Speaker 1: the case, but this sort of stuff lens ammunition to
Speaker 1: that kind of argument, right, Like you're like, well, if
Speaker 1: they can do it, then they must be doing it,
Speaker 1: and that's the problem. Uh. There's also the question of security.
Speaker 1: How do you make sure that the votes are actually
Speaker 1: coming uh from legitimate SSEs and meanwhile protecting that privacy. Um,
Speaker 1: all of the systems that are in place according to
Speaker 1: that act I was mentioning earlier, are supposed to be auditable.
Speaker 1: But how do you make a system auditable that is
Speaker 1: also protecting the identity of the voters. How can you
Speaker 1: audit an electronic system and say yes, in fact, I
Speaker 1: know that this is working because Miss Johnson over there
Speaker 1: voted for Kang, and it's sure comes up as Kang
Speaker 1: over here, and and Mr Johnson voted for Kodos, and
Speaker 1: Nick came up as Codas, and that dinner is going
Speaker 1: to be interesting. But I know for a fact the
Speaker 1: system is working. That that's It's really hard to do.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you gotta say, well, an
Speaker 1: auditable system is important because you don't want there to
Speaker 1: be some sort of bias inherent in the machinery itself.
Speaker 1: So you start to see where these challenges are coming in.
Speaker 1: One potential solution to this, or one that people have proposed,
Speaker 1: is called the voter Verified Paper Trail, which sounds like
Speaker 1: Oregon Trail to me. It's like we're going on an
Speaker 1: adventure and we're probably gonna get dysenterry, Like, yeah, Kang
Speaker 1: broke your leg and bought three barrels of salt pork. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to play Oregon Trail now. But
Speaker 1: the very the voter Verified Paper Trail talks about producing
Speaker 1: a paper ballot that reflects the electronic choices of the voter,
Speaker 1: and then ideally the voter would be able to compare
Speaker 1: the paper ballot to the output of the electronic screen
Speaker 1: and make certain that, in fact it does say exactly
Speaker 1: what they intended it to say. But of course, if
Speaker 1: you were particularly sneaky, you could have the printed ballot
Speaker 1: reflect what the displayed results are on the screen, but
Speaker 1: have the recorded but vote be something totally different. So
Speaker 1: like vote number fifty on the screen, it says this.
Speaker 1: On the paper ballot it says the same thing. That's
Speaker 1: exactly what I wanted, Press submit, But when it goes
Speaker 1: to be saved, all the lets get switched. That's entirely possible.
Speaker 1: So it's not a perfect system either, right, And because
Speaker 1: the electronic approach has the capacity of affecting a very
Speaker 1: large number of votes with a relatively small amount of effort,
Speaker 1: that has got a lot of people worried about it. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to affect paper votes, that takes a
Speaker 1: lot of effort, especially if assuming that the people running
Speaker 1: the election are on the up and up. It's hard
Speaker 1: to do. You need help, Yeah, if you are capable
Speaker 1: of of executing an attack upon a vulnerability and an
Speaker 1: electronic voting system, then you could affect thousands or maybe
Speaker 1: millions of votes from one single source. And that, I
Speaker 1: think is where a lot of people are saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: we really have to read evaluate the approach we're taking.
Speaker 1: And then there's that that question of of including a
Speaker 1: bias in a system, which is not just uh academic
Speaker 1: discussion in many ways, because this question was very seriously
Speaker 1: raised in the not too distant past because of the
Speaker 1: political um involvement of a CEO who was the head
Speaker 1: of a company that made voting machines. UH specifically talking
Speaker 1: about the the then CEO of Diebald Incorporated. Back in
Speaker 1: two thousand three. Die Bald was one of the big
Speaker 1: companies producing voting machines they had. Their business was mainly
Speaker 1: a t M S, but they also did voting machines.
Speaker 1: And the same ceo wrote fundraising letters on behalf of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party and included the sentence quote, I am
Speaker 1: committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the
Speaker 1: president next year. End quote. Now I suppose that could
Speaker 1: be interpreted in an innocuous way, sure, just saying like
Speaker 1: I want to help with the system yeah, I am
Speaker 1: going to advocate for this person and we're gonna get
Speaker 1: them into off that. That's one way of looking at
Speaker 1: Another way of looking at it, saying I'm the head
Speaker 1: of a company that creates voting machines and I could
Speaker 1: totally make this happen, So at least for people reading
Speaker 1: that on the outside, introduced suspicion, right. It raised ethical questions.
