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For a community (HN) so focused on technology and the future, I'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology such as paper ballots. Does the future of

For a community (HN) so focused on technology and the future, I'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology such as paper ballots. Does the future of voting not belong to online remote voting, like almost everything else? You can even buy a house from your phone now. In the future, we will know the results of the election as soon as the online polls close. The future is paperless.

enraged_camel 6y ago
No it isn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
failrate 6y ago
I disagree with your conclusion. Voting does not need to be made more convenient beyond preventing obvious voter suppression and making election day a federal and/or state holiday. Additionally, a digital compromise of a fully digital system could compromise all votes. If the system has a nondigital artifact it can reference as a source of truth, then it can be validated, verified, and restored to truth.
- loonster 6y ago
  A federal holiday would be fantastic. The main benefit is not getting more people to vote, but getting more people to watch the polls & counting. The more opportunity that people have to watch, the more faith people will have in the system.
lovecg 6y ago
With the election process, optics is as important as the actual security. It has to seem simple and secure for most people to accept the results easily. We saw recently that even that does not always work but I have hope it was an aberration. Can you imagine the fallout if everything was done digitally instead, considering the average person’s understanding of crypto and “hackers”?
reaperducer 6y ago
I'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology such as paper ballots. "Antiquated" is a loaded word that smacks of ageism. Restaurants are antiquated, too. Do you never go out to eat? Does the future of voting not belong to online remote voting, like almost everything else? Are you trying to say that every other country votes paperless? Because that's simply not true. You can even buy a house from your phone now You have obviously never bought a house, and certainly not one from your phone. Just because there's an ad on YouTube doesn't make it true. In the future, we will know the results of the election as soon as the online polls close. Why is that necessary? What benefit does it provide? The future is paperless. People have been saying that for over a hundred years. Yet, here we are, still with a durable, recordable medium that does things that paperless methods can't.
- astrange 6y ago
  > Restaurants are antiquated, too. The modern restaurants is kind of recent, right? It was invented around the same time as the bicycle.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> For a community (HN) so focused on technology and the future, I'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology such as paper ballots. I'm not. No one understands as well as technologists how often “novel technology” represents a regression from the tried and true, and how much the cry of “new” is used to sell defective crap. > You can even buy a house from your phone now. This is technically partially true in that a lot (not all) home purchase and finance paperwork can be done via electronically signed documents, and if you have a tolerance for extremely bad UI you can sign those on a phone. Typically, you’ll still need some wet signatures (notarized even) at the end of the process. But that’s, even if it was completely accurate, a different problem domain than voting. (Both have concerns for assurance, but only one also has nonattribution as a critical goal.)
Kim_Bruning 6y ago
Once you know how the sausage is made, sometimes you don't want to eat sausages. I actually do think that digital voting is theoretically possible, if done cautiously and in an open source manner. (it needs to be fully open source to be verifiable at all) A remaining problem is that -in an election system- every voter needs to be able to check and perceive that the election was honest. That could still be a bit tricky in a society where not everyone is a programmer.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  One big barrier to online voting is that you don't want people to be able to be forced to show their votes which makes any kind of verification immensely difficult (you have to accomodate people needing to show a fake verification) because otherwise you leave things open to voter intimidation and vote buying. Another is that by going online you instantly open the attack surface up massively. Currently to steal an election you have to physically move a large number of people to a broad set of voting sites or send in a lot of forged mail votes. Those both require physically doing something in the US where an online system lets anyone in the world potentiall attack the system.
throwawayboise 6y ago
Pretty much every noted cybersecurity expert disagrees.

enraged_camel 6y ago

No it isn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs

failrate 6y ago

I disagree with your conclusion. Voting does not need to be made more convenient beyond preventing obvious voter suppression and making election day a federal and/or state holiday. Additionally, a digital compromise of a fully digital system could compromise all votes. If the system has a nondigital artifact it can reference as a source of truth, then it can be validated, verified, and restored to truth.

loonster 6y ago
A federal holiday would be fantastic. The main benefit is not getting more people to vote, but getting more people to watch the polls & counting. The more opportunity that people have to watch, the more faith people will have in the system.

lovecg 6y ago

With the election process, optics is as important as the actual security. It has to seem simple and secure for most people to accept the results easily. We saw recently that even that does not always work but I have hope it was an aberration. Can you imagine the fallout if everything was done digitally instead, considering the average person’s understanding of crypto and “hackers”?

reaperducer 6y ago

I'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology such as paper ballots. "Antiquated" is a loaded word that smacks of ageism. Restaurants are antiquated, too. Do you never go out to eat? Does the future of voting not belong to online remote voting, like almost everything else? Are you trying to say that every other country votes paperless? Because that's simply not true. You can even buy a house from your phone now You have obviously never bought a house, and certainly not one from your phone. Just because there's an ad on YouTube doesn't make it true. In the future, we will know the results of the election as soon as the online polls close. Why is that necessary? What benefit does it provide? The future is paperless. People have been saying that for over a hundred years. Yet, here we are, still with a durable, recordable medium that does things that paperless methods can't.

astrange 6y ago
> Restaurants are antiquated, too. The modern restaurants is kind of recent, right? It was invented around the same time as the bicycle.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> For a community (HN) so focused on technology and the future, I'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology such as paper ballots. I'm not. No one understands as well as technologists how often “novel technology” represents a regression from the tried and true, and how much the cry of “new” is used to sell defective crap. > You can even buy a house from your phone now. This is technically partially true in that a lot (not all) home purchase and finance paperwork can be done via electronically signed documents, and if you have a tolerance for extremely bad UI you can sign those on a phone. Typically, you’ll still need some wet signatures (notarized even) at the end of the process. But that’s, even if it was completely accurate, a different problem domain than voting. (Both have concerns for assurance, but only one also has nonattribution as a critical goal.)

Kim_Bruning 6y ago

Once you know how the sausage is made, sometimes you don't want to eat sausages. I actually do think that digital voting is theoretically possible, if done cautiously and in an open source manner. (it needs to be fully open source to be verifiable at all) A remaining problem is that -in an election system- every voter needs to be able to check and perceive that the election was honest. That could still be a bit tricky in a society where not everyone is a programmer.

rtkwe 6y ago
One big barrier to online voting is that you don't want people to be able to be forced to show their votes which makes any kind of verification immensely difficult (you have to accomodate people needing to show a fake verification) because otherwise you leave things open to voter intimidation and vote buying. Another is that by going online you instantly open the attack surface up massively. Currently to steal an election you have to physically move a large number of people to a broad set of voting sites or send in a lot of forged mail votes. Those both require physically doing something in the US where an online system lets anyone in the world potentiall attack the system.

throwawayboise 6y ago

Pretty much every noted cybersecurity expert disagrees.