21 ms·

I used to think electronic voting was the logical next step. But now, I think voting is too important to be left to electronics. It should be done on paper. We

I used to think electronic voting was the logical next step. But now, I think voting is too important to be left to electronics. It should be done on paper. We trust billions of dollars every day to electronic banking, so why not a vote? Electronic banking comes with many types of federal guarantees to protect against fraud. The government can step in to investigate and prosecute the fraud as well. But there is no such guarantee for the voting to select the government itself! But it takes so long to aggregate the votes if done with paper ballots. Precisely the point. Electronic voting allows scalable attacks where the number of weak points is dramatically reduced. It is very hard to scale attacks on paper ballots. You would need a coordinated effort in many voting stations to make it work as opposed to hacking a more central electronic system. That is why I moved from thinking that electronic voting is the logical next step to thinking that we probably need to revert back to paper ballots.

baby 9y ago
Totally agree with you, I do not understand this need to go digital. Voting has worked and works really well with paper, it's a process anyone can audit, even non-technical people. Sure it might take a day, and a bunch of money, but so what? Our democracy heavily relies on this process.
- KGIII 9y ago
  In theory, I don't mind digital voting. I do mind network connectivity and closed source machines.
  - simias 9y ago
    Even if the machines were open source you'd have to personally inspect it to make sure it's actually running what it's supposed to be running. Unless you're reading to bring an electron microscope to the polling booth it doesn't seem particularly practical. It would make more sense to check whether your vote was counted post-facto but it's hard to especially if you still want to make it difficult to figure out who voted for whom. There are a few mathematical possibilities but they don't seem particularly practical to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho So for the time being paper ballots are probably the way to go.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      Gives you a paper result that you can verify, and leave there for manual recounts as needed. Checksums and verified hardware. This is not insurmountable. You vote, confirm the receipt says the right thing, and stuff it in a box. Verified hardware is a solved problem. Given that it'd have no idea of the candidates, there's no way to program it ahead of time to favor a candidate without being caught. We already have election officials watching each other. This needn't be more complicated than a late 70s calculator. It can even be so simple it doesn't know the candidates names or party affiliations. Well, in theory... In reality, it will be a black box, connected to any open wireless, and made by the company who donated the most. But, in theory, it'd not be too hard to make a fairly dumb device that provides verification. It only has to count and print.
      - CydeWeys 9y ago
        You haven't solved the problem that being able to prove to anyone else who you voted for should not be possible.
        KGIII 9y ago
        If there's a discrepancy, you count the paper receipts. You can order a million simple chips for like $0.03. They chip vendor isn't going to know who is running for dog catcher in 2018. You test a random sample to ensure they can count. You use simple code that is open source and write it to the memory exactly once and blow the fuse to prevent tampering. We can put people in space. Verified hardware and software is a solved problem. Well, assuming you don't make it absurdly complicated. All it needs to do is eliminate manual counting - while providing a paper printout should someone need a recount. You don't even need special tokens to make sure the person in the booth is only voting once. You can be as simple as making it flash an LED to be monitored by the election officials. They have volunteers from the various parties already there watching. Watching a light may even be easier. It doesn't need to be complicated. It need only be a glorified abacus.
        CydeWeys 9y ago
shaqbert 9y ago
Tom Scott has a very educational video[0] on why electronic voting is a really bad idea. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
raverbashing 9y ago
Electronic voting is fine (WITH a paper trail) You just need regulation to prevent the abysmal idiocy of manufacturers Also standardize the interface (ADA compliant, etc) Hire the Nevada Gaming Commission to regulate it and so be it. Make the machine print a paper backup that is put on a ballot box as well
- yflu 9y ago
  But is there any advantage to e-voting? Assuming that we can achieve exactly equal security to paper voting for a moment, what have we achieved other than adding another few layers of middlemen and cost?
  - simias 9y ago
    Arguably you could only count the paper ballots in case of litigation, otherwise you'd just use the result of the machine. Sounds like a decent compromise. That being said here in France polling stations manage to count the ballots in a couple of hours at most after closing, so I'm not sure if it's really worth it.
  - radarsat1 9y ago
