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this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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A broken clock etc etc
Also, relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2030/
A classic. By the way electronic with paper trail gives you faster counts, a way to validate the results and recompute them by hand when there’s an issue.
And doing voting over multiple days and/or by mail in ballots gives you time to count everything.
The people pushing for same day and only that day with all votes counted that day just ignore the logistics and practicality of having people vote. Or, I suspect, rather like that it makes it impossible for highly populated areas to have their votes counted while lower populated areas votes are counted.
I’ve seen pushes for mail in ballots to be held and not counted until Election Day and then only those ballots counted by the end of Election Day counted. Which is absurd. Do mail in, count them up to and after. Or count them up to and give people with mail in ballots access to them a lot earlier. So they can be accurately counted leading up to Election Day.
Of course the logistics of having people able to monitor those ballots over a larger period of time is tricky too. Hence why they’re often not counted until day of and so, by extension, result in ballots not being fully counted for a few days.
One day only in person voting is purposeful suppression of votes.
Also, am coder, 100% agree with xkcd. I'm still amazed the Internet itself works.
It is theoretically possible to devise a mathematically secure electronic voting system using cryptography, but only if everyone can follow instructions perfectly and people can understand how it works and why their vote is secure. In other words, not in any way that would work in real life.
The principal benefit of pen-and-paper voting is that it is really easy to convince people that taking a ballot paper into a booth, marking it, and then depositing the ballot into a locked glass box which is later counted in front of a room of independent observers is a secure way to run elections. It is impossible to convince the average voter that cryptographically secure voting schemes are actually immune from tampering.
Edit: I never understood why we have "election days". Why not have an "election week"?
Same here. FWIW, it's built on older, slower, less-reliable tech, which forced ridiculous amounts of resiliency into every layer of the design. It's still amazing, but perhaps slightly less so if we look back 40 years. I'm convinced that some parts are running just fine over infrastructure no better than wet string.
Having multiple days of open voting would be a game changer for some people. It can be absurdly difficult to actually get the day off, depending on the employer, and I've had ones try to treat it as a "perk", like it shouldn't be the damned baseline that we're able to actually take part in the democratic process they're parading around like a shiny bauble.
Personally I think they should do something like opening the polls on October 1st and then have November 1st be closing day, and all through October we take a page from the aussies and just have a rolling cookout/party at each of the polling places.
Ya get your "I voted sticker" any time in the month and can walk right in for beer and hot dogs and heck maybe even some of Kronk's spinach puffs if that one guy can make Babish's recipe work like he said he was gonna at the planning meeting for who's bringing the goods, and best of all, it's rolling for a month, so you've got every opportunity to stop in and cast your ballot, or just to come back with your "I voted" sticker to keep enjoying the festivities!
This is our most sacred institution as a nation, we should be making a celebration out of it!
Yup, I'm in a state with mail voting, and it's great! The ballot comes with the "I voted" sticker, you can drop off the ballot any time before election day (or mail it), and you can check if they've received and counted it online. It's great! I've never been to a voting booth and I don't intend to ever go.
That sounds a lot like early voting which I have used in the past.
In Minnesota, the law requires employers to give employees time off (of their choosing) to vote. At my previous job where they were anal about time in the office, I made a point of voting in the middle of the day which would require another commute. When I got the nasty email about "break too long". I just replied with a link the statute. And made sure all my co-workers knew what their rights were.
As commies would say, you showed class consciousness.
Damn. "Perk" of being citizen.
Oh, I can assure you that-
I never should have doubted you.
When city falls asleep, mafia awakens
Yah, on this particular thing, he's not wrong.
Everythinge else, though, he's fucking batshit.
Exactly what I was thinking.
Blockchain technology based (BBVS) could be safer but regular EVMs are still hackable
Trustless systems are always better than centralised systems especially when the government in power is also in authority to decide whether they continue to stay in power.
US has been blessed till now.
But look at Russian or North Korean elections. They also use paper ballots
I am confident that Putin is not gonna last if they go for a blockchain based voting system.
The problem is not being secure; it is convincing people that it is secure. Even the stupidest person understands that marking off a paper in a booth and then depositing it in a locked box is secure. The voting method must give voters confidence that their vote was counted, the election was fair, and the results are legitimate.
Also, you can recount papers if you think something somewhere went wrong for some reason. You can't manually recheck software.
That gives so much more opportunity for human intervention.
A good locksmith is all it takes to manipulate the votes.
Even if you keep it under tight security and surveillance they can bribe the security.
In my state, here's how it works:
To break that system, you'd need to also hack the website or manipulate the votes on election day. That's a lot harder than manipulating proprietary software by bribing a software engineer somewhere.
In my country here's how it works:
How would you propose we deal with this when people who are working (and can't take a day off to go vote) would come out in much smaller numbers than ones that have nothing else to do (and get free lunch and transit to and from the polling stations) and even when voting happens on a weekend you have to trade your only time off to go and vote out of the goodness of your heart.
I think this is one of the reasons for digital voting - I'd much rather be able to vote from work or home or anywhere when I don't have the time to sit on a queue for 5 hours just to have my vote diminished by a group that isn't politically active but loves a free lunch and something to do
EVMs aren't a vote from home option, they just replace steps 1&2 with a machine instead of a ballot drop box. So maybe your wait goes down to 2-3 hours because it's a little faster.
I'm saying we replace the physical voting locations entirely and you can drop your ballot in your mailbox, or drop it at one of the secure voting boxes throughout the city. So it doesn't matter if you work two jobs and can't get a couple hours off, if you can check your mail and fill out a form, you can vote. And the ballot comes a few weeks before election day, so you have time.
I think we should also have a federal "election day" holiday so people can research candidates and vote.
I believe that's why people are pushing for a week of early voting, and the ability to vote by mail with postage paid.
Also, if you increase the number of polling stations and keep them available longer, the wait goes down.
We can also pass laws to make it so employers must give workers time to vote at the workers discretion.
Most of what you describe is the result of an effort to make voting harder to keep turnout low. The way to fix it is to make it easier, not to make it less secure.
I am not in favour of EVMs here.
However there are pros and cons for both systems
I am just saying if you go for an electronic voting system using an airtight blockchain like Bitcoin and ethereum to verify votes using a biometric database is the only system trustworthy enough because.
If you use multiple blockchains like these it would require 10 trillion dollars or more to get the computing and staking power to hack the system.
It's inconceivably costlier than hacking a physical election.
Russia also has paper ballots and I can assure you we can easily kick out Putin with a blockchain based voting system.
In many countries there is a security camera placed over the ballot box which is livestreamed to the Internet
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/elections/lok-sabha/maharashtra/cctvs-turned-off-for-45-mins-supriya-sule/articleshow/110094264.cms
Just turn off the camera and manipulate all you like
"Playing board games is pointless because people can just cheat"
No it wouldn’t.