Speaker 1: It was obviously a conflict of interest for someone who
Speaker 1: is the head of a company that is producing machines
Speaker 1: that are supposed to be unbiased and not give any
Speaker 1: weight toward one choice or another, so that you have
Speaker 1: a a an approach that any voter can come into
Speaker 1: absolutely with a clean slate and just be confident that
Speaker 1: their vote will be reflected. And then they're also advocating
Speaker 1: for a specific party. That is problematic, and it has
Speaker 1: raised some pretty tough questions. Now. Of course, one solution
Speaker 1: that people have discussed to this is that if you know,
Speaker 1: if you have machines that have software governing the process
Speaker 1: behind counting votes, that software should be open source. People
Speaker 1: should be able to see what the code is doing.
Speaker 1: But of course companies who make those machines probably don't
Speaker 1: want that no, they take a very proprietary approach. And
Speaker 1: again it's different systems across the United States, so you have, uh,
Speaker 1: you don't have a consistent approach. And according to professors
Speaker 1: with john hop Johns Hopkins University and Rice University, who
Speaker 1: did a study on various d r E machines, they
Speaker 1: said that out of all the d r E machines
Speaker 1: they looked at, none of them used cryptography correctly and
Speaker 1: many of them didn't use it at all. So that
Speaker 1: you have these unencrypted results there that could be altered,
Speaker 1: they could be it could be stolen, so that someone
Speaker 1: is getting specific information about specific voters. It's it was
Speaker 1: a big mess. Um. So we obviously see that there
Speaker 1: are some real areas for improvement. Uh, there's some opportunities here.
Speaker 1: If we were giving if we were giving voting, the
Speaker 1: voting process a review a performance review. Right now, it's
Speaker 1: saying we've we've identified some areas, some opportunity areas for us,
Speaker 1: feel like you're not living up to your full potential
Speaker 1: and we want to try and fix you. Man, how
Speaker 1: many of my performance reviews have gone with that specific route.
Speaker 1: We want to fix you, get you fixed. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: one of the big issues facing the United States. Uh,
Speaker 1: is this aging voting equipment story? Like I said, Georgia's
Speaker 1: got some of the most ancient of the the d
Speaker 1: r E systems that are out there. And by the way,
Speaker 1: as when The Atlantic ran a piece about aging electronic
Speaker 1: voting systems, had no contention of replacing them, or at
Speaker 1: least no plan to do so. Uh. And according to
Speaker 1: the piece in The Atlantic from it said, the problem
Speaker 1: of aging voting technology reaches nearly every corner of the
Speaker 1: United States. Unlike voting machines used in past eras, today's
Speaker 1: systems were not designed to asked for decades. And this
Speaker 1: is an issue we see just by going in that
Speaker 1: high tech route. I mean, if you've bought a computer,
Speaker 1: you know that after a few years that computer just
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to work so well anymore. Well and for
Speaker 1: them where you're you're gonna especially like I read that,
Speaker 1: I read that a lot of the systems that are
Speaker 1: in place there are from the nineteen nineties even And uh.
Speaker 1: And when you're using equipment that old, you start getting
Speaker 1: into the issues that you would get into with with
Speaker 1: any kind of proprietary legacy systems. You know, the vendors
Speaker 1: eventually stop using that operating system and aren't going to
Speaker 1: be able to help you, uh fix or update anything
Speaker 1: that goes wiggy. So when you do have a situation
Speaker 1: where let's say a machine goes down in a busy
Speaker 1: polling place, you may not have any way of addressing
Speaker 1: that in a in a way that the matters to
Speaker 1: any of the voters who are in line, and so
Speaker 1: that process slows down more and more. This in turn,
Speaker 1: can create a hardship on the people who want to vote.