    > what have we achieved other than adding another few layers of middlemen and cost? and uncertainty. In principle the idea of hitting a button and having the non-networked machine spit out a paper trail that can be electronically counted sounds like a good compromise. But this leaves 1 or potentially 2 sources of uncertainty that are not necessary: (1) that what the machine prints actually corresponds to what you wanted and (2) that the counting machine actually counts what it says on the paper. (1) is not such a risk if you can verify it visually before submitting. There do exist I believe some ideas in cryptography to allow you carry a record of your vote that allows you to verify it without revealing the choice, these could have interesting application here, but I don't know the pros and cons. (2) is even a risk in the non-machine case, although it can be mitigated by having multiple independent parties do the count. But it can't easily be done by machine and have the same level of certainty.
  - edelans 9y ago
cyborgx7 9y ago
>But it takes so long to aggregate the votes if done with paper ballots. This one was alway wierd to me. Other countries always manage to count the votes in one night, and while the USA is very big, you'd think there would be that many more people counting the ballots available to make up for it. I guess it doesn't scale that easily.
- masklinn 9y ago
  Maybe the (low) number of voting locations is a problem? Around here, it's recommended to have a polling location for every 800~1000 voter and a booth per ~300 voters. When the polling location closes, staff (volunteers) start counting very publicly: anyone can watch and the procedure is legally specified such that overseers can trivially keep track and count of everything, the results are certified, displayed at the polling location and (if necessary e.g. for non-local elections) sent up to the next administrative division. Unless there are improprieties, it doesn't take very long to count a thousand votes.
  - croon 9y ago
    Bingo. Too few voting places, and voting days are not holidays (or on sundays) like in other countries. There are very obvious steps that could be taken to solve both counting time and voter turnout as well as suppression.
    - cr0sh 9y ago
      > There are very obvious steps that could be taken to solve both counting time and voter turnout as well as suppression. But when the party in power counts on that low turnout due to suppression in order to remain in power, do you really think they will do anything about it during their time in power?
  - iainmerrick 9y ago
    As a UK citizen, some of the voting practices I see in the US seem really mind-boggling: - Not enough polling stations - Long lines as the norm in many places - Polling stations closing early -- I've seen 8pm - Exit polls released before voting closes I guess these are generally due to the US being a large country spanning several time zones, with low population density. But they seem fixable, especially if you care enough about the integrity of the vote to commit enough staff and money to the process. Given the ridiculous amount of money that gets ploughed into campaigning in the US, it seems bizarre that you can't spare a fraction of that to improve the process. But it seems like what little money is available is captured by hucksters selling electronic voting machines. (Not that the UK system is perfect! Our voting system is pretty bad. Both countries could really use PR.)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
LVB 9y ago
In Oregon we're 100% mail-in paper ballots. I've come around to this idea too, especially after seeing some of the processing operations. Bulk counting in managed/secure facilities, along with secure storage of archival votes, seems like the way to go.
- detaro 9y ago
  Do you know how they protect votes against being destroyed, either on the way or by an insider, and allow enough transparency to verify this hasn't happened?
  - lostboys67 9y ago
    and how do they deal with "Granny Farming" goinmg to old people homes and "helping" them with their ballots
    - iainmerrick 9y ago
      In general, the way to avoid this problem is for everyone to be vigilant and work together to keep the process fair. Blow the whistle if you see anything shady going on. To make a big change to the results, you need a big conspiracy, and the bigger the conspiracy the easier it is to spot. When the process is simple and low-tech, like pen and paper ballots, it's possible for all ordinary people to contribute to keeping the process fair. With electronic voting, you just have to trust the manufacturers and the voting officials. Everybody else is out of the loop.
- pedrocr 9y ago
  This does away with one of the key characteristics of the vote, not being able to demonstrate to someone else who you voted for. This makes it easy to coerce/buy votes in Oregon. If you don't want this property in your voting system (and you definitely should) doing Internet voting can actually be a safer solution in plenty of ways although it's still extremely tricky to implement properly. And I'm strongly against any form of electronic voting.
rpazyaquian 9y ago
>Electronic banking comes with many types of federal guarantees to protect against fraud. The government can step in to investigate and prosecute the fraud as well. But there is no such guarantee for the voting to select the government itself! That's only because the government hasn't bothered to invest in electronic voting security, regulations, and rigor to the extend that they invested in fraud protection and financial regulations. I'm willing to be that if the government cared more about modernizing, securing, and distributing our voting systems, we'd see improvement on the level of electronic banking and finance. Not that I expect this to happen anytime soon. For various reasons, voting rights and opportunities in the US are steadily declining and don't seem to be taken seriously. You can fill in the blanks yourself there.
pps43 9y ago
It does not take long to aggregate votes using paper ballots. I was counting paper ballots in a national election, and we were done before 11 PM the same day.
- lostboys67 9y ago
  In the UK some constituencies compete to be the fastest 48 mins after the close of polls
