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Comment by CrlNvl | Hacker News Reader

So this is clearly a funding problem and a date problem. I don't know what the situation is in the US, but in France it never took me (or my parents) more than 15 minutes to cast a vote. Most of the time I'm in and out within 10 minutes. Vote always happen on Sunday.

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>So this is clearly a funding problem and a date problem

Clearly not, because I wouldn't go out on Sunday to vote unless it was on my way to do something else. It's an UX problem for me and others--the effort required is not properly compensated by the benefits I'm rewarded with for my vote as far as I'm concerned.

If you care so little about voting that you can't be bothered to go out of your house to do it, why are you even interested in increasing participation? Either voting is important, in which case you should be willing to make a small effort, or it isn't, in which case who cares if people vote or not?

Higher participation means voting is more likely to represent the population. As it is, vote results only reflect the opinions of those who considered that the benefit they gain from voting exceeds the costs, which is a biased sample and negatively affects democratic principles. Costs need to be made as negligible as possible in order to be inclusive.

Voting needs to be easier but also secure. A smartphone app isn’t secure. I don’t think it can ever be secure; exploiting that app to manipulate the US election would be the prize and singular goal of governments and corporations around the world. It would be much harder to manipulate physical ballots which are observed by multiple witnesses at every step of the process which is decentralized and takes place at multiple locations around the country.

>Voting needs to be easier

Which is why it's not a solved problem.

If higher participation is important, then why not make the effort and go out of your house and vote? I just don't follow your line of thought.

Because that only raises participation by a negligible amount.

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