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I'd like to question your view. First, you've omitted a major downside of digital vs. paper systems, scalability. Attacks on paper systems are much harder to s

I'd like to question your view. First, you've omitted a major downside of digital vs. paper systems, scalability. Attacks on paper systems are much harder to scale, are more easily detected and more readily audited by staff who need no IT training/experience. There are other downsides, but scalability is a good example. Second, the "plenty of upsides" are mere niceties. I don't know of any must-haves unique to digital voting systems. What do they offer that is worth their diminished security compared with paper ballots? I put security of our electoral process at top priority. Given the difference in attack surfaces of digital systems vs. paper ballots, I can't see a case for the former. The continuing parade of breaches of supposedly super secure systems indicates we don't yet know how to code systems for large-scale public applications where security is absolutely essential. Paper ballots are the best we have for now.

justadeveloper2 9y ago
I think decent paper ballots combined with machine counting, combined with voter ID verification (yes, I went there), combined with some kind of reliability program for poll workers would be a full spectrum kind of solution. It's not one thing that is breaking down here, it's several. We saw with the Wisconsin recounts that only a couple cities had questionable issues and not enough to change the outcome (this time). We saw in Michigan and Pennsylvania recounts that something more troubling was going on with Detroit and Philly and the real truth got hidden from public view when the recounts were abruptly ended in those places. I think there was evidence for fraud in certain Detroit precincts, but since that fraud involved Democrats, the media was silent on the issue. It got swept under the rug very fast. I bet if we look harder we find fraud in Dade County, the state of Nevada, the state of Colorado, and also likely Arizona. Lastly, if we are going to be completely honest, California is allowing illegal immigrants vote in large numbers. Mind you, I'm not anti-Democrat, I'm just anti-fraud. Verifying ID is a huge step towards ending most of the problems we have. The rest is stopping ballot stuffing and corrupt poll workers tossing out ballots.
- bsder 9y ago
  > combined with voter ID verification (yes, I went there) In what place in the US can you vote without ID? Where? Point it out to me. You can't. To vote, you already have an ID. It's called a Voter Registration Card. To get one, you generally have to cough up a bill, lease, etc. originally and then vote continuously over the years. At this point, relative to "voting fraud" (the only thing "ID" will solve), you have: 1) No evidence of significant voting fraud anywhere (we lose more ballots to mismarking) 2) Significant evidence of partisan disfranchisement 3) Leaders having been caught ON AIR saying that disfranchisement was the whole purpose Do you need someone to run up, kick you in the nuts, and yell "IT'S ABOUT DISFRANCHISEMENT" 3 inches from your ear before you get the message? Now, if you want to talk about election fraud where the counting of the ballots is suspicious, we can chat.
  - scierama 9y ago
    https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state "Under non-strict requirements, a voter who does not have the necessary identification may still vote without casting a provisional ballot.[1]"
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    > In what place in the US can you vote without ID? Where? Point it out to me. You can't. Sure, it's almost everywhere. For example, I recently voted in the 2016 presidential election. I voted in San Francisco. I didn't have to provide ID. I was allowed to vote despite claiming not to remember my own address. (Which I didn't, because I hadn't lived there for a few years. Voting continuously is certainly not a requirement.) The normal procedure is that you go to the polling place, they ask you to point yourself out on their list of registered voters, and then you vote without authenticating your identity in any way. Is this detailed/concrete enough for you?
    - thanksgiving 9y ago
      What happens when someone else shows up and points to the same name? I think what should happen is that it should ask the second person for proof and if they can provide it, the initial vote has to be discarded. But how? How do we know which vote is by the first person? I assume we don't want to keep track of who voted for whom (secret ballot). President Obama was right when he said the fix to problems in our democracy is more voter participation. Imagine if close to 100% of those eligible to vote, registered and voted. Voter fraud would be insignificant.
- scierama 9y ago
  Thank you for having the courage to voice a reasoned opinion on HN.
bluejekyll 9y ago
One thing that I think is overlooked with digital is the ease of it being replicated and backed up. Paper ballots can be destroyed. I really like the systems where there is an original easy to use paper ballot, that gets fed into a scanner for immediate counting with the ballot being stored securely in a box below the machine. It seems that the ballot could also have a scanned image stored for posterity. At that point all the digital information can be immediately backed-up, replicated, and so on. It seems like it's the best of both worlds...
- dublinben 9y ago
  There is no legal value to storing the individual ballots after an election result has been certified.
  - bluejekyll 9y ago
    Thanks, you're right... but at least until that date.

