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The reason to bring up paper is that the cost of election fraud is much higher than any "efficiency" gains to be had by digitising the process. This is (often)

The reason to bring up paper is that the cost of election fraud is much higher than any "efficiency" gains to be had by digitising the process. This is (often) not true for word processors.

darawk 7y ago
You don't digitize elections for efficiency. You do it for security. The idea that paper ballots are a secure form of voting is ridiculous. The only reason people think that they're secure is that they're so profoundly insecure that we have no way of auditing them effectively and so never uncover anything that may be happening to them. Not to mention the fact that access and efficiency are in fact forms of election manipulation. The inefficiency of the process keeps people from voting who otherwise would. That has political consequences and is absolutely used as a means to cause outcomes that otherwise wouldn't happen.
- duffmancd 7y ago
  Affecting a(n electorally) significant number of paper votes requires the compromise of more people and leaves more evidence than for electronic votes. (In general, for the quality of voting generally seen in first world countries) Can you do better in theory, yes. Have we seen any evidence that various US election bodies can do better through using electronic voting, no. The exact opposite in fact. It's similar to passwords: writing down all your passwords in a notebook and keeping it in your desk draw is a bad idea. But it's usually significantly harder to break into millions of desk draws than to break any given site's security.
  - darawk 7y ago
    > Affecting a(n electorally) significant number of paper votes requires the compromise of more people and leaves more evidence than for electronic votes. (In general, for the quality of voting generally seen in first world countries) If we didn't have an electoral college, that might be true. But the reality is that you don't need to compromise that many people in that many places to have a decent probability of tipping a close election one way or the other. > Can you do better in theory, yes. Have we seen any evidence that various US election bodies can do better through using electronic voting, no. The exact opposite in fact. Which is exactly why DARPA is researching the problem.
- bbarnett 7y ago
  Uh, no. Computing is the absolute opposite of security. Doubly so for anything networked. If you want to take anything secure, and make it unsecure, simply transform it from paper, and put it on a computer. Bam! Paper is millions of times more secure than a computer. No piece of software is ever, ever secure. There are always, literally always thousands and thousands of hardware, and software vulnerabilities just waiting to be exploited. Compared to any form of computerized voting, ballots are insanely secure. But what you're missing here is process. Paper voting has been around for a very, very long time. Process is well established, very simple to do, but it seems the US is always changing how to count, how to tally, and more. But, to pause and take a step back ... I'm not sure how you think adding a computer to the mix, improves auditing. The entire point of a voting system, is that your vote remains anonymous. Therefore, the device or method that records your vote? Must not ever ever be assigned to you. And this also includes any form of anonymization. This has also been handled for a very, very long time. Again, by process. I wonder, how many years have you (or others advocating a computer inserted into the voting process), studied in depth the chain of trust used with paper ballots? Or precisely how ballots are counted? Or, even months? Weeks? All I know is that when I researched paper ballots here in Canada, every aspect I could think of was covered. And that's what you'd expect, from a voting process that evolved over literally hundreds of years, with deep thought put into each voting cycle.
  - darawk 7y ago
    > If you want to take anything secure, and make it unsecure, simply transform it from paper, and put it on a computer. Bam! In what way, exactly, do you think paper voting is 'secure'? Do you think pieces of paper cannot be forged? Do you think it's difficult to swap out election boxes or to alter ballots? > But, to pause and take a step back ... I'm not sure how you think adding a computer to the mix, improves auditing. The entire point of a voting system, is that your vote remains anonymous. Therefore, the device or method that records your vote? Must not ever ever be assigned to you. And this also includes any form of anonymization. Sure, if you think about it for only about 1 second, the system you might come up with sucks. However, people have thought about it for more than 1 second on occasion, and come up with some pretty good designs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy...

The reason to bring up paper is that the cost of election fraud is much higher than any "efficiency" gains to be had by digitising the process. This is (often) not true for word processors.

darawk 7y ago

You don't digitize elections for efficiency. You do it for security. The idea that paper ballots are a secure form of voting is ridiculous. The only reason people think that they're secure is that they're so profoundly insecure that we have no way of auditing them effectively and so never uncover anything that may be happening to them. Not to mention the fact that access and efficiency are in fact forms of election manipulation. The inefficiency of the process keeps people from voting who otherwise would. That has political consequences and is absolutely used as a means to cause outcomes that otherwise wouldn't happen.

duffmancd 7y ago
Affecting a(n electorally) significant number of paper votes requires the compromise of more people and leaves more evidence than for electronic votes. (In general, for the quality of voting generally seen in first world countries) Can you do better in theory, yes. Have we seen any evidence that various US election bodies can do better through using electronic voting, no. The exact opposite in fact. It's similar to passwords: writing down all your passwords in a notebook and keeping it in your desk draw is a bad idea. But it's usually significantly harder to break into millions of desk draws than to break any given site's security.
- darawk 7y ago
  > Affecting a(n electorally) significant number of paper votes requires the compromise of more people and leaves more evidence than for electronic votes. (In general, for the quality of voting generally seen in first world countries) If we didn't have an electoral college, that might be true. But the reality is that you don't need to compromise that many people in that many places to have a decent probability of tipping a close election one way or the other. > Can you do better in theory, yes. Have we seen any evidence that various US election bodies can do better through using electronic voting, no. The exact opposite in fact. Which is exactly why DARPA is researching the problem.
bbarnett 7y ago
Uh, no. Computing is the absolute opposite of security. Doubly so for anything networked. If you want to take anything secure, and make it unsecure, simply transform it from paper, and put it on a computer. Bam! Paper is millions of times more secure than a computer. No piece of software is ever, ever secure. There are always, literally always thousands and thousands of hardware, and software vulnerabilities just waiting to be exploited. Compared to any form of computerized voting, ballots are insanely secure. But what you're missing here is process. Paper voting has been around for a very, very long time. Process is well established, very simple to do, but it seems the US is always changing how to count, how to tally, and more. But, to pause and take a step back ... I'm not sure how you think adding a computer to the mix, improves auditing. The entire point of a voting system, is that your vote remains anonymous. Therefore, the device or method that records your vote? Must not ever ever be assigned to you. And this also includes any form of anonymization. This has also been handled for a very, very long time. Again, by process. I wonder, how many years have you (or others advocating a computer inserted into the voting process), studied in depth the chain of trust used with paper ballots? Or precisely how ballots are counted? Or, even months? Weeks? All I know is that when I researched paper ballots here in Canada, every aspect I could think of was covered. And that's what you'd expect, from a voting process that evolved over literally hundreds of years, with deep thought put into each voting cycle.
- darawk 7y ago
  > If you want to take anything secure, and make it unsecure, simply transform it from paper, and put it on a computer. Bam! In what way, exactly, do you think paper voting is 'secure'? Do you think pieces of paper cannot be forged? Do you think it's difficult to swap out election boxes or to alter ballots? > But, to pause and take a step back ... I'm not sure how you think adding a computer to the mix, improves auditing. The entire point of a voting system, is that your vote remains anonymous. Therefore, the device or method that records your vote? Must not ever ever be assigned to you. And this also includes any form of anonymization. Sure, if you think about it for only about 1 second, the system you might come up with sucks. However, people have thought about it for more than 1 second on occasion, and come up with some pretty good designs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy...