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If there is one thing I fail to understand it is the impulse to electronic-ify our elections. Why? Do we have a history of securing computers and keeping them

If there is one thing I fail to understand it is the impulse to electronic-ify our elections. Why? Do we have a history of securing computers and keeping them secure over time? No. Are computerized elections understandable to laypersons? No. Worse; even if the election was tallied faithfully by a computerized system, a demagogic candidate can whip up fervour and call the election into question. And without bug bounties there is no legal way for whitehats to pentest these things. We're stuck with shitty scans and guessing at best. Even so, from what I've seen I fail to see why we should trust these votings systems. But the public doesn't care. They don't understand that code is just data and it can alter itself. The voting machine industry has lobbyists. The paper ballot industry doesn't exist.

Retric 8y ago
Graft, paper systems cost less to develop so it's harder to skim money from them. Electronic systems have the nominal advantage of handling disabilities and different languages more easily.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- skywhopper 8y ago
  Systems can be easily developed for multi-lingual and disabled access that still produce a paper ballot that can be easily verified by the voter and counted by the election judges. There's no reason to electronicify the entire voting process to meet this (legitimate) need.
SublimeWarior 8y ago
It's cheaper.
- skywhopper 8y ago
  No, it's definitely not cheaper to buy, maintain, properly secure, audit, and continually replace inherently insecure electronic systems that are used two or three times a year at most. Elections are also not a place I personally think we should be cheaping out.
  - jethro_tell 8y ago
    you forgot store. The state has to distribute, and collect voting machines 2-3 times a year and then what, they sit for 4 months? With armed guards and audit logs? Paper vote by mail, when the ballot is ready, the print and mail it to you, you have 3-4 weeks to fill it out and send it back. High voter turn out, easy access for people with difficult schedules, No need for transportation. keep the ballots until the election has been certified
deviationblue 8y ago
Because we can.
darpa_escapee 8y ago
> If there is one thing I fail to understand it is the impulse to electronic-ify our elections. The part that gets me is that there is no organic, grassroots push from the people who actually vote to implement electronic voting. Usually when someone, or many people, advocate for a cause, they have something to gain from it. Who is advocating for electronic voting and what do they stand to gain?
- rayiner 8y ago
  There’s always people complaining how backwards it is that we don’t have electronic voting, how it suppresses the youth vote, etc.
  - jpfed 8y ago
    Interesting! I'd never heard the idea that the lack of electronic voting suppresses the youth vote. Do you have a link for someone arguing that position?
    - rayiner 8y ago
      https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39955468 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39955468 > Online voting is a good way to engage with younger voters, busy workers, and even Estonians living abroad, Mr Koitmae says.
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
        There are several miles of difference between what they said and 'claiming that not having it suppresses the youth vote.'
- pjc50 8y ago
  Diebold salespeople.
- squiggleblaz 8y ago
  After it took a few weeks to find out the result of our last election there was a push to electronicify it. (I think some people were also upset that they had to stand in a queue and why can't we just do it from our phone?) The push was rejected since (a) the body responsible for running the elections believes it would be less secure and (b) it would still take two weeks to finalise since postal votes can come in up to two weeks after the election as long as they're postmarked before the election. But people are interested in fast results. And they're lazy.
wnevets 8y ago
Its almost if there is a group of folks who want elections to be easily hacked and manipulated.
- micaksica 8y ago
  IMO Occam's razor ends up here. Electronic voting systems do two things very well: obfuscate the system in a way that is relatively incomprehensible to a layman, and provide plausible deniability in the case of manipulation. Even if manipulation is discovered, you can chalk it up to a "bug" and re-run the manipulated election again. People are stupid, and most ordinary people only want to believe there's malice involved when they've run out of more pleasing cognitive options. I believe that if this site enumerated all the ways that you can maliciously use computerized vs. paper voting systems, we would show a hell of a lot more benefits to a manipulator than a voter.
  - AFNobody 8y ago
    That is more or less correct. It is a way for state governments to enable "their side" to win easier. It will get worse as the demographic shift continues to strangle the GOP's support in swing states.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - Terr_ 8y ago
    > IMO Occam's razor ends up here. Electronic voting systems do two things very well: obfuscate the system in a way that is relatively incomprehensible to a layman, and provide plausible deniability in the case of manipulation. I think if you bring up Occam's Razor you also need: 1. Somebody gets to make money selling crap to the government 2. Somebody in government thinks it'll mean cost-savings
  - otakucode 8y ago
    Occam's Razor is not a real logical principle. It would also lead to the conclusion that the reason not much of substance is ever done about computer security in general is because there is someone or some group who earnestly wants to see the rise of action-movie-style supervillains who can walk down the street and see society unwind into chaos around them as ATMs jackpot into the street, airplanes careen out of the sky, power stations blink and surge, all the doors to prison cells fling wide open, and modern cars lock the steering while maxing out the accelerator. Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence. And that's the case here. Electronic voting, if it were magically secure, would be cheaper and more accessible. And it would make some companies like Diebold a bunch of money. So of course it gets pursued.
