[endgame]

Just use paper, and count by hand on the day.

You need to present an election system that will convince Joe Q. Public, who is almost certainly not as tech-literate as this forum, is probably not even white-collar or university educated, and likely also suspicious of globalisation. "Tamper-proof Indian system-on-a-chip" does not have that property. Otherwise you get increasingly unhinged arguments over the election results until something breaks.

[akira2501]

A high speed electronic ballot reader with a mechanical counter display. So you can stand there and watch it count. Then run it through a duplicate machine. It should say the same thing.

Appropriately documenting these occurrences should not be hard. Appropriately archiving them would be moderately difficult but would serve as the evidence of the final tally. The final tally of all precincts could then be calculated by any number of independent organizations.

There can't be any hard to understand computer voodoo, deleteable audit logs, or single vendor reporting the final tally. No one should trust that anyways.

[CaliforniaKarl]

Unfortunately, hand-counting causes more errors than electronic counting, except in very small communities.

Ref.: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hand...

[Cthulhu_]

It's not so much about errors tbh - paper votes can be re-counted as often as needed. The fear is that voting machines are insecure, its input or results tampered with, and then you can't do a recount. Unless they generate a paper receipt as well that the voter has to confirm before the vote is counted.

[CaliforniaKarl]

> Unless they generate a paper receipt as well that the voter has to confirm before the vote is counted.

Indeed! I've volunteered at polling places where this is done.

I think one reason polling places have gravitated towards the "use paper ballots for everything, which are then scanned" option is because you're likely going to have something like that anyway, for mail-in ballots. It does bring problems, but you still have the paper to fall back to.

[cwalv]

The machine prints a paper record at the same time. Couldn't they just read off the paper record as easily as recounting paper ballots?

[dragonwriter]

The voter-verified paper record for use in audit (including recount) purposes has been a federal law requirement in effect since January 1, 2006, for voting machines (adopted under the Help America Vote Act of 2002.)

[arp242]

> paper votes can be re-counted as often as needed

That's not exactly what happened in Florida 24 years ago.

In principle I don't really disagree, but just saying the problems run rather deeper than just hand-counting vs. electronic voting. The one time a recount actually would have been useful it was stopped for highly legalistic reasons that are hard to explain to a normal person. Not only that, it's highly likely – perhaps even probable – that Gore won Florida, although we'll never know for sure.

I see no reason it would play out any different today. We all saw what happened during the last election.

Not only that, with the full-on cult of Trump and the perceived victimhood of his supporters, I'm not really sure to what degree hand counts can always be trusted. Given the very small margins in some states, even a very small error rate (malicious or otherwise) can really matter. Perhaps this is paranoid, but I fully expect Trumpdroids to try to cheat. Any idiot can cheat a handcount "by accident" (prove it otherwise), but actually tampering with voting machines is operationally much more complex, and not something any ol' yahoo can easily pull off (need not just technical knowledge, but also physical access).

tl;dr: it's all pretty fucked no matter what.

[CaliforniaKarl]

> That's not exactly what happened in Florida 24 years ago.

Which is one of the reasons why the Help America Vote Act[0] was passed two years later.

> The one time a recount actually would have been useful…

I understand things are stressful, but please avoid resorting to hyperbole. There are other times in American history when a recount has changed the result. For example, see the 2004 Washington State gubernatorial election[2].

> Not only that, with the full-on cult of Trump and the perceived victimhood of his supporters, I'm not really sure to what degree hand counts can always be trusted.

> tl;dr: it's all pretty fucked no matter what.

Be an observer.

Seriously: Be an observer. For example, Orange County (California) has their public notice[2] inviting "the public" (that's you!) to observe election operations. Tomorrow, assuming you're in a place that allows early voting, go to a polling place or vote center (or whatever they're called there) and observe. On (and after) Election Day, go to your county's registrar of voters (or whatever they are called where you are) and observe the tally. Learn how to call out when something is wrong, and learn how to "observe the observers" to call out if they say something is wrong (assuming you think their call is BS.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_America_Vote_Act

[1]: https://ocvote.gov/sites/default/files/elections/gen2024/Pub...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_...

[Spivak]

Ironically in the US the current nonsense about election fraud might push electronic ballots further. If you're going to cry wolf over paper ballots then you might as well do whatever you want, literally nothing will ever satisfy them. There's no sense even trying to appease.

[z3ncyberpunk]

"nonsense about election fraud"... the very real election fraud happening all over the place, just as it did last election (in which the legal truths are just being made public)?

[Spivak]

Look, I don't know who you are or what has led you to this position, but it's worth I think giving an appeal a chance. You are being tricked and manipulated for someone else's political gain. I know it sucks to hear and every human's response to shut down the thoughts, because admitting to yourself that you've been had is an uncomfortable thought. But I'm asking you to at least entertain the possibility.

We talk a lot on HN about people's beliefs being a reflection of the systems they're placed under— you show me the incentives I'll show you the outcome— and the incentives are clear as day. Democratic voters have two nice properties that are being exploited, Democrats are generally concentrated in major metro areas, and Democrats vote early and by mail. Being concentrated makes those counties easy targets for lawsuits hoping to tie up the process with vague nothingness and rule-lawyering to try and turn away voters. Attacking mail in voting very cleanly affects almost entirely Democrats. And pre-undermining the election results act as a hedge to explain away a loss. Because this is a must-win election for Trump's GOP, two losses in a two risks pushing the "MAGA" faction of the party into irrelevancy.

And so that's what you see, it's a narrative that has been pushed hard designed specifically to carry out the exploit. It's genuinely clever and once it reaches critical mass the people who are tricked into actually believing it outnumber the original concern-trolls so it's naturally self-perpetuating.

So look, I have no expectation that you'll change your stance, I just hope at least that if you really bought into it that going forward you'll at least do it on purpose and be in on the game.