Fearful of Hacking, Dutch Will Count Ballots by Hand

We could do that with open source software, commodity PCs and card punch machines and readers.

Then validating that your choices were encoded correctly would be easier. So would counting.

You could count at the voting location to get fast results and recount once the ballots arrive at the central office to confirm that the reported count was correct.

You could keep the initial counts at the polling place. Then later compare those numbers with the second count's to confirm that nothing happened to the ballots.

You also should have a unique number on each ballot that you can later use to look up how your ballot was recorded.

None of this should require advanced technology, new inventions or secrecy.

No, you wouldn't. The wailing and gnashing of teeth over the DNC hacks are all because the Democratic leadership is unwilling to accept responsibility for putting forward a bad candidate. Better blame the Russians, instead! If only the public didn't know the truth, we would have won!

The system worked, and worked well. But overall, it was a failure. Putting the digital in something as simple as voting, just increase the risks at all levels: security, deployment, rechecking, etc.

Pen and paper it's just so much better: simple, cost-effective, safe and understandable by anyone.

Right, because the Panama Papers leak wasn't a leak targeting specifically one Icelandic party, traced back to a foreign government with active geopolitical disputes with Iceland who also had similar hacks of other Icelandic parties traced back to them with no corresponding leaks.

There are quite a few additional relevant differences, as well, but I think that suffices to demonstrate that the situations are not, at all, parallel with regard to the applicability of the description in question.