jcranmer 8y ago
Because, to the popular perception, computers are infallible constructs and humans are fallible constructs. Imagine a human being counting thousands of paper ballots, what's the likelihood that the count will be off by one or two? It's also a case of different concerns cropping off: with paper ballots, there's a risk of miscounting, or disagreement on what constitutes a mark (remember the 2000 election, where the outcome of the election depends on the standards of how much of a mark you need for it to be indicated as a recordable vote). With computer ballots, the concern is over people hacking the tabulating machines or other computerized machinery. You're comparing vastly different risk profiles, and I suspect that most people don't have sufficiently-grounded knowledge to adequately compare them.
- charleslmunger 8y ago
  There's still the same dispute about miscalibrated touchscreens on electronic voting machines - the difference is that paper provides an audit trail, such that it can actually be disputed. https://www.npr.org/2016/10/26/499450796/some-machines-are-flipping-votes-but-that-doesnt-mean-theyre-rigged https://www.npr.org/2016/10/26/499450796/some-machines-are-f...
  - s3m4j 8y ago
    Also the "attack surface" of paper is so large as to be humanly impractical. A computer system howevever complex always has an attack surface that is actually practical.
VikingCoder 8y ago
There is a belief that technology can solve any problem.
jlarocco 8y ago
> If there is one thing I fail to understand it is the impulse to electronic-ify our elections. Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but why would you expect anything different? As a layperson, why would I treat computerized voting any differently than online shopping or ordering an Uber or something like that? The software engineering community deserves more blame for this type of thing. It's unreasonable to expect laypeople to be experts on every technology they use, and this crappy voting system didn't exactly write itself.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- micaksica 8y ago
  > This crappy voting system didn't write itself. One of the downsides of programming being easily accessible and easy to get a job in is that there is no required standards body to write code. There's no way to fix this. The best you can do is refuse to hire people that worked on these or similar systems, and I'm sure they will find jobs somewhere within the government-contractor software engineering space.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jlarocco 8y ago
    > One of the downsides of programming being easily accessible and easy to get a job in is that there is no required standards body to write code. There's no way to fix this. I guess that's what I was getting at. There never used to be a standards body for civil engineers, either, but after a while society got tired of bridges falling down and buildings collapsing. When will we get to that point with computer software? It's kind of funny (or sad) that barbers and hair stylists need a license, but software engineers don't.
    - squiggleblaz 8y ago
      It isn't sufficient that people are upset about problems caused by people in a profession/trade. Instead a major source of regulation is the professionals/tradies themselves. "I spent five years at university, so they should too." "I'm a member of the Association of Software Professionals, so they should be too". Since there's an unhealthy obsession with libertarian small government is software circles, it seems relatively unlikely this will happen any time soon. And we would rightly fear for our jobs if this happened, because I can't imagine the regulation applying to imported code.
ryanmarsh 8y ago
I'm immediately mistrustful of anyone who wants to electronic-ify our elections. No sensible person with even a cursory knowledge of how bad the state of computer security is could recommend this.
- 794CD01 8y ago
  Why not? You just need to have a cursory knowledge of how little elections and security actually matter. We already use computers to manage our finances, social lives, and health. If they get hacked they get hacked. Life goes on.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jumelles 8y ago
    That's a frighteningly cavalier attitude about the integrity of elections.
    - 794CD01 8y ago
      I think it's a realistic one. Is the integrity of your votes more important to you than your bank account? Or your medical history? It's not to me.
      - yifanl 8y ago
        If your prevailing attitude is that all of society has already failed, then I suppose, no, the integrity elections are not important. But that's a disturbingly cynical outlook, and if the general attitude of the whole populace was as such, there must be something awful at play.
reaperducer 8y ago
If there is one thing I fail to understand it is the impulse to electronic-ify our elections. It goes back to the "hanging chad" election. The losing side decried paper ballots as unreliable in every form and fashion, and the only way to have a fair election was to make it all electronic. Thus, an industry was born.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cafard 8y ago
  No, it goes back well before that, I think. Have a look at https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19/06#subj1 https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19/06#subj1
- flukus 8y ago
  > It goes back to the "hanging chad" election. Didn't this only happen because of an attempt to elctronic-ify the election and have machines tabulate the results?
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    I’m not sure how it was handled in Florida (where the infamous chad incident happened), but in at least some other states it was more electromechanical than electronic. FWIW, the place I voted during that election was straight up mechanical.
akira2501 8y ago
> If there is one thing I fail to understand it is the impulse to electronic-ify our elections. Two words: "hanging chad."
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- romwell 8y ago
  And hanging chads were a problem why exactly? I.e. why do we need to have machines do something badly that humans can do well?
  - akira2501 8y ago
