What is Approval Voting?

Approval Voting is a single-winner voting method in where a voter can approve of any number of candidates. The candidate that gets the most approval votes wins office. This would help eliminate some of the disadvantages third party candidates have. They no longer would be splitting the vote and voters will be more likely to throw their support behind someone they don’t think it will be wasted on. Approval voting can be considered a form of score voting, with two values, 0 and 1—or a form of majority judgment, with grades restricted to good and poor. Approval voting has been adopted by the Mathematical Association of America (1986), the American Mathematical Society, the Institute of Management Sciences (1987), the American Statistical Association (1987), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (1987)

Other Options?

Ranked Voting is in which the candidates are ranked in the order of their fitness for the job. The lowest ranked person gets dropped and then all of their votes go to their second choice and so on and so forth. This ensures that the most popular candidate wins the election whereas in the orginial instance of approval voting, it might be the least suitable approved candidate.

Why this matters?

Our current voting system is flawed as I pointed out in the first paragraph. The only way we can change that is by electing people who support changing the voting system and its technology. You can help by joining our Beta signup list and helping us bug-test our code before we try to market it. Through your help, we can make our voting technology more secure and keep candidates who are the least popular out of office.

About the Author: David Brock is a marketing intern at Follow My Vote.

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Under the new system, slated for public use in 2020, voters will indicate their choices on a touchscreen-operated tablet, after which a machine at the voting booth will print and process their paper ballots to be tallied. This is a leap from the ink-based system, which has remained unchanged since its adoption in 2003.

Currently the open source voting system is being developed and they are working on the user experience. The project is being tested on citizens for refinement of the interface. All demographics are getting a chance to test the system including senior citizens, people with disabilities, veterans, and speakers of foreign languages.

The county is also looking at ways to increase their voter turnout. One way they hope to do this is through a “poll pass”, which would allow voters to pre-check their vote on their phone and have a QR code scanned when they walk into the polling place. They hope that this will streamline the voting process and increase civic engagement.

LA County has partnered with Travis County in Texas to help build the open source voting system and carry out the plan.

We commend LA County for moving toward a more open source voting model! However this is a small step in the right direction. We would like to point out that people still have to go to the polls, wait in line, and their system will still waste paper.   Specialized and expensive machines will still have to be purchased for tallying ballots and recording the results. The fact is, election officials will still be the only people to tally the votes, meaning everyone must continue to trust them (The possibility of corruption still exists). We believe that one of the most important parts of an election is the vote recording process. It is not who votes that matters, but who counts the votes. And with Follow My Vote we put the vote counting in the hands of the people.

Check out all the benefits of our online open source voting platform here and let us know what you think in the comments below!

Source: Los Angeles County voting to shift from inkblots to open source

About the author: Will Long is the Marketing Manager of Follow My Vote.

The post LA County Makes Moves Towards Open Source Voting! appeared first on Follow My Vote.

Finance isn’t the only industry where the blockchain stands to create opportunity—the technology has a wide array of applications.

A movement is underway, for example, to use the blockchain to enhance civil liberties. “Follow My Vote Inc.” is a Virginia-based company that designs voting software that “blockchain technology [makes] virtually bulletproof,” according to the company’s website.

The California Association of Voting Officials (CAVO) is taking a close look at the blockchain, according to spokesman Brent Turner, who said several aspects of the technology are attractive.

“Our position is that any voting system should be publicly owned and not corporate owned software,” Turner says. “The fact that [the] blockchain is open-source, transparent and auditable makes it an attractive option—though more research and analysis needs to be done.”

Kammi Foote, past CAVO president and the current registrar of voters in California’s Inyo County, believes the blockchain might be the future of voting and is considering the technology for use in her jurisdiction. “It looks very promising,” she says. “We see potential for open-source to reduce costs and increase transparency in the voting process.”

Source: Freedom Magazine.

Note: Follow My Vote is a non-partisan organization. We do not endorse any political party or religious movement.  However, we are happy to discuss our online voting system and mission with any media publication. Freedom Magazine is the publication of the Church of Scientology.

The post Follow My Vote Featured On Freedom For Our Blockchain Voting System appeared first on Follow My Vote.