[staunch]

> ...you'd rather trust a few tens of people to write the software and audit it?

Of course not. All of the software should be open source, with multiple independent implementations, test suites, etc. And the data should be open to analysis by any number of people while preserving people's right to privacy (this is one of the hard parts).

Most people have no any idea how electronic voting machines work today, so why does it matter if laymen understand the internet voting system?

The point is that anyone that is willing and able could verify for themselves that the system does work as intended. Not that most people will actually put in the effort. Most will rely on trusting experts, but anyone is free to verify.

With paper ballots and a handful of officials involved, there is no way for a voter to verify anything, they are forced to rely on trust alone.

[throwaway936482]

This is bull. You can be one of the people who does the counting or you can watch it take place. There should be no electronic voting machines involved, that's the whole point of having a manual system. That allows basically anyone who wants to, including a hypothetical five year old, to verify that the system is working as intended. Your system relies on me going out and getting a PhD in cryptography to verify that the system is working as intended. Your system requires basically everyone to rely on trust, a well designed manual system requires basically no one to rely on trust. I know which one I'd prefer.

[staunch]

You're trusting that all the ballots are present, that no fake ballots have been added, and none have been tampered with, that the officials are all acting in good faith, aren't making mistakes, haven't been bribed, etc.

Do you really think paper ballots have not been used to rig elections? Because that's absurd given the current situation in Belarus and the long history of ballot tampering going back thousands of years.

Paper ballot counting is security theater. A system based on math and software could be provably secure.

[throwaway936482]

Of course paper ballots can be undermined. The point is that you can easily tell that they have been undermined by the big burly blokes following people into polling stations and threatening you if you don't vote for the preferred candidate, or the ballot boxes turning up in the swamp. You're asking us to trust a magic algorithm that, as I pointed out in another comment, is likely to be proprietary and back doored to hell and back because it is controlled and implemented by the sort of government that rigs elections. This opens up the possibility of subtle, undetectable election tampering, which is much harder to do with a properly run manual system that everyone can understand and participate in.

[staunch]

You rely on "magic" algorithms every time you fly in an airplane or drive a car. Because they're not "magic" at all but based in reality, on math and science.