    I think history shows that we don't actually do it that well, I gave one example from recent history and I think a quick study will show that elections, in general, are easily undermined. We want machines because they are indifferent. We can develop machine based voting systems that have a voter-verifiable receipt. We can reduce the cost of our elections and reduce the number of trusted people that must be involved with them. It removes the most common sources of error from our current flawed implementation of our democratic ideals. Expanding upon this, if we make voting cheap and easy enough, we may actually be able to expand our democracy for more direct participation at all levels of government and reduce our reliance on the currently flawed implementation of our representative system. Why would we _not_ want this? The major problem, as I see it, is that states are not assembling expert panels to either purchase or work with other states to collaboratively build a good system directly. The government purchasing process certainly plays a factor here as well, and voting systems should be classified as critical infrastructure to allow a more rational approach to their procurement and/or development.
    - romwell 8y ago
      Objection: machines are only as indifferent as the people who make or control them. On top of that, they are opaque: it's very hard to verify that a machine does what it claims to do and nothing else. If you like machines, I present you a perfect machine: it's a clear box into which you throw paper ballots. It even counts the ballots: invariably, the result is "akira2501 won" - that is written on the outside; it works instantaneously. Any party that finds it suspicious can challenge and recount the paper ballots inside, in presence of independent observers. Since there's no better way to verify the work of a voting machine other than counting papers, this machine is as good as any machine you just described - and is definitely cheap. As for the cost - citation needed that machines actually provide any savings here.
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
The cynic in me says the goal of making software controlled elections is to make them easier to manipulate. Given how insecure all these systems always are, I can’t believe the goal is improved security.
TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago
> Are computerized elections understandable to laypersons? What do you mean "No"? The ubiquity of cell phones alone makes it self-evident. What YOU mean is not described by your assertion. > Worse; even if the election was tallied faithfully by a computerized system, a demagogic candidate can whip up fervour and call the election into question. That's not worse. That's part of the path to acceptance. > The paper ballot industry doesn't exist. Tell that to the Lottery machine makers and ticket manufacturers. It's a much stronger lobby than the "e-voting" block (if you can even cobble together such an alliance).
- nxc18 8y ago
  That's nonsense. Having a cellphone != understanding the technology and how it works. People don't get this stuff, and something as fundamental as your civil liberties should not be predicated on a black box no one person can understand. Re: ballot lobby: If there's any paper ballot lobby it's HP - when I've voted it was on ballots printed by a traditional office printer/Xerox. You don't need bizarre forms and crank levers to make a ballot, just a piece of paper and a marking device.
  - TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago
    > Having a cellphone != understanding the technology and how it works That wasn't the assertion made, nor related directly to the assertion I responded to. Having an understanding of "how it works" is a weak way of couching a ton of assumptions without explaining what you mean. There's no point in trying to argue about what's in your head. The statement I take issue with is: > Are computerized elections understandable to laypersons? Yes. How they work at a cursory level of practical operation and effect, is less sophisticated than any cellphone since flip-phones.
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  > What YOU mean is not described by your assertion. I've ran a paper election for a federal race here in Canada. Anyone with the ability to form a complete sentence could understand the security of our election. We're talking 2 standard deviations below median or worse here. The number of people that can understand the security of an electronic voting system is vanishingly small. The only security mechanisms that make the election trustable are the ones that are analogous to paper elections: On premise ballot counts by humans with public observers and physical artifacts retained by receiving officers and other poll workers. Come tell me how a machine with a touch screen is as understandable to someone that can't even explain how electricity works, much less hashing algorithms or compilers. > That's not worse. That's part of the path to acceptance. It is worse that a fair election is distrusted than it is for us to be unsure of the veracity of an election yet proceed as if it were honest despite misgivings. The subversion of truth is an anathema to our democratic process. Our social fabric depends on collective reasoning operating on shared understanding. Minds operate by cohering senses into understanding and understanding into action. Discordancy is doubt's inferior. Under stress it trades quiet, humble investigation for paroxysmal rage. > Tell that to the Lottery machine makers and ticket manufacturers. These are not the people that manufactured our paper ballots and they never were. > if you can even cobble together such an alliance A lobbyist requires incentive, not alliance.
caf 8y ago
Agreed. Computerising enterprises like this is a way to make them more efficient, but the inefficiency of paper ballot voting is a feature - it means that rigging the vote is equally inefficient.
specialist 8y ago
TLDR: Outsourcing our election administration is the second biggest threat to election integrity. The driver is profit motive. The push for touchscreens was because vendors wanted to juice their valuations (from 3x revenue for services to 7x for products). The push for postal balloting, internet voting, etc is because now vendors are back to pitching themselves as services companies, the difference this time being the are now charging per registered voter (vs per ballot counted). Reliability, security, appropriateness are not even part of the conversation.

