this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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I have said it before and I'll say it again, electronic voting does not work and is a bad idea.
The election system is dependant on trust, trust that the votes are not changed nor counted incorrectly.
This works with paper ballots, you keep the ballot box sealed and under observation by observers from different parties, they can then verify that the ballots have not been changed after voting, you count the ballots together, in front of everyone, they can then verify that counting was done correctly.
With electronic voting the votes are cast by interacting with buttons on a black box, no one is able to verify that the votes are recorded correctly nor that they are counted correctly during the actual election.
In California we have electronic voting machines that are basically glorified printers. You go through the vote flow, then it prints your ballot and you can verify it's correct before it goes in the ballot box. All the upside of electronic voting and none of the downsides. Since it's printed consistently it's easier to electronically count as well without mistakes that can happen from scanning hand filled ballots. Even human vote counters can mistakenly read a hand filled ballot.
That's how it is in Georgia to. You make your selection, receive a print out which has your chooses visible on kt, put that into the counting machine which is next to a table where you get your I voted sticker so it's monitored for tampering. They then take your print out and put it in a box for manual recounts if called for.
But don't you then put it into a scanner that actually tallies the votes? The paper exists, but my understanding is it's not a hand count. There is still opportunity to manipulate the scanner.
But you still have the paper ballot so that when it's time for a recount you can validate the electronic and paper copies match.
How it is in Texas too.
That is fine, and a good usecase
In Australia we have a robust and fast paper voting system administered by the Australian Electoral Commission. We get most results in the evening of election day with only really close races being a couple of days out. There is solid chain of custody on paper ballots and having been used for over a century we have all the kinks worked out.
The USA has about 330 million people, we have about 25 million. The voting population of each is smaller, but it is a much larger percetage of our population due to compulsory voting. If we can do it with less than 10% of the population it could be done there with the same ratio no worries, just assume out country was a state and you can see it can work.
Paper is safe and secure. It is well understood and all the hack and hijinks have been worked out. If you ask experts in IT if they think voting should be dine electronically they answer hell no without much debate.
Ditto in the UK 50 million people putting crosses on paper with pens in one day. First results come in about 2 hours after the close of the polls at 10pm, 95% done by the time you wake up the next day. Electronic voting has plenty of downsides and no upsides for anyone other than the people making the voting machines.
Am an IT professional (and also happen to have a degree in politics, i've had a weird life), can confirm.
I am an IT professional, and yep computers should not do election voting
Electronic voting for deciding a conference/meeting venue is fine, but anything involving governance over a large body of people is a strict no-no.
Reason: if other nation states are interested in tampering with the election, they can easily do it with the amount of resources they have. Paper vote is a distributed system which is very hard to tamper AT SCALE.
Germany uses paper ballots. 60 million eligible voters, 3/4 actually voted during the last federal elections.
IT professional:
If I had my way we would all use paper and pen
Am an IT professional (and also happen to have a degree in politics, i've had a weird life), can confirm.
xkcd warned us and that didn't listen.
https://xkcd.com/2030/
Tom Scott warned us too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
And also literally the guy from the OP article, who is the same guy who first demonstrated this kind of hack in 2006.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I like the system we have in New Mexico. (Yes it's one of the 50 states)
You can go to any poling place, and they print you a local ballot for where you live, right there. You fill in the bubbles with your choices, then run it through a scanner machine on your way out.
You get instant counting and can track results live all day. If there's a technical problem, or any uncertainty in the results, you can always go back to the paper and hand count.
It gives the benefits of all the options.
How.is it providing secrecy and result checking at the same time?
There's no identifiable info on the ballot.
The ballots themselves are available to be recounted if necessary.
Electronic voting works wonders. All you need to sacrifice is anonymity.
Which is why it doesn't work in real elections.
Voter anonymity is critical to a functioning democracy.
Uh, no. We already have dozens of publicly characterestics to discrinate people against, we can handle one more for a huge benefit of never ever doubting election count results again.
No, just no.
The moment voter secrecy is gone, you will have a far, far , far worse situation.
The moment you can verify what a person voted for, then you have opened the door for violence, intimidation and voter bribery.
The point of voter secrecy is to prevent others from being able to force you to vote on your own.
Immagine a wife of a MAGA husband, with voter secrecy she would have the option to hide voting for the Democrts, without it she would be able to be forced by her husband to vote for the republicans.
This is simply because he would be able to verify her vote, with voter secrecy he has to trust her. (Obviously there are ways he still could come close to verifying her vote, but there remains options for her)
I'm coming from an oppressive dictatorship that kills people for disagreeing with them. One thing to enables them to is voter anonymity. An oppressive MAGA husband example is cute, ofc, but I wasn't solving "how do we make people vote with there heart is", this is kinda out of scope and definitely not crucial for a functional democracy, but wishlist-grade at best.
Now, voter bribery is a good one. Never thought of that and can see how this could be a much more sizeable problem.
Ok but how would a lack of voter secrecy prevent the government from killing people who voted "wrong"?
To me that just seems like it would make it easier.
I am a Swede and have luckily never had to think about these things, if I am being arrogant with my staunch support of voter secrecy, I want to know.
You can't kill 12+% when you're in a demographics hole.