  - sambe 9y ago
    I've always found it bizarre that nobody questions this behaviour - where is the discussion of accuracy?
    - Retric 9y ago
      You can start counting during the election. So, counting the last hundred or so ballets in ~1hour gives plenty of time for accuracy.
      - masklinn 9y ago
        > You can start counting during the election. That seems very odd. Can you actually do that? Around here the polling location must first ensure that the number of votes cast matches the number of votes recorded during voting, only after that can they open the urns and start tallying.
        Retric 9y ago
        The UK throws body's at the problem. But, in theory you can have say 2 hour windows keeping track of the voters and start counting that.
      - jomkr 9y ago
        Not in the UK you can't. All boxes are sealed until "the count" which only starts after the election has ended.
Techbrunch 9y ago
Anyone interested in electronic voting, I would suggest reading the article: Internet Voting: A Requiem for the Dream in the last issue of Phrack. It was eye opening for me. http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article Conclusion: 1. Internet voting is not compatible with democracy 2. No amount of technology can change this 3. Whom you voted for ought to be secret 4. Who voted should not be secret -- it should be known as widely as possible 5. And who counts the votes, and how, certainly ought not be secret
- GrumpyNl 9y ago
  Here the etherum approach with transactions would solve that. All votes would be public but still anonymous.
  - Balgair 9y ago
    Look, I'm not going to say you are wrong, but... not every conversation needs to descend into ham-fisting bitcoins into it. Nowadays, it's like a Godwins' Law type thing, but instead of everything devolving into Nazis, now everything devolves into 'the blockchain will fix it'. I miss Dogecoin, at least they were in on the joke.
    - artofcode 9y ago
      Such elections, much votes, wow.
    - tenaciousDaniel 9y ago
      I get the crypto fatigue because I feel it as well, but it really does apply here. Trustless voting is one of the more interesting possible applications of blockchain tech, and if properly implemented it could very well do away with voter fraud.
      - jsymolon 9y ago
        > voter fraud. Red Herring. Not counting voter registration fraud, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-000002-percent-of-all-the-ballots-cast-in-the-2016-election-were-fraudulent/?utm_term=.b50b8cb8b06b" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-... Washington Post only found 4 cases in the 2016 election.
tambourine_man 9y ago
End to End Verifiable Voting, from Ron Rivest (the R in RSA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho
cr0sh 9y ago
> But it takes so long to aggregate the votes if done with paper ballots. This is also why the complaints of government being slow to respond to things are hollow: It's meant to act that way. Which is why Trump and his "Executive Orders" are problematic; that isn't to say they are problematic for previous administrations as well. At any rate, they exist for a certain purpose, but that freedom to use them has been abused pretty much from day one of their existence. Arguably, they are there mainly for emergency purposes, when something needs to be done fairly quickly, but is something that would take too long to have done thru ordinary channels (Congress, etc). It was probably (wrongly) assumed that Presidents would be wise and restrictive about their use (completely ignoring how human nature works of course). I only mention Trump because he jumped into using them almost before he was sworn in; but so far (from what I understand) he has yet to break any records for usage of them during a term (except for maybe speed). In fact, the record actually belongs to FDR (who had 4 terms, also WW2, so that might be a part of everything). In an emergency, I can understand their use, but outside of that, we (everyone, including the President) should trust in the slow plodding of our system. It may not be perfect or work out perfectly every time, but its lack of speed gives us time to reflect and make better decisions, IMHO.
aidenn0 9y ago
I think a hybrid solution makes the most sense. Each voting machine tallies votes and prints out a filled-in paper ballot. Then you get quick electronic counting but with an auditable trail.
- nickbauman 9y ago
  We already have the reverse and it works better. You fill out a paper ballot. You feed the ballot into an optical tallying machine. The tallying machine is just an efficiency measure. The paper ballot is the record of the vote. It can be audited statistically and/or manually.
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    I'm going to disagree that that is a clear win over my idea. There are definitely issues with printing paper ballots (low toner, running out of supplies at polling locations, handling cases where the voter discovers an error after printing &c.), but similarly there are problems with optical tallying machines (e.g. hanging chads, incompletely filled in bubbles).
    - nickbauman 9y ago
      Optical machines do not have chads. Those are "punch card" machines. The low toner comment doesn't make any sense. The ballots are printed BEFORE the election. If you get a ballot that you can't read, you can return it to the pollster, they will mark the ballot as "unusable" and give you another. I know this because I've done this when I accidentally filled in the wrong circle. It's SOP. Incompletely filled-in bubbles is a real problem, true, but in my experience I've never seen this.
endgame 9y ago
Also, you can teach nearly anyone to be a scrutineer. Good luck teaching a layman to audit voting machine source code.

