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Non-digital systems have claims of fake ballots being inserted all the time. I don't think the answer to people being suspicious of digital systems is to abando

Non-digital systems have claims of fake ballots being inserted all the time. I don't think the answer to people being suspicious of digital systems is to abandon them. It's to either disprove their suspicion or add controls so they become disproven. https://www.google.com/search?q=ballot+stuffing+2020 https://www.google.com/search?q=ballot+stuffing+2020 https://www.google.com/search?q=ballot+stuffing+2016 https://www.google.com/search?q=ballot+stuffing+2016 https://www.google.com/search?q=ballot+stuffing+2012 https://www.google.com/search?q=ballot+stuffing+2012

codedokode 2y ago
With analog voting you can at least count people coming and see their ballots when tallying. With digital systems this is typically a black box where you have to trust the government.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  I don't think you understand how wrong your post is. Literally no election updates the raw tally of candidates the second a ballot comes in. If you count 1000 people entering and 1000 total votes that doesn't mean 1000 individials voted. Literally some of the cases of fraud are the same person entering multiple times and voting multiple times. You will need a control beyond "count people". (And if your control is to just do mail-in voting process in-person then what's the point). Additionally, if you have 1000 people entering and 1050 total votes; which 50 do you discard? This is where the mail-in votes have a better control than a simplistic ballot box as you only start co-mingling the votes once you know it's legit. W.r.t. Digital systems, there's nothing that stops there from being a paper audit trail you can verify. [1] Also, you don't need to "trust the government" (aka your neighbors) you can volunteer yourself to be a poll worker at your local elections to see how things are done or you can run to be on the board of elections in your local government. And if you're working the election you only need to trust yourself to have made it secure. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter-verified_paper_audit_trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter-verified_paper_audit_tra...
  - j16sdiz 2y ago
    > which 50 do you discard? That's a piece of information: you know there are 50 questionable vote. You know how many questionable vote in the gland scheme of things. As a matter of fact: most of them are too small to make a different.
  - codedokode 2y ago
    We might be talking about different forms of electronic elections. What I am talking about is remote electronic voting, when people vote from home using a website or app. > If you count 1000 people entering and 1000 total votes that doesn't mean 1000 individials voted. This means that if someone wants to vote 10 times, they need to come 10 times and hope that no election monitor will be surprised by seeing the same person 10 times. If you want to add million fake votes, you need to recruit 100 000 people voting 10 times each, you need to bribe thousands of election staff to let them vote 10 times, basically you need to involve a whole army of people and hope nobody notices nothing. Of course it is possible to find 100 000 corrupt people, but it is difficult to hide such large-scale operation. For comparison, in electronic voting all you need is to have one patriotic sysadmin willing to enter fake data to 'save the country' from an undesirable candidate. The barrier for large-scale fraud is much lower. So, basically with electronic voting election fraud requires corrupting less people and it is easier to hide. > Additionally, if you have 1000 people entering and 1050 total votes; which 50 do you discard? You nullify results at that polling station as the winner cannot be reliably determined. > Also, you don't need to "trust the government" (aka your neighbors) you can volunteer yourself to be a poll worker at your local elections to see how things are done or you can run to be on the board of elections in your local government. How can you be a poll worker in electronic elections? In my country typically the code and procedures are developed by a contractor or governmental organization. The code is not always even published. The best you can do is be an election monitor, but they have very limited tools in case of electronic elections, like observing stats on count of people voted. In contrast, election monitor at paper voting can see the whole process with their own eyes.
cryptonector 2y ago
Precinct-only elections don't quite have this problem because all the people voting are neighbors, and the poll watchers and ballot counters are all neighbors. Hard to engage in shenanigans when the people watching are your neighbors!
atoav 2y ago
Yeah but a ballot cannot potentially change the number of papers within it depending on who is looking and when they are looking. If your stupid mate from the pub questions the results he could literally look inside the box with a paper ballots and see if the votes are significantly wrong. If you let him guard the ballot box for the duration he could even see that nobody swapped the ballots. Try that with a computer. Paper ballots also having problems isn't an argument for even more complex systems, it is an argument against it.

codedokode 2y ago

With analog voting you can at least count people coming and see their ballots when tallying. With digital systems this is typically a black box where you have to trust the government.

lesuorac 2y ago
I don't think you understand how wrong your post is. Literally no election updates the raw tally of candidates the second a ballot comes in. If you count 1000 people entering and 1000 total votes that doesn't mean 1000 individials voted. Literally some of the cases of fraud are the same person entering multiple times and voting multiple times. You will need a control beyond "count people". (And if your control is to just do mail-in voting process in-person then what's the point). Additionally, if you have 1000 people entering and 1050 total votes; which 50 do you discard? This is where the mail-in votes have a better control than a simplistic ballot box as you only start co-mingling the votes once you know it's legit. W.r.t. Digital systems, there's nothing that stops there from being a paper audit trail you can verify. [1] Also, you don't need to "trust the government" (aka your neighbors) you can volunteer yourself to be a poll worker at your local elections to see how things are done or you can run to be on the board of elections in your local government. And if you're working the election you only need to trust yourself to have made it secure. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter-verified_paper_audit_trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter-verified_paper_audit_tra...
- j16sdiz 2y ago
  > which 50 do you discard? That's a piece of information: you know there are 50 questionable vote. You know how many questionable vote in the gland scheme of things. As a matter of fact: most of them are too small to make a different.
- codedokode 2y ago
  We might be talking about different forms of electronic elections. What I am talking about is remote electronic voting, when people vote from home using a website or app. > If you count 1000 people entering and 1000 total votes that doesn't mean 1000 individials voted. This means that if someone wants to vote 10 times, they need to come 10 times and hope that no election monitor will be surprised by seeing the same person 10 times. If you want to add million fake votes, you need to recruit 100 000 people voting 10 times each, you need to bribe thousands of election staff to let them vote 10 times, basically you need to involve a whole army of people and hope nobody notices nothing. Of course it is possible to find 100 000 corrupt people, but it is difficult to hide such large-scale operation. For comparison, in electronic voting all you need is to have one patriotic sysadmin willing to enter fake data to 'save the country' from an undesirable candidate. The barrier for large-scale fraud is much lower. So, basically with electronic voting election fraud requires corrupting less people and it is easier to hide. > Additionally, if you have 1000 people entering and 1050 total votes; which 50 do you discard? You nullify results at that polling station as the winner cannot be reliably determined. > Also, you don't need to "trust the government" (aka your neighbors) you can volunteer yourself to be a poll worker at your local elections to see how things are done or you can run to be on the board of elections in your local government. How can you be a poll worker in electronic elections? In my country typically the code and procedures are developed by a contractor or governmental organization. The code is not always even published. The best you can do is be an election monitor, but they have very limited tools in case of electronic elections, like observing stats on count of people voted. In contrast, election monitor at paper voting can see the whole process with their own eyes.

cryptonector 2y ago

Precinct-only elections don't quite have this problem because all the people voting are neighbors, and the poll watchers and ballot counters are all neighbors. Hard to engage in shenanigans when the people watching are your neighbors!

atoav 2y ago

Yeah but a ballot cannot potentially change the number of papers within it depending on who is looking and when they are looking. If your stupid mate from the pub questions the results he could literally look inside the box with a paper ballots and see if the votes are significantly wrong. If you let him guard the ballot box for the duration he could even see that nobody swapped the ballots. Try that with a computer. Paper ballots also having problems isn't an argument for even more complex systems, it is an argument against it.