Is it time to make Election Day a federal holiday? 🗳️ Some say it would boost voter turnout and align the U.S. with other democracies, while others argue it could create challenges for hourly workers and cost millions. Dive into the debate over whether a federal voting holiday is the best way to strengthen democracy or if there are better solutions. Check out the full breakdown!

https://ace-usa.org/blog/research/research-votingrights/should-election-day-become-a-federal-holiday-weighing-the-benefits-and-drawbacks/

  • GladiusB@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    Why? Everything is on the Internet. You can buy houses and bank on the Internet. There are scams sure. But the physical votes are still tabulated and entered into the fuckin Internet!

    • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 months ago

      The voting machines that those votes are originally entered into are not connected to the Internet, they’re on their own disconnected network, and for very good reason. Software is far from perfect, and putting voting software on the Internet would immediately make it a target from attackers all over the world, and they would absolutely be hacked and manipulated.

        • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 months ago

          For record keeping purposes, sure, not as a means to conduct the actual election. In a lot of places, paper ballots are still manually counted. Most places have a Scantron-type device that scans your filled-in ballot, but those machines are not Internet-connected. If they are networked, they’re on their own separate air-gapped network.

          • GladiusB@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            2 months ago

            Not where I was working. 90 percent were electronically entered. And I didn’t even work in the most affluent county in my state. Electronic voting is very prevalent.

    • prole
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 months ago

      Right. And you trust the American government to be transparent with this process? You trust every individual involved in programming this system not to fuck it up in some way, intentionally or not?

      There’s just way too much that can go wrong, and more possible attack vectors that could possibly be accounted for. We already have state actors actively attempting (often successfully) to interfere with our elections. What makes you think putting it online wouldn’t make that 1000x worse?

      • TheHiddenCatboy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        Not to mention you can’t even go back and see what the people really voted. If someone sneaks a

        if (vote == KamalaHarris.vote)
        {
              DateTime currentTime = DateTime.Now; 
              If (currentTime.Seconds % 3 = 0) 
                   DonaldTrump.voteCount += 3;
              else
                   KamalaHarris.voteCount += 1;
        }
        

        into closed source code, you’ve got fuckery that will take a computer scientist to find, and no way to unfuck the election.

        I prefer my paper ballot, thank you, though I’ll allow it to be scanned by a computer, as long as the computer is checked for fuckery like the above first.