baby 9y ago

Totally agree with you, I do not understand this need to go digital. Voting has worked and works really well with paper, it's a process anyone can audit, even non-technical people. Sure it might take a day, and a bunch of money, but so what? Our democracy heavily relies on this process.

KGIII 9y ago
In theory, I don't mind digital voting. I do mind network connectivity and closed source machines.
- simias 9y ago
  Even if the machines were open source you'd have to personally inspect it to make sure it's actually running what it's supposed to be running. Unless you're reading to bring an electron microscope to the polling booth it doesn't seem particularly practical. It would make more sense to check whether your vote was counted post-facto but it's hard to especially if you still want to make it difficult to figure out who voted for whom. There are a few mathematical possibilities but they don't seem particularly practical to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho So for the time being paper ballots are probably the way to go.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Gives you a paper result that you can verify, and leave there for manual recounts as needed. Checksums and verified hardware. This is not insurmountable. You vote, confirm the receipt says the right thing, and stuff it in a box. Verified hardware is a solved problem. Given that it'd have no idea of the candidates, there's no way to program it ahead of time to favor a candidate without being caught. We already have election officials watching each other. This needn't be more complicated than a late 70s calculator. It can even be so simple it doesn't know the candidates names or party affiliations. Well, in theory... In reality, it will be a black box, connected to any open wireless, and made by the company who donated the most. But, in theory, it'd not be too hard to make a fairly dumb device that provides verification. It only has to count and print.
    - CydeWeys 9y ago
      You haven't solved the problem that being able to prove to anyone else who you voted for should not be possible.
      - KGIII 9y ago
        If there's a discrepancy, you count the paper receipts. You can order a million simple chips for like $0.03. They chip vendor isn't going to know who is running for dog catcher in 2018. You test a random sample to ensure they can count. You use simple code that is open source and write it to the memory exactly once and blow the fuse to prevent tampering. We can put people in space. Verified hardware and software is a solved problem. Well, assuming you don't make it absurdly complicated. All it needs to do is eliminate manual counting - while providing a paper printout should someone need a recount. You don't even need special tokens to make sure the person in the booth is only voting once. You can be as simple as making it flash an LED to be monitored by the election officials. They have volunteers from the various parties already there watching. Watching a light may even be easier. It doesn't need to be complicated. It need only be a glorified abacus.
        CydeWeys 9y ago

shaqbert 9y ago

Tom Scott has a very educational video[0] on why electronic voting is a really bad idea. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI

raverbashing 9y ago

Electronic voting is fine (WITH a paper trail) You just need regulation to prevent the abysmal idiocy of manufacturers Also standardize the interface (ADA compliant, etc) Hire the Nevada Gaming Commission to regulate it and so be it. Make the machine print a paper backup that is put on a ballot box as well

yflu 9y ago
But is there any advantage to e-voting? Assuming that we can achieve exactly equal security to paper voting for a moment, what have we achieved other than adding another few layers of middlemen and cost?
- simias 9y ago
  Arguably you could only count the paper ballots in case of litigation, otherwise you'd just use the result of the machine. Sounds like a decent compromise. That being said here in France polling stations manage to count the ballots in a couple of hours at most after closing, so I'm not sure if it's really worth it.
- radarsat1 9y ago
  > what have we achieved other than adding another few layers of middlemen and cost? and uncertainty. In principle the idea of hitting a button and having the non-networked machine spit out a paper trail that can be electronically counted sounds like a good compromise. But this leaves 1 or potentially 2 sources of uncertainty that are not necessary: (1) that what the machine prints actually corresponds to what you wanted and (2) that the counting machine actually counts what it says on the paper. (1) is not such a risk if you can verify it visually before submitting. There do exist I believe some ideas in cryptography to allow you carry a record of your vote that allows you to verify it without revealing the choice, these could have interesting application here, but I don't know the pros and cons. (2) is even a risk in the non-machine case, although it can be mitigated by having multiple independent parties do the count. But it can't easily be done by machine and have the same level of certainty.
- edelans 9y ago

cyborgx7 9y ago

>But it takes so long to aggregate the votes if done with paper ballots. This one was alway wierd to me. Other countries always manage to count the votes in one night, and while the USA is very big, you'd think there would be that many more people counting the ballots available to make up for it. I guess it doesn't scale that easily.

