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Generally a lot of voting security experts advocate for paper ballots with electronic counting. It is very robust, efficient, has great fallback, and lots of sy

Generally a lot of voting security experts advocate for paper ballots with electronic counting. It is very robust, efficient, has great fallback, and lots of systems available to keep secure.

Lukineus 4y ago
The issue is verification - how do you verify the elctronic count was accurate? And if you're going to manually count it to verify the electronic count, then why have the electronic count in the first place?
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Because the results can be statistically verified with sampling rather than a full manual recount?
- uoaei 4y ago
  A small, statistically representative sample of the paper ballots are counted by hand and compared against the electronic count. If discrepancy arises, a more thorough audit is performed.
  - bogomipz 4y ago
    Interesting, makes sense. Is this actually the recommended resolution process by the vendors as well or is this something that needs to be approved and adopted by each voting precinct?
- PeterisP 4y ago
  Do a manual count for a random sample plus all tight races and in case of any suspicions or challenges.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  Spot checks are good enough in such a case; if you manually count 1% of the votes and the margin of error is negligible, the electronic count is sound. If there's too many errors / differences, stop using the electronic counting and just count by hand. I mean it's not exactly rocket science.
judge2020 4y ago
This is what a lot of states get wrong, with the voting machine itself being the gateway to entering your vote and having it read. For the machines in my Georgia county, it prints a paper ballot that you drop it into a counting/scanner machine, but the issue is that the only thing on the paper is a QR code that is likely encrypted (nothing readable when scanned with a standard QR reader), so there really isn't a way to verify that the paper you got actually matched what you entered into the ballot machine. The ideal system is: ballot machine entry -> prints paper ballot scantron style, so the only information the scanner will see is what you've verified is correct -> scanner reads it and enters it into their database while also saving the paper.
- eqtn 4y ago
  This is how it works in India: Once we click the button for a candidate, There will be light highlighting the selection on the voting machine. A printer that is connected to the voting machine prints the voted candidate symbol (and name?) and shows us the printed paper through a glass for a few seconds for verification and then drops it in. Later during the counting procedure, random ballots are counted for both. If someone arises some issues about the voting, those are then counted using printed ballot papers.
  - arlort 4y ago
    India is the only country doing electronic voting well that I'm aware of Almost certainly the only one doing it well and at scale
rapind 4y ago
I think the problem is who builds it. I wouldn’t trust election software that wasn’t open source with a lot of eyeballs on it. Diebold wasn’t exactly a shining example to set. Preferably a non profit organization backing it and then having it adopted as a standard. I just don’t see that happening in the US where voter obstruction is part of at least one party’s strategy.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  Open source doesn’t actually matter here. A closed source electronic system should work just as well. Why? The way it should work is the machine should just print out a scantron AND a human legible copy (probably with a bar code linking the two). The person submits both by hand. You get early results by counting the scantron. Before certification, there is a statistically significant manual counting of the human legible ballots. For tighter races you recount all. The linked barcode lets you also statistically cross-validate in case there was a discrepancy between the machine readable copy printed and the hand ballot (you sample randomly). Open source means absolutely 0 here. There are too many vectors of attack (eg physically compromising a machine, chain of custody, malware etc). Better to assume the machine is compromised and build a system that doesn’t care.
  - rapind 4y ago
    Back in 2004, “Official federal voting system standards require audit logs to record all normal and abnormal events that occur on the system.” And yet at that time Diebold had a system that did NOT do that deployed all across the US. Someone was deleting votes, and it wasn’t being logged. Here’s lawmakers saying “should” do something, and an opaque reality where that didn’t happen. It was also running windows… This is an attack vector. I prefer transparency. Open source would help.
    - rat9988 4y ago
      > It was also running windows… Nothing wrong with this choice. The rest of your point still stands though.
beprogrammed 4y ago
I envision a system where after I vote I rip off the top of the card and am able to use that hash like token to later verify that my vote was counted correctly
- orangepanda 4y ago
  I envision the same system to later verify the votes I bought
  - sircastor 4y ago
    This is one of the reasons it’s not legal in many places to take a picture of a filled out ballot.
- arlort 4y ago
  That's only viable in countries/situations where secret ballots are not a strict requirement and vote buying is not perceived to be a problem With paper ballots if you want to be sure that your vote was counted correctly you generally can go and see the counting process, as a bonus like that you help ensure that every vote is counted correctly
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - IshKebab 4y ago
    No, you could do it in a way where the voter can verify their vote was recorded correctly but can't prove it to anyone else. Trivial method: require the voter to assign random numbers to each candidate. They remember the number of the candidate they chose. The voting system later says "you voted for 6".
    - arlort 4y ago
      And how do you avoid a scenario in which you assign 6 to candidate X but the machine secretly assigns 6 to candidate Y?

