Okay, now I don't trust your computer. Congrats.
The problem is, malware infections aren't always that obvious. In fact, they rarely are. Botnets, for instance, famously try to remain unnoticed until the planned attack date, and many of the most famous cyberattacks in history infected their targets long in advance of the attack going life through trojans and the like. If we had online voting and another country wanted to disrupt the election cycle, the obvious way to do it is to infect everyone's computers long in advance and lull everyone into thinking they are safe... until election day, when their computers would be programmed to override whatever ballot you intended to submit with a fake ballot the hackers want to steal the election with. Or anything like that. Or perhaps the manufacturer has accidentally left a backdoor in the architecture of the OS or even the chipset that either they haven't discovered, or were secretly asked to put there by a government-- we know accidents happen, and IIRC the latter has been proven in some past incidents. The nature of cybersecurity is reactive; the only prediction we can make is that new attacks will come as a surprise.
What you are asking for is never going to happen. That "dumb browsing mode" would itself become a major security threat, precisely because those biometrics are valuable and vulnerable. If it can be used to identify the person who voted, it can become an avenue for voter intimidation attacks. Remember, we aren't just talking about cybersecurity, but election security. The whole election system has to be secure, and we don't want the machines to be a weak link that enables more traditional forms of election fraud.I'm less confident there, but the issue is hardly unsolvable. You could make it so that smart phones have a legally required dumb web browsing mode stored in ROM and then have your biometrics stored server side as part of being a registered voter.
Then you know nothing about the science of either biometrics or forgery detection. Do you have any idea how flawed fingerprinting, the oldest biometric in the science, has turned out to be? You not only have similar looking fingerprints to your parents and siblings, but because skin loses elasticity over time, they won't look the same now as they will when you are in your 50's or 60's or 70's.Signatures would only be useful if every ballot was checked against recent known good signature samples. Given that we know not every ballot will be checked and that samples of signatures won't be available to those counting ballots your signature is far, far less secure than a fingerprint or retinal scan.
Meanwhile, retinal biometrics are obviously problematic because some people don't have eyeballs. And those that do can have their retinal signature change as a result of various illnesses like glaucoma, diabetes, retinal degenerative disorders (self explanatory), detachment of the retina due to injury or disease, and cataracts. Measurement accuracy can also be thrown off by something as simple as an astigmatism. If you can get beyond all of those hurdles, then in theory its more reliable than fingerprinting. But the equipment to get a retinal scan is much more expensive, and getting that signature would be perceived by the public as much more invasive and threatening, which is the last thing anyone in this country wants, especially minority voters. From a privacy standpoint, biometrics only serve to make people feel less confident in the government, less safe. It serves to create more voter suppression and disenfranchisement, not less.
IMO, once we start colonizing space, in the long run we have to start considering the possibility of letting the colonists make their own governments separate from Earthly nations. Let them elect their own officials who can better decide how to handle issues unique to space and other planets, like water rights, air rights, colony building and expansion, etc. We are a long way away from having to worry about the O'Neil/Gundam future, however, and in the short term we already let astronauts vote through basically an absentee ballot handled by NASA. Guess what, its easy to prove that a ballot submitted by an astronaut on the ISS is who they say they are, because there is only about a dozen ballots submitted from space every year. Its not a hard problem in the slightest for now.How does this scale to permanent space habitation beyond low orbit? Do you renounce your vote while a certain distance from Earth or should we look into other methods because John Q Public doesn't want his biomarkers on file?
Believe it or not, yes, because I understand most people just leave the parts of the ballot they don't know anything about blank rather than casting a vote on those issues. Hell, most people probably just vote on the Federal officials and leave the rest blank; they come first on most ballots. Put a pin on that thought. I know that's what I do on the judicial elections and a lot of the county level bureaucratic positions. I mean, we can only vote a judge out of office, we don't get to put them on the bench in the first place. And we don't get to see the judiciary's party affiliation on the ballot either. When I see a party listing for the county offices, I often do vote along party lines, because I know the local politics are actually informed by that and can have dramatic effects on people's lives, even if its on the small scale of my local city or county. This year we were voting on the county treasurer, and there were three candidates: a Democrat, a Republican, and a Libertarian. Naturally I voted Democrat, because I want to create an environment where the Republican Party cannot so much as win even a local election, and of course I voted against the Libertarian because NO ONE wants a Libertarian as Treasurer if they know what Libertarians stand for. And yes, while third parties like the Libertarians rarely win at the Federal level, they absolutely have a chance in a county election. So its important to always vote against the Libertarians, lest you want your city to become the next Colorado Springs.
Voting along party lines isn't necessarily a bad thing, and besides, in a lot of the countries you are comparing to, they elect an entire government on a single ticket anyway. Its the same thing, except explicit, and has fewer valid choices for a voter to make, so if you don't like who they have listed as Treasurer but you like the guy they are submitting for, I dunno, Secretary of State, what are you to do? You don't get to say "I don't like your treasurer, so I'm not voting for him", in that case you don't get the good Secretary of State because you have to vote for a different party altogether. The only mitigating factor is that most of those countries have Ranked Preference or Single Transferable Vote systems in place to reduce the problem of a two party system the US has, making your choices more impactful in other ways. And also Votes of No Confidence can spontaneously spur on an election, which is one aspect of British democracy I envy. I think that Republicanism (the proper philosophy, and not the philosophy of the Republican party) is inherently inferior to Direct Democracy in all ways except practical implementation. Hence my question. It wasn't just snark.
I want the vote to represent the will of the people as closely as possible, so having more options on the ballot is better than having fewer IMO. This includes moving towards fractional, single transferrable, or ranked preference systems of voting, but also having more control over which officials are elected rather than fewer. In my state we even get to vote on Citizens Initiatives which can change the State's very constitution; and indeed, the longest part of the ballot here is all the new laws proposed by both that and the State legislature. Yeah, some categories of law can only be proposed by the state legislature, but ultimately the voters have the right of final approval. Legislative changes are longer because they have to spell out the basics of what the law will do. And bear in mind, part of the reason that American ballots are so complicated is that you are voting in multiple levels of government at any given time. You get a say in your city, your county, your state, and your Federal government all at once. Of course its going to be complicated. But its not really that complex. Federal officials come first, then State officials, then county, and city ballots may even be on a separate ballot if its mail in. FYI, my state sends every registered voter a complimentary mail in ballot, you don't have to ask for one. I personally attribute this as part of the reason its a purple state despite being surrounded by red. Mail in ballots massively help voter turnout. And why I think we should prioritize eliminating voter disenfranchisement and voter suppression problems before considering how much should actually be on the ballot. A well organized ballot just isn't that hard to follow or that intimidating, IMO. Having polling stations close at 5:00 PM on the other hand is just plain evil.