Retric 8y ago

Graft, paper systems cost less to develop so it's harder to skim money from them. Electronic systems have the nominal advantage of handling disabilities and different languages more easily.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
skywhopper 8y ago
Systems can be easily developed for multi-lingual and disabled access that still produce a paper ballot that can be easily verified by the voter and counted by the election judges. There's no reason to electronicify the entire voting process to meet this (legitimate) need.

SublimeWarior 8y ago

It's cheaper.

skywhopper 8y ago
No, it's definitely not cheaper to buy, maintain, properly secure, audit, and continually replace inherently insecure electronic systems that are used two or three times a year at most. Elections are also not a place I personally think we should be cheaping out.
- jethro_tell 8y ago
  you forgot store. The state has to distribute, and collect voting machines 2-3 times a year and then what, they sit for 4 months? With armed guards and audit logs? Paper vote by mail, when the ballot is ready, the print and mail it to you, you have 3-4 weeks to fill it out and send it back. High voter turn out, easy access for people with difficult schedules, No need for transportation. keep the ballots until the election has been certified

deviationblue 8y ago

Because we can.

darpa_escapee 8y ago

> If there is one thing I fail to understand it is the impulse to electronic-ify our elections. The part that gets me is that there is no organic, grassroots push from the people who actually vote to implement electronic voting. Usually when someone, or many people, advocate for a cause, they have something to gain from it. Who is advocating for electronic voting and what do they stand to gain?

