this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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Today I Learned

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[–] Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

It is my assumption that an America that has been overhauled, would have UBI. Thus free smartphones

OK, so if you're dreaming of a utopia, why complicate things? Just assume America doesn't have greedy businessmen and then even capitalism works perfectly fine.

Open-source means anyone can look at the code, be it on their machine or at the repository

We already have that and there already are OSS projects that have been compromised. The most famous of which, the SSH backdoor, was discovered by the skin of our teeth. We have no way of knowing if there are more backdoors like it that went through undetected.

With things like hashing, it can be verified at each step of the voting process that the vote remains intact by auditors

It's already being done. If the device doing the hashing is compromised, you still get a valid hash of a flipped vote.

The voting software should be device agnostic, and be something used in all elections and voting.

Meaning: even more open to fraud than the current solution.

This is very different from Diebold and other physical devices, because those are black boxes.

OSS is not a magic "fix security issues instantly" button. True, it can protect from a malicious company wanting to do a take-over, like with what Thiel/Musk did, but it opens you up to so many other attack vectors. Again, learn about the SSH backdoor.

The receipts are not about anonymity. They are laminated so that people can keep them in storage, and bring them to a poll verification booth if the call goes out. The digital vote is anonymous when cast, the physical ballot reserved for when volunteers are willing to reveal their vote in public. While obviously not fool proof, it is an extra step against corruption if needed.

Your "extra step against corruption" is just a worse version of what we currently have. The votes can be recounted as needed, only the voter anonymity is preserved.

Do you honestly believe that malicious actors wouldn't make "calls for recounts" just enough times to learn exactly who votes how and then use that for spreading propaganda and sway the votes?

Obviously, there would have to be laws against corruption to go with a redefined nation

And they would somehow magically work, unlike the existing laws against corruption because...?

Also, a UBI-based society would have less corruption, because money is associated with luxury, rather than necessity

Everybody on the planet wants more. Maybe you can't corrupt 300k UBI-receiving citizens, but you can corrupt the 10 businessmen who operate their news-sources.

When it comes to calling for a recount, it could be something like 20% of previous participants of a voted measure calling for it, or 30% of eligible voters, whichever milestone is reached first.

Got it. So, you get votes, on top of votes.

People would be doing nothing but voting, mate. You get to vote on your city laws, state laws, federal laws, then their recounts. In order to vote you need to read the laws you're voting on, and these can be easily 500+ pages long, all in lawyer-lingo.

BTW - how would be re-writes of laws done? Also direct democracy, where the population has to read the law, understand it, see the pitfalls in the budgetary situation, international laws situation, international market agreements situation, human rights laws situation, and a billion other, and then agree that "the comma placed here makes the statement ambiguous, opening an avenue for fraud"?

Presumably, frivolous calls for a recount would automatically fail if they haven’t garnered support. Presumably, the open-source voting software would be used for collecting the voting metrics.

A lot of assumptions and presumptions going on to get this thing off the ground, no?