This is more of a thought experiment than a serious proposal, but given that exit polling did detect vote-fraud in Ukraine, and Hunter's post about the very real impact voter suppression can have, I think that it is worth discussing. Has
voting become obsolete?
my main argument is:
Fraud increases the margin of error, which means in a highly polarized electorate, may become the same order of magnitude as the margin of victory, in which case the outcome of the election is essentially random to begin with. Technology is one solution, but is susceptible to funding, human error, and fraud of a different nature.
[...]
A truly random sampling of voters, with N chosen high enough to give a margin of error arbitrarily low, would make it essentially impossible to perpetrate fraud while still delivering higher fidelity of results than is possible with the present system.
There are other issues such as whether the majority of the electorate truly represents the majority of the population, given the selection bias inherent in requiring voters to go out and wait in line for hours on a workday to excercise their franchise, and the dominance of swing states on the attention of the candidates. You can read those arguments at Dean Nation. But my main question pertains to fraud - if its possible to get effectively the same accuracy, or even better, by doing away with voting and doing statistical polls instead, why not consider it?
or am I overly cynical? :)