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The biggest advantage physical voting has it is follows human-scaling laws. Which often is a problem (inefficient) but for voting this is a massive benefit for

The biggest advantage physical voting has it is follows human-scaling laws. Which often is a problem (inefficient) but for voting this is a massive benefit for one particular reason - due to lack of automation any fraud doesn't also benefit from the same automation so has to be large scale and widely distributed for it to be impactful (the fraud has to be distributed to the humans involved). Which isn't to say that it can't happen (and does!) but requires a lot more effort and in the physical world there always a lot more fingerprints left, cameras looking, informants, etc.

lesuorac 7mo ago
Isn't the advantageous fraud easy to do? Sheriff monitors the ballot box (ex. Jimmy Carter's opponent). Only allow loyalists to count the result (and then report w/e you want; ex. Russia).
- Muromec 7mo ago
  It's not fraud is difficult to do, it's difficult to do so without people noticing. The problem of r-country is not that fraud is not discovered, they problem is they are not capable to course-correct (in general, but in regards to having elections specifically)
  - danpalmer 7mo ago
    It's also very difficult to scale. For one voting site you might need a few people to force it, plus a few more counting the votes. For thousands of sites you need many thousands of people. Versus e-voting where may conceivably manage to swing the vote with a handful of people.
    - Muromec 7mo ago
      That's not difficult to scale if you already are a nation-state actor.
    - lesuorac 7mo ago
      > Versus e-voting where may conceivably manage to swing the vote with a handful of people. No the thing you're missing is that the ballots are always electronically counted. Sure, at the very low level they'll manually count each ballot but the sums are then provided to different people electronically who then report the combined total sum. But also a handful of people can just remove registered voters to have the same effect. The fraud is easy to scale though because it if you win local offices you can use that to control state offices which you can then uses to control federal offices.
      - peterfirefly 7mo ago
        They are counted by hand in Denmark. We used to post the results on physical paper at the voting site afterwards + have them published for the entire country (including a list of the votes at each voting site) in the national papers. If the local results anywhere were different from those published in the papers, people would notice. If they were different in different papers, or in different parts of the country, people would notice. We have, unfortunately, switched to a list on a website instead of in the papers :(
throwaway85825 7mo ago
Sorting physical ballots is very easy to automate. You get the security of paper with the speed of computing.
- WalterBright 7mo ago
  In Washington State we get mailed ballots, which we fill in and mail in. But the ballots are not even printed on security paper. They don't have a serial number on them, either.
  - mjevans 7mo ago
    The filled out ballot is intended to be fully anonymous. It is then slipped into a security sleeve to make it harder to read within the envelope. The envelope is sealed and signed by the citizen. Security is provided by the envelope which is the attestation that the citizen cast their ballot. Offhand, the county voting office is likely required to retain the ballot as part of the state/federal records. I haven't checked but that or a centralized ballot repository are the only things that make sense.
    - 8bitsrule 7mo ago
      >The envelope is sealed and signed by the citizen. Alas, the signature must reasonably match one on file (from somewhere ... presumably a state ID) or the ballot may be rejected. Since human signatures can vary wildly for reasons, this non-deterministic feature requires a human guess for -each- ballot. No mechanism to dispute that decision.
      - saulpw 7mo ago
        Mine has been disputed several times (because it changed due to name change and wasn't updated). There is a very clear mechanism to dispute that decision, and in fact that's why they ask for your phone number and/or email on the envelope--so when they want to dispute it, they have a way of contact for you to do what's necessary to make the ballot count (provisionally, only if the race is close enough for your vote to matter).
kshri24 7mo ago
This probably only works properly in the developed countries. In developing countries like India we suffered through decades of "booth captures" [1] where armed gangs would take over a polling booth and cast votes for their political candidate at gun point. Villagers would be disallowed from casting their votes. In many instances, the polling booth itself would be set on fire, ensuring that those votes are never counted. With EVMs the polling officer can just deactivate the machine (which stops the counting at that moment) making booth capturing pointless. Not saying this is not possible in developed countries. It could very well happen sometime in the future where armed gangs take over polling booths (especially if the candidate in question is bound to lose due to corruption/scandal and needs to cling onto political power to prevent himself/herself from going to prison). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booth_capturing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booth_capturing
- mcmoor 7mo ago
  I mean looks like booth capture can only capture a booth at most and to capture more you practically need armed rebellion. But if we automate it, then you only need to capture a location to capture all booths in the region.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- lelanthran 7mo ago
  > This probably only works properly in the developed countries. In developing countries like India we suffered through decades of "booth captures" [1] where armed gangs would take over a polling booth and cast votes for their political candidate at gun point. Villagers would be disallowed from casting their votes. In many instances, the polling booth itself would be set on fire, ensuring that those votes are never counted. Yeah, but these are visible! They provide evidence that the voting was not fair. Compare to electronic voting, where a capture might be done and no one ever finds out. We want rigging of elections to be visible. That's the whole point.
  - darig 7mo ago
notarobot123 7mo ago
The other advantage in physical voting is that so many people are needed to participate in the process. The probability of aligned bad actors goes down significantly when the voting process is a civic responsibility shared by volunteers who monitor each other. It's not perfect but public participation adds to the legitimacy of the process itself.

lesuorac 7mo ago

Isn't the advantageous fraud easy to do? Sheriff monitors the ballot box (ex. Jimmy Carter's opponent). Only allow loyalists to count the result (and then report w/e you want; ex. Russia).