rayiner 8y ago
There’s always people complaining how backwards it is that we don’t have electronic voting, how it suppresses the youth vote, etc.
- jpfed 8y ago
  Interesting! I'd never heard the idea that the lack of electronic voting suppresses the youth vote. Do you have a link for someone arguing that position?
  - rayiner 8y ago
    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39955468 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39955468 > Online voting is a good way to engage with younger voters, busy workers, and even Estonians living abroad, Mr Koitmae says.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      There are several miles of difference between what they said and 'claiming that not having it suppresses the youth vote.'
pjc50 8y ago
Diebold salespeople.
squiggleblaz 8y ago
After it took a few weeks to find out the result of our last election there was a push to electronicify it. (I think some people were also upset that they had to stand in a queue and why can't we just do it from our phone?) The push was rejected since (a) the body responsible for running the elections believes it would be less secure and (b) it would still take two weeks to finalise since postal votes can come in up to two weeks after the election as long as they're postmarked before the election. But people are interested in fast results. And they're lazy.

wnevets 8y ago

Its almost if there is a group of folks who want elections to be easily hacked and manipulated.

micaksica 8y ago
IMO Occam's razor ends up here. Electronic voting systems do two things very well: obfuscate the system in a way that is relatively incomprehensible to a layman, and provide plausible deniability in the case of manipulation. Even if manipulation is discovered, you can chalk it up to a "bug" and re-run the manipulated election again. People are stupid, and most ordinary people only want to believe there's malice involved when they've run out of more pleasing cognitive options. I believe that if this site enumerated all the ways that you can maliciously use computerized vs. paper voting systems, we would show a hell of a lot more benefits to a manipulator than a voter.
- AFNobody 8y ago
  That is more or less correct. It is a way for state governments to enable "their side" to win easier. It will get worse as the demographic shift continues to strangle the GOP's support in swing states.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- Terr_ 8y ago
  > IMO Occam's razor ends up here. Electronic voting systems do two things very well: obfuscate the system in a way that is relatively incomprehensible to a layman, and provide plausible deniability in the case of manipulation. I think if you bring up Occam's Razor you also need: 1. Somebody gets to make money selling crap to the government 2. Somebody in government thinks it'll mean cost-savings
- otakucode 8y ago
  Occam's Razor is not a real logical principle. It would also lead to the conclusion that the reason not much of substance is ever done about computer security in general is because there is someone or some group who earnestly wants to see the rise of action-movie-style supervillains who can walk down the street and see society unwind into chaos around them as ATMs jackpot into the street, airplanes careen out of the sky, power stations blink and surge, all the doors to prison cells fling wide open, and modern cars lock the steering while maxing out the accelerator. Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence. And that's the case here. Electronic voting, if it were magically secure, would be cheaper and more accessible. And it would make some companies like Diebold a bunch of money. So of course it gets pursued.

jcranmer 8y ago

Because, to the popular perception, computers are infallible constructs and humans are fallible constructs. Imagine a human being counting thousands of paper ballots, what's the likelihood that the count will be off by one or two? It's also a case of different concerns cropping off: with paper ballots, there's a risk of miscounting, or disagreement on what constitutes a mark (remember the 2000 election, where the outcome of the election depends on the standards of how much of a mark you need for it to be indicated as a recordable vote). With computer ballots, the concern is over people hacking the tabulating machines or other computerized machinery. You're comparing vastly different risk profiles, and I suspect that most people don't have sufficiently-grounded knowledge to adequately compare them.

charleslmunger 8y ago
There's still the same dispute about miscalibrated touchscreens on electronic voting machines - the difference is that paper provides an audit trail, such that it can actually be disputed. https://www.npr.org/2016/10/26/499450796/some-machines-are-flipping-votes-but-that-doesnt-mean-theyre-rigged https://www.npr.org/2016/10/26/499450796/some-machines-are-f...
- s3m4j 8y ago
  Also the "attack surface" of paper is so large as to be humanly impractical. A computer system howevever complex always has an attack surface that is actually practical.

