In 2009 the German Constitutional Court (similar to the U.S. Supreme Court) had to decide about voting machines and made an interesting decision which de-facto

In 2009 the German Constitutional Court (similar to the U.S. Supreme Court) had to decide about voting machines and made an interesting decision which de-facto banned them. They didn't really ban them, but simply set some requirements (apart from the usual as anonymity etc.) for voting machines which as of today none of them can meet: "When electronic voting machines are deployed, it must be possible for the citizen to check the essential steps in the election act and in the ascertainment of the results reliably and without special expert knowledge." So your average neighbor, grandma and co-worker must be able to understand how you came to the result because that's important in a democratic process. Your open-source voting machine software doesn't meet that requirement and neither does your fancy blockchain-based cryptographic system. But paper does: You make a cross on paper, you count them. You can find an official, full English translation of the ruling here: http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/EN/2009/03/cs20090303_2bvc000307en.html http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidu... (my quote is from paragraph 119).