Election Process
Here is how I see the e-voting process going in the future:
- 10 day period to scroll-through the elections/issues and to watch any 1-minute-videos that have been prepared for or against any person/issue (most up-voted video could be the one to represent that side of an issue)
- However far the voter scrolls and watches the videos is what they are certified to vote on. If they scroll-through everything and watch all videos, they are certified to vote on everything in the election the following week.
- 4 day percolation period to think about election issues.
- 3-day election period, Friday to Sunday
Total Number Of Items On The Ballot
Future LL elections can become a huge burden on LL voters as the number of things they have to vote on continues to expand. We don’t want to get into a situation where voters stop voting because it becomes too much of an overwhelming mental burden, as well as a burden on their time.
So I propose that each 3-month vote is limited to 50 different things that require a vote. For example, each of these would be 1 thing:
-1 Congress seat
-Election of new Govt Rental Manager
-Yes/no approval on whether to initiate a new construction apartment building (vote to choose architecture in the following election)
-Choosing 1 of 5 architectural drawings for the LL Marina
Perhaps, the 50 items could get increased in the future once it is proven that it is an amount that most voters are capable of achieving and getting voter feedback, but it should only be raised a small amount (to 60) and then that amount should be given at least a years test time before raising it again.
Total Time Spent On Voting By Each Citizen
If a LL voter spends 2 minutes to read the material for each item, and at least 1 minute of watching a video “for” and a 1-minute-video “against”, we are looking at 3.3 hours of reviewing voting material for 50 items.
But that is just yes/no items; for each elected seat there could be an unlimited number of candidates. Let’s say (fictitiously) there are an average of 5 candidates for each seat (each with 1 minute videos, so 5 min for each seat) and 30 total seats per election and 10 yes/no items, and 10 multiple choice items (like the LL Marina example above);
100min(total read-time) + 150min(candidate videos) + 20min(yes/no videos) + 50min(5 choice videos) = 5.3 hours of reviewing voting material to be able to be certified to vote and to make informed choices that election.
Even this 5.3 hours might be an overwhelming amount of time for some people, but it is hard to say for sure until a lot of people have tried it. I propose that LL work on the e-architecture to do voting in this manner and as soon as possible start doing test voting sessions and gauge user reactions and get feedback.
Certainly it is better that only those who have put in the time (5 hours in this case) to comprehend the issues they’re voting on are allowed to vote, versus the current method (in the US) of voters just marking “yes” to anything with an “R” or a “D” and being done with their vote in 5 minutes while knowing nothing about the candidates/issues they voted on.
Potential Longer Terms
I advise thinking about a longer term for Congressmen and other elected positions, because just to elect 7 congressmen in one election, citizens might have to watch a 1 minute video for each candidate, and let’s say there are 100 total candidates, that is 1.6 hours of videos just to be able to vote on the 7 Congress seats. These constrictions may necessitate at least a 1 year term for Congress and other elected positions just based on the voter mental/time burden. And the total number of elected officials might have to be capped somewhere for this same reason.
Holidays
Perhaps a law should be passed that all the holidays that LL celebrates must be placed on the 4 voting weekends of the year so that they coincide with the elections and reinforce the civic duty that each citizen must perform on these weekends. This would also encourage employers to not schedule these days for operations, if possible, and thus allow more citizens to have voting time.
Fraud In The E-Vote
A potentially contrarian view I have is that electronic voting will always be subject to extreme suspicion. This suspicion is for good reason; in the last 5 years we have seen massive evidence of vote fraud across many different countries and it is the electronic systems that have allowed much of the fraud. Therefore I propose that in order for a LLer to vote electronically, their vote must be public, with their name attached to their vote. If any LLer wants to vote confidentially, they should have to go in person to Ark village, or a LL govt building (when available) and put their vote on a paper ballot that will be counted by hand by multiple different election workers.
No matter how many audits we perform on the LL e-voting system (even if it is audited by a different 3rd party auditor every year), I will not personally trust it. My trust in e-voting has been reduced to zero, and it is never to return. Therefore the only way e-voting is possible (imho) is to do “name-attached” public e-voting, and confidential in-person voting.
Having a segment of the population that does “name-attached” public e-voting also gives citizens the ability to statistically analyze that segment of votes and make sure it matches the in-person segment results. This is just another way to make sure there is no vote-fraud with the in-person segment.
Names Or Aliases
LLers need to decide if they want to allow citizens to run for office anonymously. If they decide “No, we do not want to let anyone run for office anonymously”, then it is completely unacceptable to allow anyone to run under a moniker/alias user name. The only thing used should be their full legal name. The voter is already undergoing a mentally taxing several hour process and they don’t need any additional unnecessary difficulty like matching a user name to a legal name.