Generally a lot of voting security experts advocate for paper ballots with electronic counting. It is very robust, efficient, has great fallback, and lots of systems available to keep secure.

Lukineus 4y ago

The issue is verification - how do you verify the elctronic count was accurate? And if you're going to manually count it to verify the electronic count, then why have the electronic count in the first place?

germinalphrase 4y ago
Because the results can be statistically verified with sampling rather than a full manual recount?
uoaei 4y ago
A small, statistically representative sample of the paper ballots are counted by hand and compared against the electronic count. If discrepancy arises, a more thorough audit is performed.
- bogomipz 4y ago
  Interesting, makes sense. Is this actually the recommended resolution process by the vendors as well or is this something that needs to be approved and adopted by each voting precinct?
PeterisP 4y ago
Do a manual count for a random sample plus all tight races and in case of any suspicions or challenges.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Spot checks are good enough in such a case; if you manually count 1% of the votes and the margin of error is negligible, the electronic count is sound. If there's too many errors / differences, stop using the electronic counting and just count by hand. I mean it's not exactly rocket science.

judge2020 4y ago

This is what a lot of states get wrong, with the voting machine itself being the gateway to entering your vote and having it read. For the machines in my Georgia county, it prints a paper ballot that you drop it into a counting/scanner machine, but the issue is that the only thing on the paper is a QR code that is likely encrypted (nothing readable when scanned with a standard QR reader), so there really isn't a way to verify that the paper you got actually matched what you entered into the ballot machine. The ideal system is: ballot machine entry -> prints paper ballot scantron style, so the only information the scanner will see is what you've verified is correct -> scanner reads it and enters it into their database while also saving the paper.

eqtn 4y ago
This is how it works in India: Once we click the button for a candidate, There will be light highlighting the selection on the voting machine. A printer that is connected to the voting machine prints the voted candidate symbol (and name?) and shows us the printed paper through a glass for a few seconds for verification and then drops it in. Later during the counting procedure, random ballots are counted for both. If someone arises some issues about the voting, those are then counted using printed ballot papers.
- arlort 4y ago
  India is the only country doing electronic voting well that I'm aware of Almost certainly the only one doing it well and at scale

rapind 4y ago

I think the problem is who builds it. I wouldn’t trust election software that wasn’t open source with a lot of eyeballs on it. Diebold wasn’t exactly a shining example to set. Preferably a non profit organization backing it and then having it adopted as a standard. I just don’t see that happening in the US where voter obstruction is part of at least one party’s strategy.

vlovich123 4y ago
Open source doesn’t actually matter here. A closed source electronic system should work just as well. Why? The way it should work is the machine should just print out a scantron AND a human legible copy (probably with a bar code linking the two). The person submits both by hand. You get early results by counting the scantron. Before certification, there is a statistically significant manual counting of the human legible ballots. For tighter races you recount all. The linked barcode lets you also statistically cross-validate in case there was a discrepancy between the machine readable copy printed and the hand ballot (you sample randomly). Open source means absolutely 0 here. There are too many vectors of attack (eg physically compromising a machine, chain of custody, malware etc). Better to assume the machine is compromised and build a system that doesn’t care.
- rapind 4y ago
  Back in 2004, “Official federal voting system standards require audit logs to record all normal and abnormal events that occur on the system.” And yet at that time Diebold had a system that did NOT do that deployed all across the US. Someone was deleting votes, and it wasn’t being logged. Here’s lawmakers saying “should” do something, and an opaque reality where that didn’t happen. It was also running windows… This is an attack vector. I prefer transparency. Open source would help.
  - rat9988 4y ago
    > It was also running windows… Nothing wrong with this choice. The rest of your point still stands though.

beprogrammed 4y ago

I envision a system where after I vote I rip off the top of the card and am able to use that hash like token to later verify that my vote was counted correctly

orangepanda 4y ago
I envision the same system to later verify the votes I bought
- sircastor 4y ago
  This is one of the reasons it’s not legal in many places to take a picture of a filled out ballot.
arlort 4y ago
That's only viable in countries/situations where secret ballots are not a strict requirement and vote buying is not perceived to be a problem With paper ballots if you want to be sure that your vote was counted correctly you generally can go and see the counting process, as a bonus like that you help ensure that every vote is counted correctly
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- IshKebab 4y ago
  No, you could do it in a way where the voter can verify their vote was recorded correctly but can't prove it to anyone else. Trivial method: require the voter to assign random numbers to each candidate. They remember the number of the candidate they chose. The voting system later says "you voted for 6".
  - arlort 4y ago
    And how do you avoid a scenario in which you assign 6 to candidate X but the machine secretly assigns 6 to candidate Y?