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Why do they allow computers for voting at all? There will always be doubt that computers have been manipulated.
by biafra 10y ago
Why do they allow computers for voting at all? There will always be doubt that computers have been manipulated.
- hashkb 10y agoBut paper ballots and scanning machines... those are clearly safer?
- meowface 10y agoYes. Because - assuming you keep the paper ballots around somewhere - someone 2000 miles away can't manipulate what those paper ballots say.
- JadeNB 10y ago> Yes. Because - assuming you keep the paper ballots around somewhere - someone 2000 miles away can't manipulate what those paper ballots say. But someone on the premises can. It's not as if there was never election fraud before computerisation!
- grzm 10y agoTrue. With paper ballots it is more localized. Chains of custody along with observers from multiple parties help prevent collusion. Like all security, you can only minimize, not eliminate, risk.
- meowface 10y agoIt's a lot harder to organize multiple staff at multiple polling stations in multiple precincts - enough so that it's unlikely someone not in on the plan won't notice what's going on, all of whom are willing to cover for each other and who won't leak, and who can somehow protect the ballots against independent auditing, to conspire to manipulate paper ballots than some guy in another country just compromising the polling station and tweaking the numbers slightly to give one side an edge. Election fraud is possible in any system, but it's a lot easier when the system is purely computer-based.
- grzm 10y agoPaper ballots allow for auditing, which is objectively more verifiable than voting via direct-record electronic voting machines.
- seszett 10y agoWhat about paper ballots counted by people? That's how we do it in France, it works fine. As long as there are enough people participating and people don't choose their counting partners, it's quite resistant to fraud.
- Noughmad 10y agoThe Americans usually respond to this with "that doesn't work in the US, because it's too big, and you would need too many people to count the votes." Apparently it's not so obvious that in a bigger country you also have more people available for counting.
- Amezarak 10y agoPaper voting is still done in many, many, many places in the US. It's still a substantial fraction of US voting. It is true that counting paper ballots in the US is a more time-consuming process than elsewhere, because it's perfectly normal to vote for thirty different elected offices in the US and say, five referendums.
- raverbashing 10y agoJust have the computer print a machine-readable and human-readable ballot and put it in a box If you mistrust the computer vote count reread the ballots (and manually count them if the doubt persists)