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Yep, I changed my view on electronic voting for this reason. Even if we create a perfect, provable, electronic voting system, a very small percentage of the pu

Yep, I changed my view on electronic voting for this reason. Even if we create a perfect, provable, electronic voting system, a very small percentage of the public is going to be able to understand the proof and even fewer will be able to verify for themselves. Most people will have to rely on experts to tell them if it is secure or not. For voting, we need most people to be able to both understand why it is secure and be able to verify for themselves that it is. Paper ballots provide that, electronic voting doesn’t.

mjevans 6y ago
Electronic fast counting on deposit for in-person voting? Sure, but I like mail in a lot better. I am OK with electronic printing of human legible votes; if you want to get fancy. (Fill the bubbles in fully)
hunter2_ 6y ago
There's always the issue of not being able to verify for oneself. We tend to trust video, but what if it's video of something tainted (or a straight up deepfake)? If poll workers hand off ballots to separate counters, but publicly hired counters are diverted and provided with plausible decoys while poll workers actually hand off to secret actors who just capture and release video of the public counters... back to the Swiss cheese we go.
- smichel17 6y ago
  This is extremely difficult to pull off at scale without being caught.
  - iso1210 6y ago
    This is the key. Hacking a traditional X-in-the-box and count-in-public ballot at scale is impossible. Yes I could go to a neighbouring ward and claim I'm Joe Bloggs and vote as him. That will work until he turns up later and they tell him he's already voted. Do that once or twice and it may avoid press coverage. Do it a lot and it's going to get coverage.
fit2rule 6y ago
If you cannot trust a computer to take your vote, why would you trust it to keep your life safe and the train on the rails, or the plane in the air? This distrust of voting machines is only happening because the voting machines are NOT trust-worthy. If we were to build trustworthy voting machines, they'd probably be best modelled on other safety-critical systems.

mjevans 6y ago

Electronic fast counting on deposit for in-person voting? Sure, but I like mail in a lot better. I am OK with electronic printing of human legible votes; if you want to get fancy. (Fill the bubbles in fully)

hunter2_ 6y ago

There's always the issue of not being able to verify for oneself. We tend to trust video, but what if it's video of something tainted (or a straight up deepfake)? If poll workers hand off ballots to separate counters, but publicly hired counters are diverted and provided with plausible decoys while poll workers actually hand off to secret actors who just capture and release video of the public counters... back to the Swiss cheese we go.

smichel17 6y ago
This is extremely difficult to pull off at scale without being caught.
- iso1210 6y ago
  This is the key. Hacking a traditional X-in-the-box and count-in-public ballot at scale is impossible. Yes I could go to a neighbouring ward and claim I'm Joe Bloggs and vote as him. That will work until he turns up later and they tell him he's already voted. Do that once or twice and it may avoid press coverage. Do it a lot and it's going to get coverage.

fit2rule 6y ago

If you cannot trust a computer to take your vote, why would you trust it to keep your life safe and the train on the rails, or the plane in the air? This distrust of voting machines is only happening because the voting machines are NOT trust-worthy. If we were to build trustworthy voting machines, they'd probably be best modelled on other safety-critical systems.