masklinn 9y ago
Maybe the (low) number of voting locations is a problem? Around here, it's recommended to have a polling location for every 800~1000 voter and a booth per ~300 voters. When the polling location closes, staff (volunteers) start counting very publicly: anyone can watch and the procedure is legally specified such that overseers can trivially keep track and count of everything, the results are certified, displayed at the polling location and (if necessary e.g. for non-local elections) sent up to the next administrative division. Unless there are improprieties, it doesn't take very long to count a thousand votes.
- croon 9y ago
  Bingo. Too few voting places, and voting days are not holidays (or on sundays) like in other countries. There are very obvious steps that could be taken to solve both counting time and voter turnout as well as suppression.
  - cr0sh 9y ago
    > There are very obvious steps that could be taken to solve both counting time and voter turnout as well as suppression. But when the party in power counts on that low turnout due to suppression in order to remain in power, do you really think they will do anything about it during their time in power?
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  As a UK citizen, some of the voting practices I see in the US seem really mind-boggling: - Not enough polling stations - Long lines as the norm in many places - Polling stations closing early -- I've seen 8pm - Exit polls released before voting closes I guess these are generally due to the US being a large country spanning several time zones, with low population density. But they seem fixable, especially if you care enough about the integrity of the vote to commit enough staff and money to the process. Given the ridiculous amount of money that gets ploughed into campaigning in the US, it seems bizarre that you can't spare a fraction of that to improve the process. But it seems like what little money is available is captured by hucksters selling electronic voting machines. (Not that the UK system is perfect! Our voting system is pretty bad. Both countries could really use PR.)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

LVB 9y ago

In Oregon we're 100% mail-in paper ballots. I've come around to this idea too, especially after seeing some of the processing operations. Bulk counting in managed/secure facilities, along with secure storage of archival votes, seems like the way to go.

detaro 9y ago
Do you know how they protect votes against being destroyed, either on the way or by an insider, and allow enough transparency to verify this hasn't happened?
- lostboys67 9y ago
  and how do they deal with "Granny Farming" goinmg to old people homes and "helping" them with their ballots
  - iainmerrick 9y ago
    In general, the way to avoid this problem is for everyone to be vigilant and work together to keep the process fair. Blow the whistle if you see anything shady going on. To make a big change to the results, you need a big conspiracy, and the bigger the conspiracy the easier it is to spot. When the process is simple and low-tech, like pen and paper ballots, it's possible for all ordinary people to contribute to keeping the process fair. With electronic voting, you just have to trust the manufacturers and the voting officials. Everybody else is out of the loop.
pedrocr 9y ago
This does away with one of the key characteristics of the vote, not being able to demonstrate to someone else who you voted for. This makes it easy to coerce/buy votes in Oregon. If you don't want this property in your voting system (and you definitely should) doing Internet voting can actually be a safer solution in plenty of ways although it's still extremely tricky to implement properly. And I'm strongly against any form of electronic voting.

rpazyaquian 9y ago

>Electronic banking comes with many types of federal guarantees to protect against fraud. The government can step in to investigate and prosecute the fraud as well. But there is no such guarantee for the voting to select the government itself! That's only because the government hasn't bothered to invest in electronic voting security, regulations, and rigor to the extend that they invested in fraud protection and financial regulations. I'm willing to be that if the government cared more about modernizing, securing, and distributing our voting systems, we'd see improvement on the level of electronic banking and finance. Not that I expect this to happen anytime soon. For various reasons, voting rights and opportunities in the US are steadily declining and don't seem to be taken seriously. You can fill in the blanks yourself there.

pps43 9y ago

It does not take long to aggregate votes using paper ballots. I was counting paper ballots in a national election, and we were done before 11 PM the same day.

lostboys67 9y ago
In the UK some constituencies compete to be the fastest 48 mins after the close of polls
- sambe 9y ago
  I've always found it bizarre that nobody questions this behaviour - where is the discussion of accuracy?
  - Retric 9y ago
    You can start counting during the election. So, counting the last hundred or so ballets in ~1hour gives plenty of time for accuracy.
    - masklinn 9y ago
      > You can start counting during the election. That seems very odd. Can you actually do that? Around here the polling location must first ensure that the number of votes cast matches the number of votes recorded during voting, only after that can they open the urns and start tallying.
      - Retric 9y ago
        The UK throws body's at the problem. But, in theory you can have say 2 hour windows keeping track of the voters and start counting that.
    - jomkr 9y ago
      Not in the UK you can't. All boxes are sealed until "the count" which only starts after the election has ended.