Speaker 1: It can it can It can disincentivize I guess that's
Speaker 1: a terrible that's not even a real word, but it
Speaker 1: can use. It disincentivize when I'm when I'm living in
Speaker 1: suburbian areas as my other terrible flood I've done in
Speaker 1: the past, that i will never live down, and so
Speaker 1: I've just adopted it. It will make it will make
Speaker 1: people less likely to go out and vote, because if
Speaker 1: they go out there and they see that there's a
Speaker 1: line that stretches around the block and hasn't moved significantly
Speaker 1: for the last twenty minutes, then that creates this this
Speaker 1: barrier to voting, And it is the opposite of that
Speaker 1: accessibility we had been talking about. Sure, so okay, so
Speaker 1: we want to replace these systems, but what kind of
Speaker 1: technology would it be best to implement. Should we take
Speaker 1: some off the shelf stuff that would be cheaper and
Speaker 1: easier to set up and also easier to hack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's just like put some MacBooks on the you know, oh,
Speaker 1: here's my voting app. Right, And it's easy for us
Speaker 1: also to to say, hey, you guys should replace those systems.
Speaker 1: But that costs money. And then you get into the
Speaker 1: argument of who pays for this? And this is I
Speaker 1: bet you know I have a guest who pays for it?
Speaker 1: Somebody else? Well, ultimately it's the taxpayers who pay for it, right,
Speaker 1: ultimatelysdiction Right. The question is is it is it coming
Speaker 1: from county budgets or state budgets those tend to in
Speaker 1: the United States, that tends to be a pretty hotly
Speaker 1: contested uh kind of argument about whether should it be
Speaker 1: the local region that has to pay for those upgrades
Speaker 1: or should it be a state budgetary concern and uh some.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Atlantic report says that like some of
Speaker 1: the problems here is that it seems like the various
Speaker 1: parties are essentially waiting until something catastrophic happens in the
Speaker 1: federal government steps in and says, all right, now we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to pay for these upgrades. But that's not
Speaker 1: a great stress to g right. Let's well, I'd like
Speaker 1: to build up the levy a little more, but I
Speaker 1: don't have the money for it. So we're just gonna
Speaker 1: wait for a massive storm to come in wipe out
Speaker 1: the levy. Lots of people are going to be harmed,
Speaker 1: perhaps killed in the process, but afterward we'll have the
Speaker 1: money to build up that levy again. Or we're going
Speaker 1: to change public opinion with a John Bonham drum solo
Speaker 1: also a possibility. So one of the other options we
Speaker 1: have heard about in the past is the idea of
Speaker 1: allowing people to vote over the internet. Genius there it is.
Speaker 1: That's the I mean, I would love to be able
Speaker 1: to vote online. I don't know if I'd feel very
Speaker 1: good about it, but that would be great because the
Speaker 1: last time I went to the polls, I went there
Speaker 1: and I you know, I got there and they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to be here. You're supposed to be
Speaker 1: at this other place back where your old address was.
Speaker 1: And I was like, why aren't stirred here. I just
Speaker 1: want I just want an approach like American Idol, were
Speaker 1: two different phone numbers pop up and I just have
Speaker 1: to call one of them. M M, That's what I want.
Speaker 1: So the Internet, like you're you know, the idea of
Speaker 1: having something really convenient and instantaneous and having this ability
Speaker 1: to to see in real time what election results are going,
Speaker 1: like who's in the lead and who's behind. That has
Speaker 1: a certain uh, you know, charm to it, as certain
Speaker 1: attractiveness to it. You could argue that this would open
Speaker 1: up access to even more voters. It lowers that barrier
Speaker 1: of participation even further for people who have access to
Speaker 1: a computer. Anyway, that's still not that's non trivial, by
Speaker 1: the way, like you know, that's that's still that's still
Speaker 1: a huge assumption. But I mean, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who probably are you know, they worry about
Speaker 1: how can I get away from work? Right? You know,
Speaker 1: they've got stuff to do there for I mean, technically
Speaker 1: your boss is supposed to let you go vote, but
Speaker 1: a lot but in practice that's not necessarily going to
Speaker 1: be how it turns out like And it's not like
Speaker 1: most of us are equipped to say, oh, well, I
Speaker 1: was going to vote and then my boss said that
Speaker 1: I had to come in and so now I'm going
Speaker 1: to have a civil lawsuit that most of us can't do.
Speaker 1: That it's not something that we it's not it's not
Speaker 1: a realistic approach. So yeah, so that could make it
Speaker 1: easier in those cases. You can just go to work
Speaker 1: still and then if you get you get a ten
Speaker 1: minute break, go vote on your break. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: that this might end up increasing voter participation, which is
Speaker 1: something of a weird topic here in the United States too.
