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You don't know if they are false. The fact is that electronic voting machines should be never let in a democracy. You should always use paper ballots and peopl

You don't know if they are false. The fact is that electronic voting machines should be never let in a democracy. You should always use paper ballots and people from different parties should be on the table. Like with Kanban quality control, you want simplicity and robustness, and paper is great for that. We create and programs machines for a living and nobody can warrantee that they have not been tampered.

wfriesen 3y ago
In Australia we do paper ballots, no voter ID, you just say your name and it's crossed off a list. Afterwards, if the same name was crossed off two lists, the amount of double votes are counted and if it is enough to change the result then the result of that electorate is invalidated. This has not ever happened.
- mkl 3y ago
  Australia has compulsory voting, which must change that dynamic a bit. Someone voting as multiple other people in different places is going to double up with the actual people, since they have to vote, so the incentive will be lower. That said, NZ has a similar system without compulsory voting, and I've never heard of any significant voter fraud. We have decent voter turnout.
  - wfriesen 3y ago
    Yeah, compulsory voting is what makes it a viable way to detect fraud. I was also mistaken somewhat when I said "paper ballots". There is certainly electronic voting in Australia, but the "authentication" aspect of just saying a name is still the same. It's essentially "trust but verify"
  - miohtama 3y ago
    The US would hate the idea of compulsory voting, as the goal of Republicans is to make as few people to vote as possible.
    - porkbeer 3y ago
      Citation needed.
cassepipe 3y ago
We don't know in the sense that we can't know anything for sure that is not the fruit of a controlled experience but we are very confident in the fact that it was all about a rich childish prick who cannot accept defeat or being denied something he wants and making sure to fleece his supporters one last time. There was no evidence of any real fraud. If there's no evidence it's either a conspiracy to hide it, or that there was no such thing. Thing is, conspiracies are hard to pull off and we end up knowing about them (and nobody really cares and we forget about them, they're called "scandals") I do find myself agreeing on voting machines though.The Last Week Tonight on voting machines was quite something to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0
- chriscjcj 3y ago
  I'm assuming the childish prick you're referring to is Hilary Clinton, yes? https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-election-160716779.html https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-electi... I'm not trying to start a flame war, but with all due respect, there are ways to discuss the politics and their relevant merits (or lack thereof) without immediately devolving into partisanship.
  - cassepipe 3y ago
    Look, I am not an US citizen and I don't support the Democrats either. On the spectrum of political ideas, I even fail to see how Bill Clinton nor Hillary Clinton (or Blair or Schroeder, that kind) counts as "The Left". In most of the world, the Left has been historically defined as people trying to at least get a form of betterment for the working class. I don't think the aforementioned Democrats even ever attempted that. Before Trump's rise, I kind of saw both the Republicans and the Democrats as the mostly the same. So you see in the end, this is not about partisanship, I am just defending my self-enforced sovereign right to call out a rich childish prick who's never had to work a day in his pampered life when he is behaving like one. It's a crazy world where you can't call someone crazy because he's got the crazies' support. That being said, I am against millonnaires even where they are not sociopaths.
dustymcp 3y ago
so its better to have manual counting that also can be tampered with?
- CodesInChaos 3y ago
  Tampering with manual counting at scale without being detected sounds very difficult.
  - pydry 3y ago
    Tampering with electronic voting can be made impossible too - by allowing people to validate their vote. This solution is often rejected because it could theoretically lead to vote buying but in practice vote buying is ridiculously susceptible even to very halfhearted sting operations. Historically it has been a problem because it was tolerated, but literally as soon as it was cracked down upon it dried up completely. It only worked when it was de facto decriminalized. Paper is still better but IMHO I'd be happy with electronic voting with cryptographic after-election vote validation.
    - CodesInChaos 3y ago
      > vote buying is ridiculously susceptible even to very halfhearted sting operations. But what would you do after you detect it? Go back to paper elections?
      - pydry 3y ago
        Imprison the offender. Jail time tends to focus the mind. If it's impossible to achieve on a meaningful scale without wearing an orange jumpsuit people won't try.
        CodesInChaos 3y ago
        What if it's an anonymous website that offers to pay anybody (via difficult to trace cryptocurrency) who uploads proof that they voted for a particular candidate/party?
mariusor 3y ago
> You should always use paper ballots I think that even if electronic voting devices are not guaranteed to be failsafe today it does not mean that they can't get there. Paper ballots are not an optimal democratic way of conducting voting. The whole process is time and resource consuming and disenfranchises the less privileged. If there would be a cheap and safe way to cast electronic ballots from one's own phone I bet engagement with democracy would be a lot higher, not only on big issues like presidential elections, but on smaller stuff that one would vote at a local level.
- jules 3y ago
  Would letting people vote with their phone lead to better outcomes?
  - mariusor 3y ago
    Better or worse, I don't know, but it would allow more people to vote, which would lead to a more democratic outcome. :D
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      By "democratic", do you mean "make it possible for someone else to force you or pay you to vote a certain way"? That wouldn't even be "allowing more people to vote", but rather fewer people, each of whom effectively gets more than one vote.
      - mariusor 3y ago
        I'm saying things under the assumption that this type of electronic voting is at least as secure as mail in ballots. I have ideas about how pay/force can be prevented, but nothing super definite.
- lozenge 3y ago
  How can you prevent a partner, parent or employer from watching you vote with a phone?
manuelabeledo 3y ago
> You should always use paper ballots and people from different parties should be on the table. It is easy to tamper paper ballots the way the US uses them, i.e. by having to manually tick the candidate box. I think that, for some elections, using different ballots for each party and/or candidate, should be the way. This is done in many other countries and it works consistently better. You also want an electronic trail, just because there are certain places where you cannot trust that the manual count would be accurate. I think most people do not trust voting machines because they do not understand the security preconditions they have to comply with. In many ways, they are way more reliable than paper and manual counting.

