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Electronic voting is already widely in use. I've never voted on a paper ballot. And it makes some really cool voting systems possible. For example, you can do

Electronic voting is already widely in use. I've never voted on a paper ballot. And it makes some really cool voting systems possible. For example, you can do Condorcet voting systems, which are far superior to normal first past the post. Or cool systems like single transferable vote for electing groups of representatives. These systems are much harder to do manually and with paper ballots, but trivial to do electronically.

stonesixone 11y ago
San Francisco uses both paper ballots and single transferable voting (in its single-winner, instant runoff voting form). Indeed, I believe all jurisdictions in the United States that use STV also use paper ballots. In San Francisco, voters vote on paper ballots, and the ballots are electronically scanned. This generates a digital representation of the rankings cast on all ballots, which can be fed into tabulation software. SF actually releases these rankings publicly as a text file for each contest. See here, for example: http://www.sfelections.org/results/20151103/#english_detail http://www.sfelections.org/results/20151103/#english_detail
- Houshalter 11y ago
  Yes it's the vote tallying machine that needs to be electronic, not necessarily the ballot that the voter fills out. But even then, it's harder to do ranked paper ballots. Presumably someone has to transcribe the numbers voters wrote on the ballot into a computer, which introduces room for mistakes and lots of work.
  - thwarted 11y ago
    None of that requires manually transcribing numbers. Here's what the ranked paper ballot looks like that we use in SF. This is entirely scanable by machine. http://californiawatch.org/files/imagecache/image-full-width/Ranked-choice-voting-sample-ballot_0.jpg http://californiawatch.org/files/imagecache/image-full-width... Notice that it says (hard to read in this image) in the second and third choice that the selection must be different from the other choices.
    - Houshalter 11y ago
      Ah, interesting way of doing it. Still a bit messy, and the size of the ballot could grow quadratically with the number of candidates.
r00fus 11y ago
> These systems are much harder to do manually and with paper ballots, but trivial to do electronically. I'm a fan of Condorcet method and STV/IRV, but to be honest, I'd rather wait for election results that are verified over speed of implementation. The mechanics of better election methods shouldn't require a hard-to-verify electronic voting booth. Paper ballots are much harder to commit fraud with (and the conspiracy need to be larger) than e-vote machines all writing to memory (and likely to be closed-source).
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
> Or cool systems like single transferable vote for electing groups of representatives. Scotland, where I live, uses the Single Transferable Vote for local council elections. We use paper ballots. It doesn't seem to be a problem. There was a UK-wide referendum in 2011 for adopting the Alternative Vote (single-seat STV) for House of Commons elections. It failed to pass, but if it had, that too would have used paper ballots.

stonesixone 11y ago

San Francisco uses both paper ballots and single transferable voting (in its single-winner, instant runoff voting form). Indeed, I believe all jurisdictions in the United States that use STV also use paper ballots. In San Francisco, voters vote on paper ballots, and the ballots are electronically scanned. This generates a digital representation of the rankings cast on all ballots, which can be fed into tabulation software. SF actually releases these rankings publicly as a text file for each contest. See here, for example: http://www.sfelections.org/results/20151103/#english_detail http://www.sfelections.org/results/20151103/#english_detail

Houshalter 11y ago
Yes it's the vote tallying machine that needs to be electronic, not necessarily the ballot that the voter fills out. But even then, it's harder to do ranked paper ballots. Presumably someone has to transcribe the numbers voters wrote on the ballot into a computer, which introduces room for mistakes and lots of work.
- thwarted 11y ago
  None of that requires manually transcribing numbers. Here's what the ranked paper ballot looks like that we use in SF. This is entirely scanable by machine. http://californiawatch.org/files/imagecache/image-full-width/Ranked-choice-voting-sample-ballot_0.jpg http://californiawatch.org/files/imagecache/image-full-width... Notice that it says (hard to read in this image) in the second and third choice that the selection must be different from the other choices.
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    Ah, interesting way of doing it. Still a bit messy, and the size of the ballot could grow quadratically with the number of candidates.

r00fus 11y ago

> These systems are much harder to do manually and with paper ballots, but trivial to do electronically. I'm a fan of Condorcet method and STV/IRV, but to be honest, I'd rather wait for election results that are verified over speed of implementation. The mechanics of better election methods shouldn't require a hard-to-verify electronic voting booth. Paper ballots are much harder to commit fraud with (and the conspiracy need to be larger) than e-vote machines all writing to memory (and likely to be closed-source).

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

> Or cool systems like single transferable vote for electing groups of representatives. Scotland, where I live, uses the Single Transferable Vote for local council elections. We use paper ballots. It doesn't seem to be a problem. There was a UK-wide referendum in 2011 for adopting the Alternative Vote (single-seat STV) for House of Commons elections. It failed to pass, but if it had, that too would have used paper ballots.