Speaker 1: You may have heard that in the US that voter
Speaker 1: participation is particularly low. The Pew Research Center found that
Speaker 1: voting participation in the US was that um only seventy
Speaker 1: one percent of the United States citizens who are eligible
Speaker 1: to vote were even registered. It's been decreasing for fifty
Speaker 1: years running. I actually saw some figures earlier today that
Speaker 1: if true. They say that more than half of eligible
Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty four year olds are unregistered. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's so young people especially don't even get registered. That's
Speaker 1: even that's just registering, not that's so that you can vote. Right. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're we're seeing that the participation on that side
Speaker 1: is pretty low. But to be fair, to be perfectly fair,
Speaker 1: some countries that have incredibly high percentages, it's compulsory, like
Speaker 1: you have no choice in it um and and some
Speaker 1: some of them you have no choice but to vote
Speaker 1: as well, like you are you are compelled to vote.
Speaker 1: So it all depends upon the systems you look at.
Speaker 1: It's not we can't just assume that all of them
Speaker 1: are equivalent to the approach the United States takes. Um.
Speaker 1: It would be a very different story if in the
Speaker 1: US you not only had to register to vote, but
Speaker 1: you had to vote in every election, and then you
Speaker 1: see the numbers go up if you had like real
Speaker 1: consequences that could happen to you if you did not participate.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's important to keep in mind too. Uh
Speaker 1: So there's some people say, yes, we should have internet voting.
Speaker 1: It would it would mean that more people would partic
Speaker 1: sipate in the system, that the whomever is voted or
Speaker 1: whatever measures are past would accurately reflect the majority the
Speaker 1: desire of the largest number of people within the population
Speaker 1: who are eligible to vote, and that that would be
Speaker 1: more fair. So it would be super fast, to be
Speaker 1: super easy to tell you those votes why not go
Speaker 1: that way? Well, one would be you remember those old
Speaker 1: rock the Vote things the future that could be replaced
Speaker 1: with hack the Vote. You're killing me that you're calling
Speaker 1: it the old rock the Vote things that was a
Speaker 1: voting age when those were up. Come on hack the
Speaker 1: Vote that that is what you you'd have people like
Speaker 1: organizing conferences for fun just to try to do things. Absolutely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: communication over the internet is is pretty much insecure. That's
Speaker 1: like excluding the people who would have organized nefarious campaigns
Speaker 1: trying to sway the election. Right there's there's already been
Speaker 1: a published paper that contains a no own hack for
Speaker 1: attacking home WiFi routers in order to tamper with PDF
Speaker 1: ballots on the way from a voter back to the precinct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that is a thing that exists on the Internet
Speaker 1: right now, and that's that's that's before you actually see
Speaker 1: a rollout to a larger population. Like even if you're
Speaker 1: just doing a little pilot program where you're testing it out, uh,
Speaker 1: you you would have hackers target that. A general rule
Speaker 1: of thumb is the the shinier the target, the more
Speaker 1: hackers are going to want to attack it. And nothing
Speaker 1: really gets shinier than the elections of a nation um,
Speaker 1: and you could see all sorts of ways to disrupt
Speaker 1: an election, from something as simple as a di DOS attack,
Speaker 1: that the distributed denial of service attacks, so that that
Speaker 1: the actual servers that are accepting votes and allowing you
Speaker 1: to vote are down, thus you cannot even participate. There's
Speaker 1: that approach to perhaps infecting computers and having them vote
Speaker 1: via a bot net to sway results or to deny
Speaker 1: people their actual chance to vote. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of ways that they could block a vote so that
Speaker 1: it looks like you've cast your vote but nothing has
Speaker 1: actually happened, or they could make changes to results. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many different avenues to attack that making sure
Speaker 1: all of them are secure would be a massive undertaking,
Speaker 1: one that some security experts say is, for for all
Speaker 1: reality's sake, impossible, Like it's just not it's not within
Speaker 1: our capability of producing that. Uh. Obviously, if you were
Speaker 1: to create that system, it would have a huge target
Speaker 1: where hackers would have this enormous incentive to try and
Speaker 1: find vulnerabilities, and it's highly unlikely we will ever produce
Speaker 1: a system with no vulnerabilities, So it would be a
Speaker 1: very high stakes game. Ah, so you also have problems
Speaker 1: with transparency. How could you be sure that such a
Speaker 1: system and internet voting syce him is accurately reflecting what
Speaker 1: is really happening on the voter side of this right
Speaker 1: right back to the back to the it's digital. How
Speaker 1: do we tell exactly? Yeah, unless you're unless you're able
Speaker 1: as a voter to say, I have cast a vote,
Speaker 1: I see that the vote recorded is in fact reflective
Speaker 1: of my choice, and I can see that it has
Speaker 1: been included in the overall votes, and I can see
Speaker 1: that in the final results, my vote is among them.
