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This is a great example of why electronic voting is important and can help secure democracy.

TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
On the contrary, eletronic voting doesn't create the paper trail necessary to dig up frauds like this. You can simply program or hack the system to report any vote total you want.
- SkeuomorphicBee 4y ago
  First of all, hacking the electronic system is much much harder than hacking the paper process. In the case at hand the paper tallying process was the one hacked. And second, electronic systems can create a paper trail, just make the electronic machine spit out a paper receipt. Then you have the best of both worlds, you can have instant electronic totals, and then do some random sampling recounts of the receipts to validate the result.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Scaling an attack against paper is incredibly difficult, and requires coordination in a level that is almost sure to trigger the law enforcement much before it can change some national-level numbers. Scaling an attack against a computer system is almost the same as doing an attack against a computer system. Few attacks don't scale. But yeah, if you just print the vote and push it into an urn (while the voter can read it), you'll get the best of both worlds.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
    > just make the electronic machine spit out a paper receipt Now the person making the vote has to check the receipt matches their input, and they probably don't have a practical form of redress if it doesn't.
logifail 4y ago
> This is a great example of why electronic voting is important and can help secure democracy. If those in power are against change, I wouldn't want to have to put my trust in electronic voting if I was hoping for change. I was left with the impression that it is the paper records in this story that led to the unravelling of an attempt to forge the results. Long live paper ballots.
- SkeuomorphicBee 4y ago
  > I was left with the impression that it is the paper records in this story that led to the unravelling of an attempt to forge the results. The manual tallying of paper records is what lead to the attempt to forge the results in the first place. If the results were electronically tallied to generate an official result, then they wouldn't need to recount the whole election to verify the result, just doing a statistically significant random sampling of the polls to recount would be enough.
  - logifail 4y ago
    > If the results were electronically tallied to generate an official result Electronic voting doesn't make bad politicians less bad. In this instance, the bad guys were prepared to deliberately remove CCTV so when they sent their goons out at night to shoot protestors there would be no evidence. "Electronic tallies" are never going to give a free and fair election if those in power are prepared to go that far. Safer to stick with paper ballots and election observers equipped with Mark I eyeballs.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    How do you recount electronic-only elections?
    - SkeuomorphicBee 4y ago
      By looking at the receipts printed by the ballot machines. Ballot machines print either a final tally at the end of the day, or print every single vote and automatically drop it into a physical ballot, depending on the threat model of the country in question. Either way the you have partial or total recount.
gdelfino01 4y ago
You introduce technology to increase transparency and fight corruption. You increase transparency by having video recordings of human counting votes linked to the electronic record of the totals. When you introduce technology to eliminate manual counting and paper trails, then transparency is eliminated and you give a green light to fraud, corruption, very juicy contracts and death.
cwkoss 4y ago
Wouldn't electronic voting just create a means for the ruling party to deliver the result without releasing evidence of vote tampering? I don't understand what you think electronic voting solves...

On the contrary, eletronic voting doesn't create the paper trail necessary to dig up frauds like this. You can simply program or hack the system to report any vote total you want.

SkeuomorphicBee 4y ago
First of all, hacking the electronic system is much much harder than hacking the paper process. In the case at hand the paper tallying process was the one hacked. And second, electronic systems can create a paper trail, just make the electronic machine spit out a paper receipt. Then you have the best of both worlds, you can have instant electronic totals, and then do some random sampling recounts of the receipts to validate the result.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Scaling an attack against paper is incredibly difficult, and requires coordination in a level that is almost sure to trigger the law enforcement much before it can change some national-level numbers. Scaling an attack against a computer system is almost the same as doing an attack against a computer system. Few attacks don't scale. But yeah, if you just print the vote and push it into an urn (while the voter can read it), you'll get the best of both worlds.
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
  > just make the electronic machine spit out a paper receipt Now the person making the vote has to check the receipt matches their input, and they probably don't have a practical form of redress if it doesn't.

logifail 4y ago

> This is a great example of why electronic voting is important and can help secure democracy. If those in power are against change, I wouldn't want to have to put my trust in electronic voting if I was hoping for change. I was left with the impression that it is the paper records in this story that led to the unravelling of an attempt to forge the results. Long live paper ballots.

SkeuomorphicBee 4y ago
> I was left with the impression that it is the paper records in this story that led to the unravelling of an attempt to forge the results. The manual tallying of paper records is what lead to the attempt to forge the results in the first place. If the results were electronically tallied to generate an official result, then they wouldn't need to recount the whole election to verify the result, just doing a statistically significant random sampling of the polls to recount would be enough.
- logifail 4y ago
  > If the results were electronically tallied to generate an official result Electronic voting doesn't make bad politicians less bad. In this instance, the bad guys were prepared to deliberately remove CCTV so when they sent their goons out at night to shoot protestors there would be no evidence. "Electronic tallies" are never going to give a free and fair election if those in power are prepared to go that far. Safer to stick with paper ballots and election observers equipped with Mark I eyeballs.
- pjc50 4y ago
  How do you recount electronic-only elections?
  - SkeuomorphicBee 4y ago
    By looking at the receipts printed by the ballot machines. Ballot machines print either a final tally at the end of the day, or print every single vote and automatically drop it into a physical ballot, depending on the threat model of the country in question. Either way the you have partial or total recount.

gdelfino01 4y ago

You introduce technology to increase transparency and fight corruption. You increase transparency by having video recordings of human counting votes linked to the electronic record of the totals. When you introduce technology to eliminate manual counting and paper trails, then transparency is eliminated and you give a green light to fraud, corruption, very juicy contracts and death.

cwkoss 4y ago

Wouldn't electronic voting just create a means for the ruling party to deliver the result without releasing evidence of vote tampering? I don't understand what you think electronic voting solves...