wfriesen 3y ago

In Australia we do paper ballots, no voter ID, you just say your name and it's crossed off a list. Afterwards, if the same name was crossed off two lists, the amount of double votes are counted and if it is enough to change the result then the result of that electorate is invalidated. This has not ever happened.

mkl 3y ago
Australia has compulsory voting, which must change that dynamic a bit. Someone voting as multiple other people in different places is going to double up with the actual people, since they have to vote, so the incentive will be lower. That said, NZ has a similar system without compulsory voting, and I've never heard of any significant voter fraud. We have decent voter turnout.
- wfriesen 3y ago
  Yeah, compulsory voting is what makes it a viable way to detect fraud. I was also mistaken somewhat when I said "paper ballots". There is certainly electronic voting in Australia, but the "authentication" aspect of just saying a name is still the same. It's essentially "trust but verify"
- miohtama 3y ago
  The US would hate the idea of compulsory voting, as the goal of Republicans is to make as few people to vote as possible.
  - porkbeer 3y ago
    Citation needed.

cassepipe 3y ago

We don't know in the sense that we can't know anything for sure that is not the fruit of a controlled experience but we are very confident in the fact that it was all about a rich childish prick who cannot accept defeat or being denied something he wants and making sure to fleece his supporters one last time. There was no evidence of any real fraud. If there's no evidence it's either a conspiracy to hide it, or that there was no such thing. Thing is, conspiracies are hard to pull off and we end up knowing about them (and nobody really cares and we forget about them, they're called "scandals") I do find myself agreeing on voting machines though.The Last Week Tonight on voting machines was quite something to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0

chriscjcj 3y ago
I'm assuming the childish prick you're referring to is Hilary Clinton, yes? https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-election-160716779.html https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-electi... I'm not trying to start a flame war, but with all due respect, there are ways to discuss the politics and their relevant merits (or lack thereof) without immediately devolving into partisanship.
- cassepipe 3y ago
  Look, I am not an US citizen and I don't support the Democrats either. On the spectrum of political ideas, I even fail to see how Bill Clinton nor Hillary Clinton (or Blair or Schroeder, that kind) counts as "The Left". In most of the world, the Left has been historically defined as people trying to at least get a form of betterment for the working class. I don't think the aforementioned Democrats even ever attempted that. Before Trump's rise, I kind of saw both the Republicans and the Democrats as the mostly the same. So you see in the end, this is not about partisanship, I am just defending my self-enforced sovereign right to call out a rich childish prick who's never had to work a day in his pampered life when he is behaving like one. It's a crazy world where you can't call someone crazy because he's got the crazies' support. That being said, I am against millonnaires even where they are not sociopaths.

dustymcp 3y ago

so its better to have manual counting that also can be tampered with?

CodesInChaos 3y ago
Tampering with manual counting at scale without being detected sounds very difficult.
- pydry 3y ago
  Tampering with electronic voting can be made impossible too - by allowing people to validate their vote. This solution is often rejected because it could theoretically lead to vote buying but in practice vote buying is ridiculously susceptible even to very halfhearted sting operations. Historically it has been a problem because it was tolerated, but literally as soon as it was cracked down upon it dried up completely. It only worked when it was de facto decriminalized. Paper is still better but IMHO I'd be happy with electronic voting with cryptographic after-election vote validation.
  - CodesInChaos 3y ago
    > vote buying is ridiculously susceptible even to very halfhearted sting operations. But what would you do after you detect it? Go back to paper elections?
    - pydry 3y ago
      Imprison the offender. Jail time tends to focus the mind. If it's impossible to achieve on a meaningful scale without wearing an orange jumpsuit people won't try.
      - CodesInChaos 3y ago
        What if it's an anonymous website that offers to pay anybody (via difficult to trace cryptocurrency) who uploads proof that they voted for a particular candidate/party?

mariusor 3y ago

> You should always use paper ballots I think that even if electronic voting devices are not guaranteed to be failsafe today it does not mean that they can't get there. Paper ballots are not an optimal democratic way of conducting voting. The whole process is time and resource consuming and disenfranchises the less privileged. If there would be a cheap and safe way to cast electronic ballots from one's own phone I bet engagement with democracy would be a lot higher, not only on big issues like presidential elections, but on smaller stuff that one would vote at a local level.

jules 3y ago
Would letting people vote with their phone lead to better outcomes?
- mariusor 3y ago
  Better or worse, I don't know, but it would allow more people to vote, which would lead to a more democratic outcome. :D
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    By "democratic", do you mean "make it possible for someone else to force you or pay you to vote a certain way"? That wouldn't even be "allowing more people to vote", but rather fewer people, each of whom effectively gets more than one vote.
    - mariusor 3y ago
      I'm saying things under the assumption that this type of electronic voting is at least as secure as mail in ballots. I have ideas about how pay/force can be prevented, but nothing super definite.
lozenge 3y ago
How can you prevent a partner, parent or employer from watching you vote with a phone?

manuelabeledo 3y ago

> You should always use paper ballots and people from different parties should be on the table. It is easy to tamper paper ballots the way the US uses them, i.e. by having to manually tick the candidate box. I think that, for some elections, using different ballots for each party and/or candidate, should be the way. This is done in many other countries and it works consistently better. You also want an electronic trail, just because there are certain places where you cannot trust that the manual count would be accurate. I think most people do not trust voting machines because they do not understand the security preconditions they have to comply with. In many ways, they are way more reliable than paper and manual counting.