Speaker 1: Unless you have that assurance somehow, this is a very
Speaker 1: difficult approach. Now. Granted, you could argue you don't have
Speaker 1: that assurance with other methods of voting either, But you
Speaker 1: could build that into an electronic system if it weren't
Speaker 1: for the fact that you still have the security issues
Speaker 1: that don't magically go away. Right. Um, So, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is something that a lot of people have pushed for,
Speaker 1: a lot of countries have pushed for at least experimenting
Speaker 1: with internet voting. But almost every computer security authority I
Speaker 1: could find said this is not a practical idea. It
Speaker 1: is at best misguided and at worst it would be catastrophic.
Speaker 1: So uh, yikes, Um, what about other ways? What if?
Speaker 1: Well if what let's go back to my smartphone. So
Speaker 1: let's say all right, so let's say the calling the
Speaker 1: American idle number doesn't work. What about something else? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: other other methods have been proposed for for coming a
Speaker 1: little bit halfway towards towards getting getting more accessibility for
Speaker 1: people to vote, making it a little bit easier, like
Speaker 1: a like a system where people could could download an
Speaker 1: app on their phone precomplete a ballot, um maybe even
Speaker 1: scan in QR codes from campaign posters if they so chose, um,
Speaker 1: and then when you go to the polls, you just
Speaker 1: upload it or even video conference yourself in to a
Speaker 1: polling official and you know, for for like military personnel
Speaker 1: overseas or sure and uh and and so that up
Speaker 1: and could make it easier for for not just people
Speaker 1: who are are incapable for whatever reason that day of
Speaker 1: getting out to the polls, but but also for for
Speaker 1: voters with disabilities with with audio or visual disabilities, who
Speaker 1: who need a better way to to access that information. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But of course, if you're main concern is increasing voter
Speaker 1: turnout or at least accessibility. I think there are arguments
Speaker 1: that there are other ways to increase voter turnout and
Speaker 1: accessibility that wouldn't compromise security in the same ways, and
Speaker 1: maybe it would be better to try those first. So,
Speaker 1: for example, we might have mentioned this earlier, I think,
Speaker 1: But one is making voting day of federal holiday. This
Speaker 1: is a pretty standard proposal. Um, you know it's not
Speaker 1: so we hold federal elections on Tuesdays in November. Why
Speaker 1: do we do that? As we have for a minute, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we do that, and I love most people as
Speaker 1: we always did it that way. That's not a reason
Speaker 1: most people have to go to work. Work your boss.
Speaker 1: Your boss is supposed to say it's okay for you
Speaker 1: to leave work to vote. But you know, bosses are
Speaker 1: supposed to do a lot of things. It doesn't always
Speaker 1: work that way in the real world, right. Um, So
Speaker 1: if you simply made the day on which the elections
Speaker 1: occur a federal holiday in which nobody is supposed to
Speaker 1: be going to work, then then that that should increase
Speaker 1: voter turnout. It should make it easier. And this has
Speaker 1: been advocated by a lot of people, among them Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders you know, Vermont senator and recent US presidential candidate,
Speaker 1: but also universal automatic voter registration. This is a big
Speaker 1: one because one obstacle to voting is the registration block.
Speaker 1: So you can't just show up at the polls and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm over eighteen and I'm not a felon time to vote. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's my ide, but yeah, you have to be registered,
Speaker 1: and you have to be registered a certain period of
Speaker 1: time before the elections. Yeah. And so an easy way
Speaker 1: around this would be to say, well, why don't we
Speaker 1: just have some some system that automatically registers everybody who's
Speaker 1: eligible to vote. I don't understand why why don't we
Speaker 1: do that? And that actually is not only proposed, it's
Speaker 1: approved in five U s States as of last month.
