Why the fuck do we need to vote on machines, anyway? I don't understand this. Many other countries use paper ballots, including highly developed ones (e.g., France, UK...)
It needs to be advanced and expensive to show how important we think it is.
Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines
21–30 of 72 posts
Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think you should leave with any proof of who you voted for. I'm worried that it could be used by people to influence elections by paying for receipts from certain candidates or by punishing people who are not able to produce the correct receipt. I think we should return back to paper ballots. When there are witnesses to elections, I don't think any of them are qualified to judge if an election has been done i…
Yes, they don't actually give you a receipt, for this reason. One way it's done is that after entering your choices on touchscreen, you see the printed receipt through a glass window, and then it's stored so a recount can be done if necessary. However, an electrically scanned paper ballot seems a lot simpler.
> you see the printed receipt through a glass window
I actually believe this is actually the best possible situation.
The voting machine should print a clear, unambiguous, ballot and on-screen tell you to verify it before you officially "cast" your vote. "If the ballot below does not represent your choices, please click to request an attendant."
I'm thinking of this more as having printers that print out an unambiguous completed ballot and less as voting machines that "also print out a copy".
Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because we're becoming lazier with each passing day? I do think we need paper -- a "hard copy" -- at some level, whether for the ballot itself or just a verifiable audit trail. I think 100% electronic voting would be fine so long as there's an audit trail that matches the (electronically) talkied results perfectly. I don't think dealing with millions of paper ballots would be any more advantageous than that -- you'd…
Yeah sure there are some rube goldberg schemes you can concoct like printing a hard copy or whatever, where electronic voting might be secure. But... why? What is the point of adding all this complexity? What problem is electronic voting solving?
Hanging Chads. See: the year 2000.
Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines
#24I think blockchain is a perfect application for voting machines. Blockchain is public, immutable, cryptographic. Every voter can vote and then verify their vote was actually registered and was untampered via a web platform or something.
The network can be run by the public. Ofcourse there is risk associated with the 51% attack, but it's still a more transparent process than what we have today.
Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines
#25I think blockchain is a perfect application for voting machines. Blockchain is public, immutable, cryptographic. Every voter can vote and then verify their vote was actually registered and was untampered via a web platform or something. The network can be run by the public. Ofcourse there is risk associated with the 51% attack, but it's still a more transparent process than what we have today.
Making everyone's voting record public is just about the worst possible idea for a voting system.
Secret ballot is a feature, not a bug. It protects you from coercion and retaliation.
Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah sure there are some rube goldberg schemes you can concoct like printing a hard copy or whatever, where electronic voting might be secure. But... why? What is the point of adding all this complexity? What problem is electronic voting solving?
Hanging Chads. See: the year 2000.
Hanging chads were a problem because we tried to use machine-readable ballots. That's the whole point.
Here's a better system: you go into the voting booth. They have some envelopes and stacks of preprinted ballots, each with one candidate's name. You take a ballot for the candidate you want, and put it in the envelope. Then you come out of the booth and drop the sealed envelope in a box.
After polls close, they open the box and all the envelopes, and count the ballots, in the open. Anyone can go watch. If an envelope is empty or has more than one ballot inside, the vote doesn't count.
Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hanging Chads. See: the year 2000.
Hanging chads were a problem because we tried to use machine-readable ballots. That's the whole point. Here's a better system: you go into the voting booth. They have some envelopes and stacks of preprinted ballots, each with one candidate's name. You take a ballot for the candidate you want, and put it in the envelope. Then you come out of the booth and drop the sealed envelope in a box. After polls close, they open…
> Here's a better system: you go into the voting booth. They have some envelopes and stacks of preprinted ballots, each with one candidate's name. You take a ballot for the candidate you want, and put it in the envelope. Then you come out of the booth and drop the sealed envelope in a box.
Works well for elections with one race; those with a dozen offices being elected and an equal number of ballot measures make that... impractical.
Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hanging chads were a problem because we tried to use machine-readable ballots. That's the whole point. Here's a better system: you go into the voting booth. They have some envelopes and stacks of preprinted ballots, each with one candidate's name. You take a ballot for the candidate you want, and put it in the envelope. Then you come out of the booth and drop the sealed envelope in a box. After polls close, they open…
> Here's a better system: you go into the voting booth. They have some envelopes and stacks of preprinted ballots, each with one candidate's name. You take a ballot for the candidate you want, and put it in the envelope. Then you come out of the booth and drop the sealed envelope in a box. Works well for elections with one race; those with a dozen offices being elected and an equal number of ballot measures make that…
This is the system used in Germany, all votes are hand-counted. And it's also used for very complicated local elections that allow very fine-grained votes for individual candidates.
In extreme cases you get huge ballots with this system, see e.g. (http://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/frankfurter-wahlzettel...) for Frankfurt with a ~0.9 square meter ballot.
Counting by hand still works even for those over-complicated ballots.
Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines
#29Why the fuck do we need to vote on machines, anyway? I don't understand this. Many other countries use paper ballots, including highly developed ones (e.g., France, UK...)
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Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines
#30In the UK I walk into my local primary school/church/community hall (no more than a 5-10 min walk away), utter my name and address as identification (no other ID needed), and use a pencil to write a big 'X' against my preferences on a piece of paper I was handed when I entered the polling station.
There are multiple local party volunteers (I was one in the last election) from all the major parties at all stages of the process watching the flow of paper ballots from the sealed black collection bins to the voting halls where local council officals that volunteered, with paltry compensation, to a 12-18 hour shift to collect and count the vote. Some local councils take pride in being amoung the first to report their results, and there is a side competition to see who reports first.
We usually know the broad outcome of the election by the early hours of the next morning, with a handful of recounts in tight races going into the next couple of days.