justadeveloper2 9y ago

I think decent paper ballots combined with machine counting, combined with voter ID verification (yes, I went there), combined with some kind of reliability program for poll workers would be a full spectrum kind of solution. It's not one thing that is breaking down here, it's several. We saw with the Wisconsin recounts that only a couple cities had questionable issues and not enough to change the outcome (this time). We saw in Michigan and Pennsylvania recounts that something more troubling was going on with Detroit and Philly and the real truth got hidden from public view when the recounts were abruptly ended in those places. I think there was evidence for fraud in certain Detroit precincts, but since that fraud involved Democrats, the media was silent on the issue. It got swept under the rug very fast. I bet if we look harder we find fraud in Dade County, the state of Nevada, the state of Colorado, and also likely Arizona. Lastly, if we are going to be completely honest, California is allowing illegal immigrants vote in large numbers. Mind you, I'm not anti-Democrat, I'm just anti-fraud. Verifying ID is a huge step towards ending most of the problems we have. The rest is stopping ballot stuffing and corrupt poll workers tossing out ballots.

bsder 9y ago
> combined with voter ID verification (yes, I went there) In what place in the US can you vote without ID? Where? Point it out to me. You can't. To vote, you already have an ID. It's called a Voter Registration Card. To get one, you generally have to cough up a bill, lease, etc. originally and then vote continuously over the years. At this point, relative to "voting fraud" (the only thing "ID" will solve), you have: 1) No evidence of significant voting fraud anywhere (we lose more ballots to mismarking) 2) Significant evidence of partisan disfranchisement 3) Leaders having been caught ON AIR saying that disfranchisement was the whole purpose Do you need someone to run up, kick you in the nuts, and yell "IT'S ABOUT DISFRANCHISEMENT" 3 inches from your ear before you get the message? Now, if you want to talk about election fraud where the counting of the ballots is suspicious, we can chat.
- scierama 9y ago
  https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state "Under non-strict requirements, a voter who does not have the necessary identification may still vote without casting a provisional ballot.[1]"
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  > In what place in the US can you vote without ID? Where? Point it out to me. You can't. Sure, it's almost everywhere. For example, I recently voted in the 2016 presidential election. I voted in San Francisco. I didn't have to provide ID. I was allowed to vote despite claiming not to remember my own address. (Which I didn't, because I hadn't lived there for a few years. Voting continuously is certainly not a requirement.) The normal procedure is that you go to the polling place, they ask you to point yourself out on their list of registered voters, and then you vote without authenticating your identity in any way. Is this detailed/concrete enough for you?
  - thanksgiving 9y ago
    What happens when someone else shows up and points to the same name? I think what should happen is that it should ask the second person for proof and if they can provide it, the initial vote has to be discarded. But how? How do we know which vote is by the first person? I assume we don't want to keep track of who voted for whom (secret ballot). President Obama was right when he said the fix to problems in our democracy is more voter participation. Imagine if close to 100% of those eligible to vote, registered and voted. Voter fraud would be insignificant.
scierama 9y ago
Thank you for having the courage to voice a reasoned opinion on HN.

bluejekyll 9y ago

One thing that I think is overlooked with digital is the ease of it being replicated and backed up. Paper ballots can be destroyed. I really like the systems where there is an original easy to use paper ballot, that gets fed into a scanner for immediate counting with the ballot being stored securely in a box below the machine. It seems that the ballot could also have a scanned image stored for posterity. At that point all the digital information can be immediately backed-up, replicated, and so on. It seems like it's the best of both worlds...

dublinben 9y ago
There is no legal value to storing the individual ballots after an election result has been certified.
- bluejekyll 9y ago
  Thanks, you're right... but at least until that date.