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by saturn8601 601 days ago
>The only way to get an honest electronic vote is by giving realtime visibility on who voted what and where publicly.

How about having the voter verify a printed copy of their electronic vote before the machine casts the ballot and then counting the paper ballots afterwards to verify the tally with the machine. Two way verification. Problem solved.

Since 2016, with the help of activists over the country, NJ and many otther states switched to electronic machines with paper records validated by the voter. Unfortunately the part about counting the paper ballots afterwards varies between states.
1 comments
ytpete 600 days ago
I believe since 2002 all electronic voting machines must produce a paper receipt like that, due to the Help America Vote Act.

I don't think most states hand-check every single ballot, but I'd be shocked if there are any that don't perform random audits where some sampling of the receipt are hand-checked.

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saturn8601 600 days ago
As of 2024 there are still many states that are still using DRE: Direct Record Electronic: a voter records the vote digitally and any paper record, if available is printed after the fact.

[1]:https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...

I am not a fan of Optical scan either. In NY back in 2019 I was a volunteer for a local election that was super close and we discovered that the machines rejected a bunch of votes. We then had to challenge the election and do a manual hand count. For the votes rejected by the machine that were not fully legible we had to find the voter who cast the ballot. I recall some ballot were rejected for stupid reason like there was a mustard stain on the ballot(this is in NYC ha ha). In the end I think we lost by 60 votes or so.

A good system in my mind is what NJ has moved to (although it seems like they have not moved to this system statewide which is a shame): DRE with paper trail. Essentially, the voter votes, the machine prints a paper record and shows it to the voter so they can verify. Once they verify, the vote is cast and the paper is deposited into a sealed box.

Unfortunately they only go back and count the paper for close races but they should really do it for all races.

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