I don't understand the need for e-voting. Germany's entirely paper-based system works fine! After voting closes, volunteers count the votes for a few hours and we get a result.
Canada also uses hand counted paper ballots and it works great. There's no need to make large-scale voting electronic, and I'd never trust it without major social institutions in place that can provide the kind of oversight we have with good old paper ballots.
Hard not to "blame the referee" when the supreme judge-kings in charge of the electronic voting system are openly partisan to say the least.
In fact, the issue of fair elections in Brazil has become background noise because of these so called "referees". They have usurped so much power elections are just theater at this point. It doesn't matter who wins because in the end it's the judge-kings who rule the country. There's no point in even discussing the matter until their fall.
That's perhaps not the best example of a stable democracy. Lots of people in Brazil mistrust the voting system, and they were pretty close to a coup d'etat after their last election, with polticians thrown in jail and so on.
The pilot is for people unable to get to a polling booth. Traditionally, we use postal votes for this. But postal votes enable voter fraud (primarily selling your vote), so we can only use it for a small portion of votes or results become too suspect.
So paper systems require ballot boxes and polling stations for the vast majority, which makes elections expensive, complicated, and generally problematic. And unpopular, with low turnout, particularly during flu season and pandemic.
Wider participation in voting? Easier to vote for people who can’t travel to the voting station, for myriad reasons? Just more efficient for everyone involved?
And bigger picture, once you prove a system that’s easier, more efficient, reliable… you could expand to more votes on more things. Like… the Swiss do.
—-
(A German advocating for paper-based bureaucracy… whatever next? ;) )
Drawing two crosses on a piece of paper every couple of years has really nothing to do with democracy. Democracy is when one can vote on all topics on any level (local village, town, district, county, state, ...) using the computer at home. This is possible to implement using the algorithms/data structures available today. We actually do basically everything online today - except voting.
For instance, such a system would be immune to corruption. That's one of the major reasons such a system will likely never appear.
> For instance, such a system would be immune to corruption
OTOH, it enables vote buying and intimidation at scale: you vote from home in exchange for 5€/not being beat up and have to film yourself doing it, so that the local bad guy gets authorized to bulldoze the local nature reserve.
Vote buying and intimidation already exist, but proving it is harder, all remote voting on everything would just make it more convenient.
The only potential benefit I can think of is getting results faster, but it's really not important enough to optimise for.
Maybe a dual system of paper ballots and e-voting could be good so that they cross check each other. Can't stuff paper ballots without manipulating the digital counter, can't manipulate the digital counter without stuffing ballots. A digital counter also enables meta analysis which could identify suspicious patterns, like a wave of votes for a particular candidate.
Another possible benefit I've heard of is it can stop some kinds of voter intimidation:
Someone gets hand of an empty ballot, they fill in the ballot and give it to you and tell you to come back with another empty ballot. Rinse and repeat. Of course, with today's smartphones there are simpler ways to do this. Also moot if you can vote by mail, which is why voting by mail is a really bad idea.
there's a much simpler solution for in person voting, used in Italy for example: you have a numbered sticker on the ballot, when you get the ballot the sticker id is written down, when you get out of the voting booth it gets verified and detached.
The ballot you throw in the box does not have the sticker (vote is anonymous) and you cannot come in with a pre-marked ballot (and being out one) cause the number would not match.