VikingCoder 8y ago

There is a belief that technology can solve any problem.

jlarocco 8y ago

> If there is one thing I fail to understand it is the impulse to electronic-ify our elections. Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but why would you expect anything different? As a layperson, why would I treat computerized voting any differently than online shopping or ordering an Uber or something like that? The software engineering community deserves more blame for this type of thing. It's unreasonable to expect laypeople to be experts on every technology they use, and this crappy voting system didn't exactly write itself.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
micaksica 8y ago
> This crappy voting system didn't write itself. One of the downsides of programming being easily accessible and easy to get a job in is that there is no required standards body to write code. There's no way to fix this. The best you can do is refuse to hire people that worked on these or similar systems, and I'm sure they will find jobs somewhere within the government-contractor software engineering space.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jlarocco 8y ago
  > One of the downsides of programming being easily accessible and easy to get a job in is that there is no required standards body to write code. There's no way to fix this. I guess that's what I was getting at. There never used to be a standards body for civil engineers, either, but after a while society got tired of bridges falling down and buildings collapsing. When will we get to that point with computer software? It's kind of funny (or sad) that barbers and hair stylists need a license, but software engineers don't.
  - squiggleblaz 8y ago
    It isn't sufficient that people are upset about problems caused by people in a profession/trade. Instead a major source of regulation is the professionals/tradies themselves. "I spent five years at university, so they should too." "I'm a member of the Association of Software Professionals, so they should be too". Since there's an unhealthy obsession with libertarian small government is software circles, it seems relatively unlikely this will happen any time soon. And we would rightly fear for our jobs if this happened, because I can't imagine the regulation applying to imported code.

ryanmarsh 8y ago

I'm immediately mistrustful of anyone who wants to electronic-ify our elections. No sensible person with even a cursory knowledge of how bad the state of computer security is could recommend this.

794CD01 8y ago
Why not? You just need to have a cursory knowledge of how little elections and security actually matter. We already use computers to manage our finances, social lives, and health. If they get hacked they get hacked. Life goes on.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jumelles 8y ago
  That's a frighteningly cavalier attitude about the integrity of elections.
  - 794CD01 8y ago
    I think it's a realistic one. Is the integrity of your votes more important to you than your bank account? Or your medical history? It's not to me.
    - yifanl 8y ago
      If your prevailing attitude is that all of society has already failed, then I suppose, no, the integrity elections are not important. But that's a disturbingly cynical outlook, and if the general attitude of the whole populace was as such, there must be something awful at play.

reaperducer 8y ago

If there is one thing I fail to understand it is the impulse to electronic-ify our elections. It goes back to the "hanging chad" election. The losing side decried paper ballots as unreliable in every form and fashion, and the only way to have a fair election was to make it all electronic. Thus, an industry was born.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cafard 8y ago
No, it goes back well before that, I think. Have a look at https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19/06#subj1 https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19/06#subj1
flukus 8y ago
> It goes back to the "hanging chad" election. Didn't this only happen because of an attempt to elctronic-ify the election and have machines tabulate the results?
- reaperducer 8y ago
  I’m not sure how it was handled in Florida (where the infamous chad incident happened), but in at least some other states it was more electromechanical than electronic. FWIW, the place I voted during that election was straight up mechanical.

akira2501 8y ago

> If there is one thing I fail to understand it is the impulse to electronic-ify our elections. Two words: "hanging chad."

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
romwell 8y ago
And hanging chads were a problem why exactly? I.e. why do we need to have machines do something badly that humans can do well?
- akira2501 8y ago
  I think history shows that we don't actually do it that well, I gave one example from recent history and I think a quick study will show that elections, in general, are easily undermined. We want machines because they are indifferent. We can develop machine based voting systems that have a voter-verifiable receipt. We can reduce the cost of our elections and reduce the number of trusted people that must be involved with them. It removes the most common sources of error from our current flawed implementation of our democratic ideals. Expanding upon this, if we make voting cheap and easy enough, we may actually be able to expand our democracy for more direct participation at all levels of government and reduce our reliance on the currently flawed implementation of our representative system. Why would we _not_ want this? The major problem, as I see it, is that states are not assembling expert panels to either purchase or work with other states to collaboratively build a good system directly. The government purchasing process certainly plays a factor here as well, and voting systems should be classified as critical infrastructure to allow a more rational approach to their procurement and/or development.
  - romwell 8y ago
    Objection: machines are only as indifferent as the people who make or control them. On top of that, they are opaque: it's very hard to verify that a machine does what it claims to do and nothing else. If you like machines, I present you a perfect machine: it's a clear box into which you throw paper ballots. It even counts the ballots: invariably, the result is "akira2501 won" - that is written on the outside; it works instantaneously. Any party that finds it suspicious can challenge and recount the paper ballots inside, in presence of independent observers. Since there's no better way to verify the work of a voting machine other than counting papers, this machine is as good as any machine you just described - and is definitely cheap. As for the cost - citation needed that machines actually provide any savings here.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago

