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by an_account 2457 days ago
Paper ballot, electronic counting. Best of both worlds. You get a quick count, but also if there’s shadiness/hacking going on you can always recount the paper.

Some states seem to be moving towards absentee voting over the internet, which will be a mess when accusations of hacking start flying.

3 comments

Voting over the internet? Oh dear... But it theoretically could be a use case for blockchain.

Still I don't get it why voting in the US is so complicated and difficult. Even India does a better job. There is also a reason why most other western countries have a paper ballot, they are harder to temper with.

> Voting over the internet? Oh dear... But it theoretically could be a use case for blockchain.

Upon deployment of such scheme, it will be quickly discovered - or claimed - that some of the voters had their voting software MITMed, or their computers hacked, or whatever.

With electronic voting, you have to secure the whole chain, starting from a person interacting with their device. It's not like finance, where you can paper over malware or direct attacks on people's devices through police investigations, reimbursements and insurance payouts. Mere accusation of a e-voting's equivalent to Zeus being deployed would call an election into question.

Paper ballots are easy to tamper with when there are chain-of-custody issues regarding the ballots.
Maybe, but certainly not at a scale needed to influence the election outcome without anybody noticing. Voting over the internet is totally different in that regard.
Paper ballot, people counting.

There cannot be a black box in a voting system.

It works perfectly well in the UK and is literally impossible to hack because all the candidates are in the room with the people counting the votes. There are also two people with the votes (in a sealed bag) at all time during transit

> but also if there’s shadiness/hacking going on you can always recount the paper.

It depends on the country, but typically you need some valid reason to require recounting. And "my favourite candidate got less votes than I expected" doesn't sound like a valid reason.