[vacri]

At Ruxcon last year there was a very interesting talk by an electoral systems researcher (I can't recall her name). She went through a number of electronic voting systems, and they all suck. Some more than others. The only case where she found a system that was close to acceptable was in a crypto organisation where everyone was highly technically fluent in the system. Certainly not transferable to the general public. She also noted that computerised systems tend to favour right-wing policies even if the algorithm is fair - people who vote for leftist policies are over-represented amongst migrants, people with disabilities, and other non-mainstream demographics.

She did have the opinion though that there was as place for electronic machines in the voting booth, and it was this: register your vote on a machine. It prints out a slip with clear, unambiguous markings against your selected candidate(s). Verify that it has the content you want, then go lodge the slip like any other paper ballot. You now have a clearer, less ambiguous version of the paper ballot, which is more accessible to people with certain kinds of disabilities to boot.

Most of the times that a paper ballot recount differs is not because of inept counters, but because some voters leave ambiguous marks. She said that in Australia, it has about the best system possible (edit: probably 'in current use') in terms of verifying the count: an AEC official does the counting, and the major parties volunteer scrutineers to challenge ambiguous voting slips. As there are mutually opposing witnesses, you get a fairly robust count - the differences come when one set of scrutineers allows one ambiguous mark, but on a recount that same ambiguous mark gets treated differently by another set of scrutineers.

The important thing is the pile of paper though - the evidence that people voted a certain way. In effect, as soon as you don't have the physical evidence, you're at the mercy of "trust us, it's accurate". How do you scrutinise that?

[gibb0n]

It was Vanessa Teague from Melbourne Uni

http://people.eng.unimelb.edu.au/vjteague/

[toyg]

>in Australia, it has about the best system possible [...] in terms of verifying the count: an AEC official does the counting, and the major parties volunteer scrutineers to challenge ambiguous voting slips

That's actually how it works in Italy as well: each poll station has an official "commission" and party-nominated "observers" who can challenge slip by slip. It's probably the fairest system one can devise, although it relies on political activism (a party without enough volunteers to cover all poll stations will likely miss out votes here and there, although this might be irrelevant depending on how winners are determined).

[wavegeek]

Correct. I have done scrutineering in Australian elections. It is fun as you get the local results before anyone else. Also you see the comments people write on the papers

Eg Youse bastards r al liers!