Restart Democracy

In the US, turnout and voter trust is at an all time low. Right now, 80% of the population agrees that the country is being run by "a few big interests looking out for themselves." (http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/governance_bt/461.php) The current state of US election technology, featuring machines that are insecure, unauditable, and not transparent, is partially responsible for this problem. In the last presidential election, only 69% of voters nationwide were “confident that their vote in the general election was counted as... intended.” (http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv4/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__journals__journal_of_legislation_and_public_policy/documents/documents/ecm_pro_068045.pdf) As the situation gets grimmer and grimmer, US election officials are heading in the wrong direction with respect to new voting technology - specifically, internet voting. 32 states are currently testing remote electronic voting systems (verifiedvoting.org), but the security of these systems leaves much to be desired. Case in point: after allowing the computer science community to check their protocol for security holes, a trial in Washington DC was hacked to change votes in October of last year.