Electronic voting can mean different things as computers can plan different roles in the voting process. For example, just in terms of recording votes, we have
- internet voting
- touch screen voting
- optical scan voting
Computers can also be used in other roles, such as voter verification, vote tabulation, and results transmission, result verification, and auditing.
With only paper ballots, arbitrary vote verification is likely to be a tedious process, if possible at all. Cryptographic methods such as homomorphic tallying can ensure vote secrecy and vote verifiation. This can also provide stronger guarantees of chain of custody integrity by verifying voter receipts or cast paper ballots are included in the final tally. With only paper ballots, trust that a given cast ballot is included in the result relies on trust in those doing the tallying and the chain of custody of the ballots themselves.
One could imply from the phrasing of your question that you have reservations about any benefits electronic voting might have. What's your take?
I fail to see how the benefits outweigh the added complexity and lack of trust.
Optical scan is the only above mentioned method that can be verified by laypeople.
Also, although a tedious process, paper voting has worked for quite some time. Centuries?
Chain of custody will always be a problem, whether it be source code to a compile runtime, or paper ballots.
However, the potential for abuse seems less likely for a more manual process.
A voter signs in to vote, so we know how many voters to reconcile to the same number of ballots. If we have more ballots cast than signed in votes, we have a problem.
Additionally, ballots are serialized, though not associated with any particular individual. So we know what ballots were used and unused. If we find multiple ballots with the same serial number, we know there is a problem, too.
Voting should not rely on a blackbox algorithm. The majority of the voting public can count pieces of paper, but can they understand and verify code running on a device?
Who cares if it saves time, particularly at the cost of transparency and trust?
My question to you is, what problem did electronic voting solve (as implemented in the US), that needed solving?
- internet voting
- touch screen voting
- optical scan voting
Computers can also be used in other roles, such as voter verification, vote tabulation, and results transmission, result verification, and auditing.
With only paper ballots, arbitrary vote verification is likely to be a tedious process, if possible at all. Cryptographic methods such as homomorphic tallying can ensure vote secrecy and vote verifiation. This can also provide stronger guarantees of chain of custody integrity by verifying voter receipts or cast paper ballots are included in the final tally. With only paper ballots, trust that a given cast ballot is included in the result relies on trust in those doing the tallying and the chain of custody of the ballots themselves.
One could imply from the phrasing of your question that you have reservations about any benefits electronic voting might have. What's your take?