Electronic voting is a terrible idea. Lil’ bits of paper with representatives watching the vote counters is a pretty solid system. There’s no problem there that needs to be fixed.
I say this as a Canadian who has volunteered as an observer in federal elections. I know Americans have their thing going on, but seriously. Paper ballots all the way.
I have never volunteered to count or observe elections. However I am a professional programmer, and I absolutely agree, electronic voting opens up tons of new attacks, whereas paper voting “security” is basically a solved problem at this point
If code was impossible to make safe banks would still be doing manual labour and ATMs would’ve been phased out.
Financial transactions are logged and the logs maintained for a certain number of years. You can definitely use a similar system for voting when the stakes are low - local elections, for example. But an electronic voting system cannot be both secret and verifiable. In practice you make finding out how someone voted as hard as possible, and hope that a future government will not put in the effort to crack your system. All of which is completely unnecessary when paper ballots exist, and can be both secret and verifiable.
Electronic voting is a terrible idea. Lil’ bits of paper with representatives watching the vote counters is a pretty solid system. There’s no problem there that needs to be fixed.
I say this as a Canadian who has volunteered as an observer in federal elections. I know Americans have their thing going on, but seriously. Paper ballots all the way.
I have never volunteered to count or observe elections. However I am a professional programmer, and I absolutely agree, electronic voting opens up tons of new attacks, whereas paper voting “security” is basically a solved problem at this point
Brazilian elections continue to be fine for decades, this fear mongering is precisely what the right does whenever they lose.
If code was impossible to make safe banks would still be doing manual labour and ATMs would’ve been phased out.
Financial transactions are logged and the logs maintained for a certain number of years. You can definitely use a similar system for voting when the stakes are low - local elections, for example. But an electronic voting system cannot be both secret and verifiable. In practice you make finding out how someone voted as hard as possible, and hope that a future government will not put in the effort to crack your system. All of which is completely unnecessary when paper ballots exist, and can be both secret and verifiable.
Local elections are not low stakes. Most of the services you receive are from the municipality you live in.
Just because they’re less polarizing doesn’t mean the stakes are lower.
‘Low stakes’ as in ‘the new mayor isn’t sending everyone who didn’t vote for their party to jail’.
We don’t have a unified thing. We definitely don’t.
oh it’s a thing
Ok, i made an edit
Works fine in french election abroads.
But yes vote by mail is best.