[sandworm101]

>> This system just begs for being manipulated.

Paper ballots are not immune from such concerns. The concept of votes being added or removed from a count isn't a new phenomena. So the standard should be whether or not the electronic means are better, rather than them being a perfect counting method.

[patall]

Yes but that is not the point. You can also add votes to electronic voting by just allowing someone to cast more votes at it. But the difference is that with paper voting, you as a single actor can only influence one voting booth, while as a hacker, you can manipulated thousands of voting machines. So the influence of a single actor could be much bigger. Furthermore, while you can manipulate a paper ballot, you can only do so so long as an investigator is not looking. If he keeps the booth in view the whole time, you cannot add anything or change votes or whatever. A computer can not be surveyed that way because I do not see what happens inside as long as its not open source code and hardware which is signed etc.

[sandworm101]

>> ...with paper voting, you as a single actor can only influence one voting booth, while as a hacker, you can manipulated thousands of voting machines.

That depends where the person is. The people managing the process, those doing the counting, have plenty of opportunity for large manipulations. There are safeguards, but the possibility remains and must be accounted for.

[patall]

As I know it, you have 2-3 persons that count together one urn. That's not one person doing it. And you can do recounts. And adding large numbers of ballot papers is not easy because its marked how many there are in a ballot. (What is more effective is declaring a number of ballots invalid if they are not the right candidate but still, we are speaking about in extrem cases 100 votes, not possibly millions as would be possible in hacking an electronic voting machine)

[pvaldes]

One fake vote can be enough if winner takes all.

[patall]

Sure, but that is a problem of "winner takes all" and not any voting method.

[NumberCruncher]

Using paper ballots you can at least re-count the votes and validate the results of the election. With the electronic system like this you can not validate the results. Does it use an open source firmware? How can you make sure that there is no

IF vote = Clinton AND random <= small error limit not making cheating oblivious THEN vote = Trump;

line in the code?

[lisivka]

Yep, you can recount fake paper votes, but how you will distinguish fake votes from real ones? Remember, votes are anonymous, so you cannot track vote back to live being to ask. And even if you will be able to do so, live being can lie you about his vote, to protect himself, or just to not look dumb in eyes of others.

[sandworm101]

>>> ... but how you will distinguish fake votes from real ones?

Easy. Serial numbers. Like any other anonymous system (paper money, raffle tickets etc) you assign a number to every valid ballot. Should the same number appear twice, or not appear, then you know something fishy is happening. Any extra fake ballots should be discovered, so long as the originals are not removed from the systems. Throw the numbers around randomly and creating undetectable fakes become very difficult.

[rbanffy]

The order has to be random or you can trace votes to individuals if you keep the order in which they voted.

[sveiss]

In some voting systems (eg, the UK's), this is a feature, not a bug. Ballot serials are recorded against electoral register entries, and the courts have de-anonymized ballots in a few cases.

[rbanffy]

This is a very serious bug, even if courts want to exploit it.

[Retric]

Most systems seem to have two lines so it's not clear the order people voted in. Excluding hidden cameras which also work with voting machines.

[naasking]

> Yep, you can recount fake paper votes, but how you will distinguish fake votes from real ones?

You already have a log of who showed up to vote. Compare the number of shows S with the number of ballots V which must be <= S due to poorly marked/unreadable ballots. Simple.

Edit: and this all statistically correlates with exit polls. It's very, very hard to fake all three of these in order to rig an election.

[lisivka]

So yes, you have log, you have votes. How to distinguish real votes from fake ones? State can start election again from scratch, when it will find a problem, but people will vote very differently at this next election, because whole story will affect their minds and votes. Brave fakers can raise stakes and win.

[grzm]

It's not necessary for a subsequent vote to have the same outcome as the first. The issue is whether the election is secure and people have trust in the system.

[caf]

Indeed, here is a recent example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Senate_special_elec...