Speaker 1: So according to the Brennan Center at the n y
Speaker 1: U School of Law, quote, eligible citizens who interact with
Speaker 1: government agencies are registered to vote unless they decline, and
Speaker 1: agencies transfer voter registration information electronically to election officials. So
Speaker 1: this means you interact with any agency of state government
Speaker 1: or federal government. I guess you, uh, you go to
Speaker 1: the d m V or you do whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: you interact with the government Uh, they know who you are,
Speaker 1: and they say, Okay, by the way, I see that
Speaker 1: you're over eighteen, and you're not a felon. You're registered
Speaker 1: to vote unless you unless you say I don't want
Speaker 1: to be right. That seems like an to me. That
Speaker 1: seems like a fair way of going about it, especially
Speaker 1: to remove that that barrier of entry where people who
Speaker 1: are either unaware of the process of registering to vote,
Speaker 1: or it's not built into a way that's easy for
Speaker 1: them to get to or do or whatever, that the
Speaker 1: barrier is just too high for them to go past
Speaker 1: it for whatever personal reason there may be. To remove
Speaker 1: that or as much of that as possible, I think
Speaker 1: is that's that's a decent thing to do, doesn't It
Speaker 1: doesn't even mean that that person has to vote. It
Speaker 1: just means that they're registered. Right. Well, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: I think I hear people making an argument like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, how how easy does it have to be?
Speaker 1: It's not that hard to get registered to vote, but
Speaker 1: shouldn't be too easy. I mean, think think about your life.
Speaker 1: You you people have a lot of things going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of things to do. They might
Speaker 1: care a lot about politics, but they're also working very hard.
Speaker 1: They're taking their kids, you know. Well, and let's let's
Speaker 1: let's take I'll take myself as an example, because I
Speaker 1: I come from an extremely privileged kind of background in
Speaker 1: that regard, and yet even I would have a certain barrier.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, I don't I don't drive, for instance, right,
Speaker 1: so I don't get a driver's license. I do have
Speaker 1: an I D because I need one for lots of
Speaker 1: different reasons. So going to get an I D though,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a pretty that's that's a lot of
Speaker 1: work for me to get there. I mean that's before
Speaker 1: I even get into the point where you enter the
Speaker 1: d m V and you have, you know, the the
Speaker 1: whole U Labrinthian line system that you have to go through,
Speaker 1: and the waiting times and everything before you even get
Speaker 1: to that. It's hard for me to get to the
Speaker 1: place where I'm going to get my I D H
Speaker 1: if it if it weren't for the fact that voter
Speaker 1: registration is just immediately lumped into that too, like I
Speaker 1: can just register to vote as I get my I D.
Speaker 1: If I had to do something similar to that, I
Speaker 1: could see it being one of those things where I've
Speaker 1: got to really, I've got to really be like dude,
Speaker 1: I it's my responsibility as a citizen to participate in this.
Speaker 1: I've got to push myself. But it would be pushing myself,
Speaker 1: it would not It would not be just so simple. Uh,
Speaker 1: same thing for participating in the voting process. In my case,
Speaker 1: very very fortunate in this sense, the polling place that
Speaker 1: I have to report to happens to be the walking
Speaker 1: route on the walking route to work. If it weren't,
Speaker 1: imagine a work day where I have to walk the
Speaker 1: opposite direction, I'm already walking three miles to get to work. Um,
Speaker 1: it would be uh more of a hardship. And I
Speaker 1: realize I am lucky in that sense. There are thousands
Speaker 1: of people out there who the situation I am in
Speaker 1: would seem like a dream to them. Yeah, at the
Speaker 1: very least you could call an uber or whatever if
Speaker 1: he really needed to. Not Not everyone is is in
Speaker 1: that is an that position, right. So again, like you know,
Speaker 1: making the argument of well, how difficult can it be
Speaker 1: often comes from such a position of well, yeah, in
Speaker 1: your situation, it may not be that big of a barrier.
Speaker 1: But not everyone is in your situation. But everyone who
Speaker 1: is eligible to vote should still be capable of going
Speaker 1: through that process. And I guess we should say, you know,
Speaker 1: for all the things we've just been talking about, they
Speaker 1: do simply assume that increasing voter turnout is a goal
Speaker 1: we want to achieve. Now, personally, I'm fairly convinced that's
Speaker 1: a good thing, But I guess somebody can make the
Speaker 1: argument that as long as everyone has the opportunity to vote,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't bother enacting measures to try to pump up
Speaker 1: the turnout. You know, maybe some people just don't care.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe I think it's kind of a weak
Speaker 1: argument against making it easier to vote, because many people
Speaker 1: may feel they want to vote, but they're unable to
Speaker 1: because of other pressures on their time or something like that.
