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> In Germany we don't have any voting machines, never was even seriously discussed. It was quite seriously discussed and some were used during the 2005 electio

> In Germany we don't have any voting machines, never was even seriously discussed. It was quite seriously discussed and some were used during the 2005 election. You don't see any discussions about it today because the constitutional court put a stop to it. https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/germany-constitutional-court-decision-on-electronic-voting/ https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/germany-constit...

eru 6y ago
Interesting! Yeah, voting machines are pretty unnecessary (for most voting systems). There's something to be said in favour of a method that any village idiot can understand and observe with their own eyes. Paper delivers that.
- pgeorgi 6y ago
  > There's something to be said in favour of a method that any village idiot can understand and observe with their own eyes. For example that it's a precondition to fair and open elections? :-)
  - eru 6y ago
    I don't think so. If you have open source voting machines that can be and are audited, that's probably more than good enough for fair and open elections. Lowering the complexity and thus barrier to understanding just builds an extra buffer of transparency into the system. It's a very-nice-to-have.
    - Certhas 6y ago
      In a technical sense, yes. But there is definitely social value in having a system that is in principle auditable by (almost) everyone. An open source voting machine would still be only auditable by the small minority of people who can read code.
      - eru 6y ago
        Yes, exactly my point. You don't want to just have free and fair elections, you want to also convey the clear and unfakeable impression that your elections are free and fair. There's a lot of signalling involved.
    - pgeorgi 6y ago
      > If you have open source voting machines that can be and are audited, It's extremely hard to verify that whatever code you audited is the one used in the actual devices. No such problem with pen and paper
      - eru 6y ago
        Pen and paper gives you both a safety margin (or transparency margin). And it allows you to signal in a hard to fake way that your elections are free and fair and hard to temper with. (Fair as far as the voting system goes. Eg first-past-the-post on paper will still be a less fair voting system than Germany's weird proportional hybrid or my favourite, range voting. Or this fascinating gem: https://rangevoting.org/PropRep.html https://rangevoting.org/PropRep.html)

eru 6y ago

Interesting! Yeah, voting machines are pretty unnecessary (for most voting systems). There's something to be said in favour of a method that any village idiot can understand and observe with their own eyes. Paper delivers that.

pgeorgi 6y ago
> There's something to be said in favour of a method that any village idiot can understand and observe with their own eyes. For example that it's a precondition to fair and open elections? :-)
- eru 6y ago
  I don't think so. If you have open source voting machines that can be and are audited, that's probably more than good enough for fair and open elections. Lowering the complexity and thus barrier to understanding just builds an extra buffer of transparency into the system. It's a very-nice-to-have.
  - Certhas 6y ago
    In a technical sense, yes. But there is definitely social value in having a system that is in principle auditable by (almost) everyone. An open source voting machine would still be only auditable by the small minority of people who can read code.
    - eru 6y ago
      Yes, exactly my point. You don't want to just have free and fair elections, you want to also convey the clear and unfakeable impression that your elections are free and fair. There's a lot of signalling involved.
  - pgeorgi 6y ago
    > If you have open source voting machines that can be and are audited, It's extremely hard to verify that whatever code you audited is the one used in the actual devices. No such problem with pen and paper
    - eru 6y ago
      Pen and paper gives you both a safety margin (or transparency margin). And it allows you to signal in a hard to fake way that your elections are free and fair and hard to temper with. (Fair as far as the voting system goes. Eg first-past-the-post on paper will still be a less fair voting system than Germany's weird proportional hybrid or my favourite, range voting. Or this fascinating gem: https://rangevoting.org/PropRep.html https://rangevoting.org/PropRep.html)