[lisivka]

So first goal of fakers is to ruin that. It even written as one of main goals in Russian trolls goal books. Find a copy of such book and read it: you will learn a lot.

[labster]

Explain "fake paper votes". I'm not sure that this is a real problem with normal auditing -- record all voters that come into a precinct, what time they appear, and compare to the number of received ballots. Comparing signatures of voters to the file signature is common for absentee voting. It's just far harder and riskier to mess around with compromising paper ballots than a mistake (or "mistake") in a line of code.

[lisivka]

You cannot force voters to come in and confirm that they sold their votes for exchange of money. They will lie. You must catch fakers, which is tricky when they have chance to win election and punish you, like Stalin did.

[semi-extrinsic]

As is frequently attributed to Stalin:

What counts is not who votes, but who counts the votes.

[lisivka]

"You know, comrades," says Stalin, "that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how."

Original in Russian:

Каменев. стараясь снизойти до уровня Сталина, говорит: "А вот по вопросу, как завоевать большинство в партии". - "Знаете, товарищи, - говорит Сталин, - что я думаю по этому поводу: я считаю, что совершенно неважно, кто и как будет в партии голосовать; но вот что чрезвычайно важно, это - кто и как будет считать голоса". Даже Каменев, который уже должен знать Сталина, выразительно откашливается.

На следующий день Сталин вызывает к себе в кабинет Назаретяна и долго с ним совещается. Назаретян выходит из кабинета довольно кислый. Но он человек послушный. В тот же день постановлением Оргбюро он назначен заведующим партийным отделом "Правды" и приступает к работе.

В "Правду" поступают отчеты о собраниях партийных организаций и результаты голосований, в особенности по Москве. Работа Назаретяна очень проста. На собрании такой-то ячейки за ЦК голосовало, скажем, 300 человек, против - 600; Назаретян переправляет: за ЦК - 600, против - 300. Так это и печатается в "Правде". И так по всем организациям. Конечно, ячейка, прочтя в "Правде" ложный отчет о результатах ее голосования, протестует, звонит в "Правду", добивается отдела партийной жизни. Назаретян вежливо отвечает, обещает немедленно проверить. По проверке оказывается, "что вы совершенно правы, произошла досадная ошибка, перепутали в типографии; знаете, они очень перегружены; редакция "Правды" приносит вам свои извинения; будет напечатано исправление". Каждая ячейка полагает, что это единичная ошибка, происшедшая только с ней, и не догадывается, что это происходит по большинству ячеек. Между тем постепенно создается общая картина, что ЦК начинает выигрывать по всей линии. Провинция становится осторожнее и начинает идти за Москвой, то есть за ЦК.

(Stalin faked election by printing reverted votes in «Pravda»).

[adamsea]

Paper ballots at least leave a paper-trail.

[fooker]

How do you distinguish between a real ballot and a fake ballot?

How do you know if someone decided to throw away some of them?

(While also ensuring voters remain anonymous and allowing voters to verify their votes.)

[DrPhish]

Scrutineers : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrutineer

You have a number of differently affiliated persons watching the proceedings, and having at the end a rough idea of the number of votes that were returned per polling station. Then (with some coordination that should be trivial for the smallest of political parties) those results can be independently reckoned and compared back to the official totals. Any irregularities should be quite obvious. Recounts are probably the Achilles heel of paper ballots, as you need a way to verify that they were not tampered with in the meantime

[vacri]

Scrutineers also have the advantage of being understood by anyone with a pulse. "Votes go in here, mutually opposing interests watch them like a hawk until they get to the counting center, then the count is watched by those mutually opposing interests. You can be a scrutineer yourself if you're concerned. The record can also be re-tallied if there's a concern".

Compare to voting machines: "Just trust us. You need to have deep domain knowledge in several fields before you can even start to evaluate our trustworthiness (software, hardware, security, etc)... so just trust us. No, you can't examine the machines."