Techbrunch 9y ago

Anyone interested in electronic voting, I would suggest reading the article: Internet Voting: A Requiem for the Dream in the last issue of Phrack. It was eye opening for me. http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article Conclusion: 1. Internet voting is not compatible with democracy 2. No amount of technology can change this 3. Whom you voted for ought to be secret 4. Who voted should not be secret -- it should be known as widely as possible 5. And who counts the votes, and how, certainly ought not be secret

GrumpyNl 9y ago
Here the etherum approach with transactions would solve that. All votes would be public but still anonymous.
- Balgair 9y ago
  Look, I'm not going to say you are wrong, but... not every conversation needs to descend into ham-fisting bitcoins into it. Nowadays, it's like a Godwins' Law type thing, but instead of everything devolving into Nazis, now everything devolves into 'the blockchain will fix it'. I miss Dogecoin, at least they were in on the joke.
  - artofcode 9y ago
    Such elections, much votes, wow.
  - tenaciousDaniel 9y ago
    I get the crypto fatigue because I feel it as well, but it really does apply here. Trustless voting is one of the more interesting possible applications of blockchain tech, and if properly implemented it could very well do away with voter fraud.
    - jsymolon 9y ago
      > voter fraud. Red Herring. Not counting voter registration fraud, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-000002-percent-of-all-the-ballots-cast-in-the-2016-election-were-fraudulent/?utm_term=.b50b8cb8b06b" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-... Washington Post only found 4 cases in the 2016 election.

tambourine_man 9y ago

End to End Verifiable Voting, from Ron Rivest (the R in RSA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho

cr0sh 9y ago

> But it takes so long to aggregate the votes if done with paper ballots. This is also why the complaints of government being slow to respond to things are hollow: It's meant to act that way. Which is why Trump and his "Executive Orders" are problematic; that isn't to say they are problematic for previous administrations as well. At any rate, they exist for a certain purpose, but that freedom to use them has been abused pretty much from day one of their existence. Arguably, they are there mainly for emergency purposes, when something needs to be done fairly quickly, but is something that would take too long to have done thru ordinary channels (Congress, etc). It was probably (wrongly) assumed that Presidents would be wise and restrictive about their use (completely ignoring how human nature works of course). I only mention Trump because he jumped into using them almost before he was sworn in; but so far (from what I understand) he has yet to break any records for usage of them during a term (except for maybe speed). In fact, the record actually belongs to FDR (who had 4 terms, also WW2, so that might be a part of everything). In an emergency, I can understand their use, but outside of that, we (everyone, including the President) should trust in the slow plodding of our system. It may not be perfect or work out perfectly every time, but its lack of speed gives us time to reflect and make better decisions, IMHO.

aidenn0 9y ago

I think a hybrid solution makes the most sense. Each voting machine tallies votes and prints out a filled-in paper ballot. Then you get quick electronic counting but with an auditable trail.

nickbauman 9y ago
We already have the reverse and it works better. You fill out a paper ballot. You feed the ballot into an optical tallying machine. The tallying machine is just an efficiency measure. The paper ballot is the record of the vote. It can be audited statistically and/or manually.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  I'm going to disagree that that is a clear win over my idea. There are definitely issues with printing paper ballots (low toner, running out of supplies at polling locations, handling cases where the voter discovers an error after printing &c.), but similarly there are problems with optical tallying machines (e.g. hanging chads, incompletely filled in bubbles).
  - nickbauman 9y ago
    Optical machines do not have chads. Those are "punch card" machines. The low toner comment doesn't make any sense. The ballots are printed BEFORE the election. If you get a ballot that you can't read, you can return it to the pollster, they will mark the ballot as "unusable" and give you another. I know this because I've done this when I accidentally filled in the wrong circle. It's SOP. Incompletely filled-in bubbles is a real problem, true, but in my experience I've never seen this.

endgame 9y ago

Also, you can teach nearly anyone to be a scrutineer. Good luck teaching a layman to audit voting machine source code.