Speaker 1: But as for people who genuinely don't care, I guess
Speaker 1: that you genuinely don't care, I don't see a good
Speaker 1: reason to try to pressure you to vote, right, I
Speaker 1: think the registering thing makes sense. I think compulsory voting
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense personally, personally compulsory not so much compulsory,
Speaker 1: but automatic registration. I'm in favor of compulsory voting, not
Speaker 1: so much. If you don't care, you should at least
Speaker 1: not if you haven't formed an educated opinion and don't
Speaker 1: bothered to read anything. You know, are we really that
Speaker 1: eager to get you involved? I'm not. I'm not so
Speaker 1: worried about so much worried about that. But I'm you know,
Speaker 1: someone who someone who for whatever reason doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: they want to participate in that particular uh voting process.
Speaker 1: I totally get it, and they should not be forced
Speaker 1: to do so. Well, that's another thing for somebody, whether
Speaker 1: or not you agree with the wisdom of this. For
Speaker 1: some people also, they regard not voting as a legitimate
Speaker 1: form of protests. So absolutely, yeah, as you were saying,
Speaker 1: like the people who argue against making voting easier, and
Speaker 1: I was reminded of the The Bit and Hitchhiker's Guide
Speaker 1: to the Galaxy of where the city plans for Arthur
Speaker 1: Dense's house was being demolished, like it was in a
Speaker 1: basement in a disused lavatory that had a sign on
Speaker 1: it saying beware of the leopard. Right, like to some
Speaker 1: people the process they have to go through to either
Speaker 1: register or to vote is while not that exact thing,
Speaker 1: at least you could empathize with that passage right, and
Speaker 1: we don't. I think that's the bad way to go personally.
Speaker 1: That's my personal opinion. Um, this was a really interesting
Speaker 1: topic and like we said, you know, this just covered
Speaker 1: the voting aspect, uh and what is the future of voting.
Speaker 1: I imagine we're going to see some other uh probably
Speaker 1: other groups dip their toe into the idea of internet voting.
Speaker 1: I hope to a level that is done responsibly and
Speaker 1: with the guidance from real computer security personnel. I don't
Speaker 1: expect that to become widely adopted because of the vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: we've already mentioned. You know, if we do, I suspect
Speaker 1: there will be extreme prank voting hacks that will, like
Speaker 1: for example, Kang and photos will actually win elections. It
Speaker 1: would it would be really odd. It would mean it
Speaker 1: would mean that it would mean an unprecedented approach, right
Speaker 1: like the point where a government would have to say
Speaker 1: the results of this election are not valid because that's
Speaker 1: a cartoon character. We got to totally do a do over. Guys.
Speaker 1: It's like, think about any time you've ever seen a
Speaker 1: corporate identity or brand try to do a voting campaign
Speaker 1: on social media or something. Every single time, what happens,
Speaker 1: it gets hijacked by people trying to make fun of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as soon as you I mean, we've talked about this
Speaker 1: before to right, Like, as soon as you create a system,
Speaker 1: people want to see how far you can push the
Speaker 1: system before it breaks. And when you're talking about something
Speaker 1: this big and this this important, that has lots of
Speaker 1: different implications, not just on the voting side, but the
Speaker 1: privacy side, the security side. If you let me generate
Speaker 1: my own Coca Cola ads, I'm going to try to
Speaker 1: find a way to make one about demons. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just who Joe is. Alright, guys. Well, that wraps
Speaker 1: up this discussion about voting. Uh. I am curious to
Speaker 1: see how this continues for I mean, obviously because it
Speaker 1: has such a huge impact on millions of people and
Speaker 1: and uh, not just obviously in the United States but
Speaker 1: around the world. Uh. If you guys have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of Forward Thinking, you get an idea for
Speaker 1: a topic that you would like us to cover, please
Speaker 1: send us an email or message on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: Our email addresses FW Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: Our Twitter Twitter handle is f W Thinking, or you
Speaker 1: can search f w thinking on Facebook and our profile
Speaker 1: will pop up. You can use us a message there
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you again really soon. For
Speaker 1: more on this topic and the future of technology, visit
Speaker 1: forward thinking dot com, brought to you by toy Yoda.
Speaker 1: Let's go Places,