Web Voting?
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008How Design Can Save Democracy has been generating a lot of buzz lately. After all, it has been roundly recognized that some folks found the 2000 General Election butterfly ballots confusing, so why not let designers address the issue?
That’s a good start, but why stop there? Why not move voting online? We can already do our taxes online and that’s much more sensitive and private data then a hacker finding out which gum flapping bag of hot air I voted for. What could possibly go wrong?
I suppose a malicious user could game the system to vote for a particular candidate or proposition multiple times. But someone could also steal your Social Security number from your online bank account, open a bunch of credit cards and retire fat and happy in the Cayman Islands.
Since no one keeps their politics private anymore anyway, what about tweeting our votes? People already plaster stickers of their favorite candidate all over their hybrid’s bumper like it’s the local basketball team so why not increase the exposure to millions of users rather than just a few fellow motorists? And while I am on that topic, it’s safe to remove those Kerry/Edwards stickers now. You know who are.
With that voting mess all sorted out, we can now focus on something much more important - the release of Firebug 1.2. If you’ve been using one of the beta versions (1.2.0b1-15) with Firefox 3 I highly suggest you update now and start enjoying the good life.
Sensei Resig has a write up about it over on his cyberspace if you want the lowdown.