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This is exactly why I hate electronic voting. When I argue about it, people always tell me that it's easier to commit vote fraud with paper ballots. Sure, it's
by Coincoin 10y ago
This is exactly why I hate electronic voting. When I argue about it, people always tell me that it's easier to commit vote fraud with paper ballots.
Sure, it's easier for a single person to temper with a single paper ballot or even poll box, but it is much harder on a large scale. Tampering with every physical boxes and tallies in a country requires much more effort and organisation than exploiting a single vulnerability that applies to an endless series of identical machines.
- gertef 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter-verified_paper_audit_trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter-verified_paper_audit_tra...
- kmicklas 10y agoAdvances in mathematically verified software could help here - although mechanisms for verifying the manufacturing of chips all the way down the supply chain might be farther out.
- taeric 10y agoThe biggest actual risk to voting remains the party in power. Why go through the effort of fraud, when you can just throw out the results? Similarly, propaganda is also more effective.
- abecedarius 10y agoWhy hide that you're changing the election result? Well, I can imagine cases where it's not worth the bother, but they hardly seem like the default.
- taeric 10y agoMy point is look at pretty much every election where democracy actually left. Not exactly subtle fraud going on. (Though, I will confess I have not tabulated this, so would be very curious in full numbers.)
- jsharpe 10y agoThis is a tautology. You're saying that in every election where fraud was obvious ("democracy actually left"), fraud was obvious. There is probably a lot more subtle election fraud that is never detected.
- taeric 10y agoHmm... I'm trying to say in every election that was manipulated, it was not subtle fraud that was the problem. I have little doubt that some fraud happens. I just don't think it typically matters. In most cases where it was not detected, it had no bearing on the outcome. Now, overt manipulation of the voting populace through propaganda or other means is very common and has definitely happened. Ballet fraud, though? Are there any documented cases of that being a thing that mattered?
- thegeomaster 10y agoSee e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslavian_general_election,_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslavian_general_election,_...