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by rotten 3233 days ago
Why use a voting machine at all? Isn't the main point of having a polling location simply so you can verify your identity? If we could come up with a system that allowed one's identity to be verified online, or by postal service, then do we really need thousands of machines collecting the votes. Couldn't it be centralized to a handful of more easily audited systems?
2 comments
vertex-four 3233 days ago
No, the point of a polling station is so that there's provably no coercion. You fill out your ballot in secret, you're not permitted to take a photograph of it, and you place it in the ballot box without telling anybody what you've voted for.

The more you allow people to vote from their homes, the more likely it is that people can be coerced into voting the way their partner, employer, or otherwise, want them to.

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Spivak 3233 days ago
You missed one important criterion. After you vote there is no way for you to prove who you voted for. If you could verify it after the fact then it opens up potential for coercion or incentives.
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0xffff2 3233 days ago
>You fill out your ballot in secret, you're not permitted to take a photograph of it, and you place it in the ballot box without telling anybody what you've voted for.

In the US, only one of those is guaranteed [0]. In California, where I can get an absentee ballot just by asking for it, none of those is guaranteed.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-03/ballot-se...

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vertex-four 3233 days ago
Yes, well, the US also broadly thinks electronic vote recording is a good idea. Let's not pretend it's any good at designing voting systems.
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chiph 3233 days ago
There's some challenging requirements around this. You need to positively identify someone as having the right and ability to vote (no dead people voting like in Illinois). You need to make sure they vote only once (no ballot box stuffing). You need to make sure their vote wasn't coerced (as far as you can). You need to make sure their vote is anonymous (to protect the voters from retaliation). And it needs to be easy enough so that your 80 year old grandmother can do it.
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rotten 3232 days ago
Well, could you turn on the web cam and attach a picture of the person voting while they are voting?
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