ITT, people talking about the merits of paper vs electronic. But the answer to the question is simple: same reason most government software isn't open source, namely, lobbying
Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?
81–90 of 134 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inefficiency is a feature, having every state and every county slightly different makes systemic fraud very difficult. All these phishing schemes that are extremely effective with IT workers and other security conscious people. I say just keep elections analog for the time being. Perhaps someday the technology will be mature, well understood, and distributed far enough to work but I don't see it happening this decade…
> Inefficiency is a feature, having every state and every county slightly different makes systemic fraud very difficult. I agree with this - in addition, it makes it a lot easier for everyone to understand the system, and therefore more likely to trust it.
> makes it a lot easier for everyone to understand the system, and therefore more likely to trust it.
Is this the USA system we are talking about? Because a significant proportion don’t seem to understand or trust the system right now!
Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's nothing wrong with paper except its extreme inefficiency in the human realm. They aren't inefficient. In the UK (paper ballots) an accurate estimate is available when the polls close, and a certain result is available within a few hours before next morning. This is much faster than US voting machines.
Honest question here: how many races and questions do you vote on at once in the UK? This year, my ballot had about a dozen individual races (including two state referendums and an advisory question) to vote on, and this is probably about or below the US median ballot complexity each presidential election.
I'm sure you have more on your ballot than us.
But can you not return a presidential result in the first few hours, and then go back in priority order?
Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?
#84Everyone here is talking about paper ballots. Good, but this ignores OP's question. Most voting machines, even if they have paper trails, have some software in them. Just saying "paper ballots" doesn't address the issue. To answer OP's question, I personally have no idea but think it should be. Much of our scientific work is open sourced (e.g. codes from national labs, NASA, etc). But I think a lot of people don't un…
The answer to OP's question is... why have software at all? Why not just paper? Why do you want a 'voting machine' at all? What's wrong with paper? The solution to a problem that should not be solved with software is not to have different software.
I assume this is working under the presumption that we get rid of the voting software that already exists? This is a big part of OP's question, but I'll entertain it.
You have to look at the 2000 election[0] where there was a switch to digital means. I don't have exact numbers, but I am under the impression that these machines are easier to use and are less error prone than the previous punch card methods. Your digital machines can also print you a receipt. So "why have a (digital) voting machine at all" is because it is easier and less error prone. Having election results going to the Supreme Court is a pretty big deal and should be avoided.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...
Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answer to OP's question is... why have software at all? Why not just paper? Why do you want a 'voting machine' at all? What's wrong with paper? The solution to a problem that should not be solved with software is not to have different software.
At some point in the process, vote information will be stored digitally. Whether it's posted to the SoE's website or during transmittal to the Federal or state governments. I'm also trying to imagine elections with the number of people we have and number of races being counted by hand from the beginning, with no digital storage or tabulation, and it is rife with errors and even harder to validate in a reasonable way.
Yeah it makes more sense to have a digital tabulation, paper receipts, and a paper count later. You can also add in independent analysis by counting random subsets to do quick verification. Digital doesn't mean getting rid of paper ballots. And people are confusing experts advice of not doing "online voting" with "digital voting".
Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
We went from abacus to digital circuit painstakingly over thousands of years and you're using a compute-er with a screen to post this comment. There's nothing wrong with paper except its extreme inefficiency in the human realm. We could have audit-able ballots and public/private keys to check that our ballots have been counted and tabulated correctly. Is it the case, perhaps, that ballots are supposed to be "private"…
Inefficiency is a feature, having every state and every county slightly different makes systemic fraud very difficult. All these phishing schemes that are extremely effective with IT workers and other security conscious people. I say just keep elections analog for the time being. Perhaps someday the technology will be mature, well understood, and distributed far enough to work but I don't see it happening this decade…
That's an interesting point because it effectively nullifies the argument for more nuanced voting mechanisms such as Score Voting. Since more nuanced voting would require a stronger reliance on vote tabulators. It is somewhat deflating that better voting methods must be discarded in favor of "inefficiency as a feature." I long for an upgrade to voting, but all these arguments _in favor of_ hand-counting-only make me think we are stuck with plurality voting for a long time.
Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some point in the process, vote information will be stored digitally. Whether it's posted to the SoE's website or during transmittal to the Federal or state governments. I'm also trying to imagine elections with the number of people we have and number of races being counted by hand from the beginning, with no digital storage or tabulation, and it is rife with errors and even harder to validate in a reasonable way.
Hand counting is how we do it in the U.K. It’s not actually that hard at all, including validation, through simple physical processes (that are incredibly tried and tested!). Write the contents of the vote totals on the outside of the box containing the ballots (total must reconcile to number of ballots placed in), then total all the box totals at the end for a single constituency. Constituencies then report back. We…
There are scaling issues though. The US is 5x the size of the UK. Counting is actually pretty hard and I'm not convinced it scales linearly. I'm also not convinced results are actually back in a day, but rather good estimates are given within a day.
Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's nothing wrong with paper except its extreme inefficiency in the human realm. They aren't inefficient. In the UK (paper ballots) an accurate estimate is available when the polls close, and a certain result is available within a few hours before next morning. This is much faster than US voting machines.
True, but: 1. You didn't have to count 151 million votes in the UK election 2. You didn't have to wait a few days for mail-in ballots that were delayed in transit to arrive 3. You didn't have to do this in the middle of a global pandemic that required poll workers to stay 6 feet apart Generally the US election results can be predicted the same day, this year had additional challenges due to extremely high turn-out, h…
There were 32,014,110 in the last UK general election, which is one fifth of the US total, but then the population is also (roughly) one fifth of the US’.
Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The states that had long delayed results were due to being close, and accepting mail in ballots long after polls closed. It's not a matter of counting speed.
The UK does recounts in hours, not weeks.
This election is an anomaly and should not be considered the norm. But there's also some confusion where winners get announced before the total counting is done. They are just announced when there is believed to be statistical certainty. A nation wide (full) recount is not happening in a few hours and if it was I would expect it to have a decent error margin. The UK also doesn't have as many options on the ballots as the US you have president, house, senate, judges, reps, measures, state constitution amendments, etc. You can't make a one to one comparison.
Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inefficiency is a feature, having every state and every county slightly different makes systemic fraud very difficult. All these phishing schemes that are extremely effective with IT workers and other security conscious people. I say just keep elections analog for the time being. Perhaps someday the technology will be mature, well understood, and distributed far enough to work but I don't see it happening this decade…
That's an interesting point because it effectively nullifies the argument for more nuanced voting mechanisms such as Score Voting. Since more nuanced voting would require a stronger reliance on vote tabulators. It is somewhat deflating that better voting methods must be discarded in favor of "inefficiency as a feature." I long for an upgrade to voting, but all these arguments _in favor of_ hand-counting-only make me…
I have a suspicion that a complex voting system (like, anything more complex than "most votes win") would spread greater confusion and distrust, that's just my pessimism.
I would be happy if we could have a national popular vote to choose the president, that reduces complexity. I'm wary of anything more, though I do like that there are now some experiments here and there with other systems.
Edit: I've recently come to the conclusion that the real value of elections is as a national show of force.
"1xx,000,000 of us are here and paying attention and expecting the government to respond to our interests and willing to do something about it"