When someone says, "America isn't ready for online voting." I hear, "The interests who already buy and aggregate enough information to have the results ahead of time want to stay 1 step ahead of regulators."
When someone says, "America isn't ready for online voting." I hear, "The interests who already buy and aggregate enough information to have the results ahead of time want to stay 1 step ahead of regulators."
Both of those things have happened with voting in the past, which is why ballots are secret.
That's happening right now. Not in the past. That's why we need enough people who aren't in danger to volunteer their data.
> World governments and wealthy private interests are right now paying huge sums of money
You are describing a different problem than the one the parent comment is describing. The latter is lobbying, which can be prevented through legal restrictions and auditing to make sure those restrictions are being adhered to.
The former is outright vote-buying. People who are looking for money can, and will sell their votes for money, goods, or jobs. This happens in less rigorous democracies like India today. This happened in the US as well with the old-time patronage machines in big cities. Even if you don't necessarily need to sell your vote to get any job, you might lose a job offer to someone else who was willing to demonstrate that they voted "correctly".
The existence of one problem does not minimize the other, and we should seek to strike as many impurities from the process as possible, rather than trading one devil for another.
It's perfectly legal to take a selfie at the ballot box showing that you voted a particular way. It's feasible that some party could anonymously pay, say, $20 for every selfie they are sent with the way of voting that they ask for. Sure, it's illegal but so would be doing the same thing if the ballot wasn't secret.
If you tick a disclosure box and void your ballot, then that can be tracked.