Muromec 7mo ago
It's not fraud is difficult to do, it's difficult to do so without people noticing. The problem of r-country is not that fraud is not discovered, they problem is they are not capable to course-correct (in general, but in regards to having elections specifically)
- danpalmer 7mo ago
  It's also very difficult to scale. For one voting site you might need a few people to force it, plus a few more counting the votes. For thousands of sites you need many thousands of people. Versus e-voting where may conceivably manage to swing the vote with a handful of people.
  - Muromec 7mo ago
    That's not difficult to scale if you already are a nation-state actor.
  - lesuorac 7mo ago
    > Versus e-voting where may conceivably manage to swing the vote with a handful of people. No the thing you're missing is that the ballots are always electronically counted. Sure, at the very low level they'll manually count each ballot but the sums are then provided to different people electronically who then report the combined total sum. But also a handful of people can just remove registered voters to have the same effect. The fraud is easy to scale though because it if you win local offices you can use that to control state offices which you can then uses to control federal offices.
    - peterfirefly 7mo ago
      They are counted by hand in Denmark. We used to post the results on physical paper at the voting site afterwards + have them published for the entire country (including a list of the votes at each voting site) in the national papers. If the local results anywhere were different from those published in the papers, people would notice. If they were different in different papers, or in different parts of the country, people would notice. We have, unfortunately, switched to a list on a website instead of in the papers :(

throwaway85825 7mo ago

Sorting physical ballots is very easy to automate. You get the security of paper with the speed of computing.

WalterBright 7mo ago
In Washington State we get mailed ballots, which we fill in and mail in. But the ballots are not even printed on security paper. They don't have a serial number on them, either.
- mjevans 7mo ago
  The filled out ballot is intended to be fully anonymous. It is then slipped into a security sleeve to make it harder to read within the envelope. The envelope is sealed and signed by the citizen. Security is provided by the envelope which is the attestation that the citizen cast their ballot. Offhand, the county voting office is likely required to retain the ballot as part of the state/federal records. I haven't checked but that or a centralized ballot repository are the only things that make sense.
  - 8bitsrule 7mo ago
    >The envelope is sealed and signed by the citizen. Alas, the signature must reasonably match one on file (from somewhere ... presumably a state ID) or the ballot may be rejected. Since human signatures can vary wildly for reasons, this non-deterministic feature requires a human guess for -each- ballot. No mechanism to dispute that decision.
    - saulpw 7mo ago
      Mine has been disputed several times (because it changed due to name change and wasn't updated). There is a very clear mechanism to dispute that decision, and in fact that's why they ask for your phone number and/or email on the envelope--so when they want to dispute it, they have a way of contact for you to do what's necessary to make the ballot count (provisionally, only if the race is close enough for your vote to matter).

kshri24 7mo ago

This probably only works properly in the developed countries. In developing countries like India we suffered through decades of "booth captures" [1] where armed gangs would take over a polling booth and cast votes for their political candidate at gun point. Villagers would be disallowed from casting their votes. In many instances, the polling booth itself would be set on fire, ensuring that those votes are never counted. With EVMs the polling officer can just deactivate the machine (which stops the counting at that moment) making booth capturing pointless. Not saying this is not possible in developed countries. It could very well happen sometime in the future where armed gangs take over polling booths (especially if the candidate in question is bound to lose due to corruption/scandal and needs to cling onto political power to prevent himself/herself from going to prison). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booth_capturing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booth_capturing

mcmoor 7mo ago
I mean looks like booth capture can only capture a booth at most and to capture more you practically need armed rebellion. But if we automate it, then you only need to capture a location to capture all booths in the region.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
lelanthran 7mo ago
> This probably only works properly in the developed countries. In developing countries like India we suffered through decades of "booth captures" [1] where armed gangs would take over a polling booth and cast votes for their political candidate at gun point. Villagers would be disallowed from casting their votes. In many instances, the polling booth itself would be set on fire, ensuring that those votes are never counted. Yeah, but these are visible! They provide evidence that the voting was not fair. Compare to electronic voting, where a capture might be done and no one ever finds out. We want rigging of elections to be visible. That's the whole point.
- darig 7mo ago

notarobot123 7mo ago

The other advantage in physical voting is that so many people are needed to participate in the process. The probability of aligned bad actors goes down significantly when the voting process is a civic responsibility shared by volunteers who monitor each other. It's not perfect but public participation adds to the legitimacy of the process itself.