The cynic in me says the goal of making software controlled elections is to make them easier to manipulate. Given how insecure all these systems always are, I can’t believe the goal is improved security.

TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago

> Are computerized elections understandable to laypersons? What do you mean "No"? The ubiquity of cell phones alone makes it self-evident. What YOU mean is not described by your assertion. > Worse; even if the election was tallied faithfully by a computerized system, a demagogic candidate can whip up fervour and call the election into question. That's not worse. That's part of the path to acceptance. > The paper ballot industry doesn't exist. Tell that to the Lottery machine makers and ticket manufacturers. It's a much stronger lobby than the "e-voting" block (if you can even cobble together such an alliance).

nxc18 8y ago
That's nonsense. Having a cellphone != understanding the technology and how it works. People don't get this stuff, and something as fundamental as your civil liberties should not be predicated on a black box no one person can understand. Re: ballot lobby: If there's any paper ballot lobby it's HP - when I've voted it was on ballots printed by a traditional office printer/Xerox. You don't need bizarre forms and crank levers to make a ballot, just a piece of paper and a marking device.
- TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago
  > Having a cellphone != understanding the technology and how it works That wasn't the assertion made, nor related directly to the assertion I responded to. Having an understanding of "how it works" is a weak way of couching a ton of assumptions without explaining what you mean. There's no point in trying to argue about what's in your head. The statement I take issue with is: > Are computerized elections understandable to laypersons? Yes. How they work at a cursory level of practical operation and effect, is less sophisticated than any cellphone since flip-phones.
3pt14159 8y ago
> What YOU mean is not described by your assertion. I've ran a paper election for a federal race here in Canada. Anyone with the ability to form a complete sentence could understand the security of our election. We're talking 2 standard deviations below median or worse here. The number of people that can understand the security of an electronic voting system is vanishingly small. The only security mechanisms that make the election trustable are the ones that are analogous to paper elections: On premise ballot counts by humans with public observers and physical artifacts retained by receiving officers and other poll workers. Come tell me how a machine with a touch screen is as understandable to someone that can't even explain how electricity works, much less hashing algorithms or compilers. > That's not worse. That's part of the path to acceptance. It is worse that a fair election is distrusted than it is for us to be unsure of the veracity of an election yet proceed as if it were honest despite misgivings. The subversion of truth is an anathema to our democratic process. Our social fabric depends on collective reasoning operating on shared understanding. Minds operate by cohering senses into understanding and understanding into action. Discordancy is doubt's inferior. Under stress it trades quiet, humble investigation for paroxysmal rage. > Tell that to the Lottery machine makers and ticket manufacturers. These are not the people that manufactured our paper ballots and they never were. > if you can even cobble together such an alliance A lobbyist requires incentive, not alliance.

caf 8y ago

Agreed. Computerising enterprises like this is a way to make them more efficient, but the inefficiency of paper ballot voting is a feature - it means that rigging the vote is equally inefficient.

specialist 8y ago

TLDR: Outsourcing our election administration is the second biggest threat to election integrity. The driver is profit motive. The push for touchscreens was because vendors wanted to juice their valuations (from 3x revenue for services to 7x for products). The push for postal balloting, internet voting, etc is because now vendors are back to pitching themselves as services companies, the difference this time being the are now charging per registered voter (vs per ballot counted). Reliability, security, appropriateness are not even part of the conversation.