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> Paper ballots work fine and, in Australia, would require the systematic subversion of hundreds of electoral officials and thousands of mutually-hostile scruti

by vetler 12y ago

> Paper ballots work fine and, in Australia, would require the systematic subversion of hundreds of electoral officials and thousands of mutually-hostile scrutineers to rig a vote The paper ballots are scanned: http://www.elections.act.gov.au/elections_and_voting/scanning_of_ballot_papers http://www.elections.act.gov.au/elections_and_voting/scannin... After scanning, "the preference data from those ballot papers was transferred to the electronic voting and counting system (eVACS)" So you do have an electronic voting system, just not end-user accessible.

jacques_chester 12y ago
The ACT is not Australia. It's one of the territories and the ACT electoral commission has dabbled with electronic voting for a long time. Speaking frankly, ACT elections don't matter; it's basically a town council. Federal elections and state elections are actually important.
- vetler 12y ago
  Aha, thanks for the clarification! Also found this: http://www.governmentnews.com.au/2015/02/electronic-vote-counting-one-step-closer/ http://www.governmentnews.com.au/2015/02/electronic-vote-cou... Interesting that Australia does not scan paper ballots yet, the amount of manual work must be enormous.
  - jacques_chester 12y ago
    > the amount of manual work must be enormous. This is a feature, not a bug. An "indicative count" is available on the night of an election, and final results take a few weeks. A few weeks versus extremely high assurance of a legitimate count is an excellent tradeoff, in my view. Who is hurt by the delay? Nobody. It's already expected and accounted for. As a profession we love benchmark porn -- latency! throughput! TPS! BPS! -- but optimisation is pointless if you undermine key guarantees. It's pointless to have an instant count if it can't be trusted. And the sheer unwieldiness of a paper ballot drastically amplifies the difficulty of subverting it.

by vetler 12y ago

jacques_chester 12y ago

The ACT is not Australia. It's one of the territories and the ACT electoral commission has dabbled with electronic voting for a long time. Speaking frankly, ACT elections don't matter; it's basically a town council. Federal elections and state elections are actually important.

vetler 12y ago
Aha, thanks for the clarification! Also found this: http://www.governmentnews.com.au/2015/02/electronic-vote-counting-one-step-closer/ http://www.governmentnews.com.au/2015/02/electronic-vote-cou... Interesting that Australia does not scan paper ballots yet, the amount of manual work must be enormous.
- jacques_chester 12y ago
  > the amount of manual work must be enormous. This is a feature, not a bug. An "indicative count" is available on the night of an election, and final results take a few weeks. A few weeks versus extremely high assurance of a legitimate count is an excellent tradeoff, in my view. Who is hurt by the delay? Nobody. It's already expected and accounted for. As a profession we love benchmark porn -- latency! throughput! TPS! BPS! -- but optimisation is pointless if you undermine key guarantees. It's pointless to have an instant count if it can't be trusted. And the sheer unwieldiness of a paper ballot drastically amplifies the difficulty of subverting it.