Colorado Political Candidate Promises to Give His Seat to an App - Sensationalist Headlines

[QUOTE=Motherboard]If Camilo Casas is elected to city council in Boulder, Colorado, this November, he doesn't plan to make any decisions himself. If he wins, Casas will instead give up his vote to Parti.Vote, a "liquid democracy" app he built to change how government functions. This is how it will work: If more than 50 percent of people in his community vote "yes" on an issue through the app, Casas will vote the same way they do. Only in the event of a tie would he be forced to make a decision based on his own beliefs. In order to avoid fraud, Casas' team will vet signups on Parti.Vote against the Colorado Secretary of State's publicly available voter rolls. In the future, Casas told me he wants to utilize biometrics for verification, possibly using something like Apple's Face ID technology. [...] [/QUOTE] [URL="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/59dnbb/colorado-political-candidate-promises-to-give-his-seat-to-an-app"]Source[/URL]

This is actually kinda pretty cool.

Sounds abusable as hell, but very cool if it's implemented properly

This comes to mind [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI[/media] Obviously a much smaller scale than a presidential election but I think the same rules apply.

not really, if you actually read the article, or hell, even the thread. “In order to avoid fraud, Casas' team will vet signups on Parti.Vote against the Colorado Secretary of State's publicly available voter rolls. In the future, Casas told me he wants to utilize biometrics for verification, possibly using something like Apple's Face ID technology.”

This would actually help out a ton with getting the young involved in local politics and votes and not just national elections.

Introducing a remote voting system can come with some serious vulnerabilities, but it can't be any more dangerous than an unchecked representative. I'd like to think of "political donations" as a human vulnerability.

I think this is dumb. We have a representative democracy for a reason. Not every issue should be a referendum. This is why we vote officials into office in the first place.

[QUOTE=DarklytheGreat;52809182]not really, if you actually read the article, or hell, even the thread. “In order to avoid fraud, Casas' team will vet signups on Parti.Vote against the Colorado Secretary of State's publicly available voter rolls. In the future, Casas told me he wants to utilize biometrics for verification, possibly using something like Apple's Face ID technology.”[/QUOTE] I did read the article. The problem is that this just pushes the trust to a third party. What happens if someone is able to get between or even bypass the verification? Now it's possible that for a small-scale system like this fraud would be pretty easy to check for. But if this were to expand further (anything less than State isn't really worth much in my opinion) that's when the issues mentioned in the video I posted become very relevant. tl;dr on the video: electronic voting just pushes the trust to another party, and it's way easier for a single group or even individual to affect the outcome.

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;52809245]I was just thinking this. I can't be assed to read my states budget every time they propose something. That's why I elect someone to do it for me. On top of this, my neighbor is illiterate.. I really would rather he didn't make rules/regulations regarding schools/education. Direct democracy is a wonderful idea in theory, and an absolute shit idea in practice, because a direct democracy requires almost CONSTANT education about the problem at hand, and most people simply don't have the time to give a shit.[/QUOTE] I don't think illiterate people can use a smartphone app to vote. It deeply disturbs me that there are actual illiterate people in the US right now, however

People shouldn't be participating in democracy whilst they are taking a shit.

[QUOTE=DarklytheGreat;52809182]not really, if you actually read the article, or hell, even the thread. “In order to avoid fraud, Casas' team will vet signups on Parti.Vote against the Colorado Secretary of State's publicly available voter rolls. In the future, Casas told me he wants to utilize biometrics for verification, possibly using something like Apple's Face ID technology.”[/QUOTE] Doesn't matter, that only vets sign-ups, not actual votes. You could still fraudulently sign up as other people who exist on the voter rolls, or malware could override clients votes.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;52809236]This is why we vote officials into office in the first place.[/QUOTE] And then we criticize every decision they make that doesn't expressly align with our beliefs. I mean, I don't think I've [I]ever[/I] seen anyone on this forum say 'Well, I don't think they should have voted that way, but I trust their judgment as my elected representative'. A politician who votes contrary to the wishes of a plurality of their constituents is gets labeled corrupt, uninformed, or out of touch. If people seem to hate when representative democracy yields different results from direct democracy, what's the point?

good job on transparency, bad execution i think. Look, people aren't going to be overseeing his every decision, only people who have an interest would and that could mean they drive decisions that don't reflect the majority. I applaud his attempt at transparency but its also a legislators duty to weight the pros and cons of every vote. What we should see is legislators everywhere use the ease of the internet to provide their constituents with an accurate tally of who is lobbying, such as meetings with lobbiests, and special interest groups as well as being avalible in public forums (no crappy controlled online forums are not the right call even as my rep has never held an in person town hall.)

[QUOTE=catbarf;52809650]And then we criticize every decision they make that doesn't expressly align with our beliefs. I mean, I don't think I've [I]ever[/I] seen anyone on this forum say 'Well, I don't think they should have voted that way, but I trust their judgment as my elected representative'. A politician who votes contrary to the wishes of a plurality of their constituents is gets labeled corrupt, uninformed, or out of touch. If people seem to hate when representative democracy yields different results from direct democracy, what's the point?[/QUOTE] This is more an issue of the politicians, not the system. Puting absolutely everything up to popular vote is just foolish

Voting should be easy, but not too easy. This would make voting feel worthless.

[QUOTE=Plaster;52809866]Voting should be easy, but not too easy. This would make voting feel worthless.[/QUOTE] Voting is already worthless with gerrymandering, political parties, and the electoral college being broken. Putting things up to popular vote won't fix any of that, it will just make it worse.

[QUOTE=catbarf;52809650]And then we criticize every decision they make that doesn't expressly align with our beliefs. I mean, I don't think I've [I]ever[/I] seen anyone on this forum say 'Well, I don't think they should have voted that way, but I trust their judgment as my elected representative'. A politician who votes contrary to the wishes of a plurality of their constituents is gets labeled corrupt, uninformed, or out of touch. If people seem to hate when representative democracy yields different results from direct democracy, what's the point?[/QUOTE] The point is you should never trust your government to do anything right, let alone right the first time. Constant scrutiny is the only thing between you and an overbearing government.

[QUOTE=Cyke Lon bee;52810125]Voting is already worthless with gerrymandering, political parties, and the electoral college being broken. Putting things up to popular vote won't fix any of that, it will just make it worse.[/QUOTE] ah yes, forgot how backwards your system was.

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;52809723]The difference is (hopefully) my representative follows his word with campaign promises, and reads the content of bills thoroughly, and votes based on the content of the bills. [/QUOTE] The reality of which however is that usually your representative votes along party lines regardless of the bill's content and will generally propose or vote within the interests of those who line his "campaign's" pockets with generous "donations". That's not to say that direct democracy is 100% the right option, maybe if we had a system that mixed both styles to provide a resulting outcome? Because 100% of either option is obviously not working too well.