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Paper. It works. There is a _physical_ backup for recounts. It's verifiable. Its trustworthy, and it's secret. If you want results faster. Volunteer at the vo

Paper. It works. There is a _physical_ backup for recounts. It's verifiable. Its trustworthy, and it's secret. If you want results faster. Volunteer at the voting place. If you don't trust a voting place. Send an observer. All of this can and should happen in secret in plain sight. I know this is hard for us nerds to admit, but there are systems that do not need to be, nor should be computerized.

jonknee 15y ago
> There is a _physical_ backup for recounts. It's verifiable. Its trustworthy, and it's secret. If you want results faster. Volunteer at the voting place. If you don't trust a voting place. Send an observer. All of this can and should happen in secret in plain sight. I know this is hard for us nerds to admit, but there are systems that do not need to be, nor should be computerized. Sort of. But a poll worker could toss out ballots and you'd have no idea. A voter could toss in multiple (stolen) ballots and no one could stop it. Etc etc. There are serious problems with electronic voting, but paper ballots aren't immune to problems. Physical backups mean shit when the source is fraudulent.
- aw3c2 15y ago
  No idea where you live but in Germany you can be a volunteer if you desire to monitor the process. Also you cannot put in multiple ballots. Each voter is checked off a list, a mismatch between "people who came to vote" and "ballots in the box" would be easy to spot.
  - jonknee 15y ago
    You can volunteer here in the US too, but what if the volunteer commits fraud? If there's a mismatch, what would you do? It's a secret ballot so you can't throw out the extra votes, you'd have to throw out all the votes in that ballot box.
- dagw 15y ago
  Every time I've voted (in Sweden), at least two observers check that the right number of ballot papers have been received and then they place the ballot papers in the sealed ballot box in full view of both the voter and the observers. It would be basically impossible (barring a conspiracy between the poll workers and observers) to either toss out a ballot or chuck in an extra ballot without being spotted.
- vetler 15y ago
  Ballot boxes can also be lost or forgotten ... this actually happens. Paper ballots are also usually scanned, and not counted manually, which raises the question if the scanners can be hacked. And where does the scanned result go? Disregarding electronic voting, there is already some sort of electronic system in place that deals with scanning the ballots and collecting the results, but all the focus seems to be on hacking electronic voting, not the existing voting infrastructure.

jonknee 15y ago

> There is a _physical_ backup for recounts. It's verifiable. Its trustworthy, and it's secret. If you want results faster. Volunteer at the voting place. If you don't trust a voting place. Send an observer. All of this can and should happen in secret in plain sight. I know this is hard for us nerds to admit, but there are systems that do not need to be, nor should be computerized. Sort of. But a poll worker could toss out ballots and you'd have no idea. A voter could toss in multiple (stolen) ballots and no one could stop it. Etc etc. There are serious problems with electronic voting, but paper ballots aren't immune to problems. Physical backups mean shit when the source is fraudulent.

aw3c2 15y ago
No idea where you live but in Germany you can be a volunteer if you desire to monitor the process. Also you cannot put in multiple ballots. Each voter is checked off a list, a mismatch between "people who came to vote" and "ballots in the box" would be easy to spot.
- jonknee 15y ago
  You can volunteer here in the US too, but what if the volunteer commits fraud? If there's a mismatch, what would you do? It's a secret ballot so you can't throw out the extra votes, you'd have to throw out all the votes in that ballot box.
dagw 15y ago
Every time I've voted (in Sweden), at least two observers check that the right number of ballot papers have been received and then they place the ballot papers in the sealed ballot box in full view of both the voter and the observers. It would be basically impossible (barring a conspiracy between the poll workers and observers) to either toss out a ballot or chuck in an extra ballot without being spotted.
vetler 15y ago
Ballot boxes can also be lost or forgotten ... this actually happens. Paper ballots are also usually scanned, and not counted manually, which raises the question if the scanners can be hacked. And where does the scanned result go? Disregarding electronic voting, there is already some sort of electronic system in place that deals with scanning the ballots and collecting the results, but all the focus seems to be on hacking electronic voting, not the existing voting infrastructure.