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They are an entirely unnecessary risk. There are plenty of countries that manage to count elections a lot faster than the US while using only pen and paper. It
by fabian2k 4y ago
They are an entirely unnecessary risk. There are plenty of countries that manage to count elections a lot faster than the US while using only pen and paper. It provides a lot more transparency as observers can actually follow every single step of the entire process and verify everything. A voting machine is a big black box that you have to trust (unless they also have a paper trail, and you actually verify it).
- retrac 4y ago> It provides a lot more transparency as observers can actually follow every single step of the entire process and verify everything. Simple folk physics gives everyone an understanding of the security of ballot boxes. There's thousands of ballot boxes, each in a different physically-secured location, with various personnel keeping track of them, many of them citizen volunteers and workers, as well as partisan observers. Everyone intuitively understands the security, as well as security flaws, of this system. All of that is lost with electronic voting. Even with complete confidence/faith in the system, it simply becomes a black box. Press button and the vote total is spit out. Only a few experts understand the system in a way that they could explain how that total was arrived at and why you should have confidence in it. And even fewer would be able to actually verify that the black box does what it says it does and that you should by confident in it. Otherwise it's just a box that spits out a number. And computers make up numbers all the time.