Postal voting

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1562419]

I think that postal voting has real problems - as I've been discussing over here (worth reading the post that's attached to too, it's very interesting).

The basic problem boils down to this - if you're voting from home then there's nothing to stop someone bribing you to vote X, and then sitting behind you while you click the button/write on the form. Similarly, much more social pressure to conform can be exerted. Whereas, if you're voting in a booth then you can say "Yes, I voted X." when actually you voted "Y", no matter how much social pressure is exerted. See The Times article on that link for an example of that kind of pressure being exerted.

Comments

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

The point is that you can use the "other PC" or ATM at any point in the year before the election, when you have five minutes of privacy to yourself ... it's not like the day of the election where you can be watched for the whole day or made to vote at a particular time/place.

Proxy votes and postal votes already suffer from the problem you identify, and so it's something we already know about and don't do enough about it.