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As far as I’ve seen, paper ballots are the most secure, affordable, and understandable method of voting to embrace. Granted, we’re on HN so we all know not to t

As far as I’ve seen, paper ballots are the most secure, affordable, and understandable method of voting to embrace. Granted, we’re on HN so we all know not to trust technology. Does anyone have a counterargument to paper ballots? I know that there were some murmurings of fraud in the paper ballots this election but from what I’ve seen, paper ballots are head and shoulders above (hackable) electronic systems.

tzs 6y ago
We can get the best of both worlds: paper ballots that can be counted with inexpensive, already widely in use, optical scan systems. That gives you fast vote counting, with the ability to do a hand recount if needed. If you are clever about how you make the ballots, you can even get end to end verifiability, and you can publish the ballots so the anyone who wants can verify that the count was done correctly. See [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity
Mountain_Skies 6y ago
The main arguments against paper ballots are that they allow for marks that make the intent of the voter unclear and that they take more time and effort to tabulate. The latter point shouldn't be an issue due to the importance of voting to Democracy. Allocate the money required for counting and simply deal with the time it takes to tabulate, which isn't all that long. The former could be addressed by having ballot MARKING machines instead of voting machines. Some jurisdictions have already moved in this direction. With a ballot marking machine, you can use a device such as a touchscreen that then prints out a ballot with your selections on it. You verify the correctness of your votes on the ballot. If they are not correct, it is a spoiled ballot that you witness being destroyed before using the ballot marking machine again. If the ballot is correct, you turn it in just as you would a completed human marked ballot. Given the standardized printing of the ballots by the ballot marking machine, they should also be machine readable without bar codes or any other non human readable form. If there is a question about the accuracy of the machine count, a human count can be used to verify correctness. The real gain here is the elimination of ambiguity in voter intent and the elimination of ballots that only exist inside of a computer.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Such a ballot marking machine sounds interesting, but I see no reason for it to be a digital device. You could accomplish the same with a glorified spring loaded hole punching machine. Or purely electromechanical, using simple button activated circuits to fire hole punching solenoids.

tzs 6y ago

We can get the best of both worlds: paper ballots that can be counted with inexpensive, already widely in use, optical scan systems. That gives you fast vote counting, with the ability to do a hand recount if needed. If you are clever about how you make the ballots, you can even get end to end verifiability, and you can publish the ballots so the anyone who wants can verify that the count was done correctly. See [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity

Mountain_Skies 6y ago

The main arguments against paper ballots are that they allow for marks that make the intent of the voter unclear and that they take more time and effort to tabulate. The latter point shouldn't be an issue due to the importance of voting to Democracy. Allocate the money required for counting and simply deal with the time it takes to tabulate, which isn't all that long. The former could be addressed by having ballot MARKING machines instead of voting machines. Some jurisdictions have already moved in this direction. With a ballot marking machine, you can use a device such as a touchscreen that then prints out a ballot with your selections on it. You verify the correctness of your votes on the ballot. If they are not correct, it is a spoiled ballot that you witness being destroyed before using the ballot marking machine again. If the ballot is correct, you turn it in just as you would a completed human marked ballot. Given the standardized printing of the ballots by the ballot marking machine, they should also be machine readable without bar codes or any other non human readable form. If there is a question about the accuracy of the machine count, a human count can be used to verify correctness. The real gain here is the elimination of ambiguity in voter intent and the elimination of ballots that only exist inside of a computer.

bigbubba 6y ago
Such a ballot marking machine sounds interesting, but I see no reason for it to be a digital device. You could accomplish the same with a glorified spring loaded hole punching machine. Or purely electromechanical, using simple button activated circuits to fire hole punching solenoids.