You can watch the box that the votes are put into, you can be present at the opening of the box, you can participate in the count. All the key parts of the process can (and in most countries do) happen in public view, and even someone with a low level of education can gain high confidence that the election is fair, trusting only other people like themselves - no need to trust the corporation that built the machine, or the politicians currently in power - you can watch it from empty box to published voting district results, and as long as you think there are people like you in each district doing similar checks, you can be confident the entire vote was done correctly.
That's good and all, but in the 4 states I've voted in, only one had a paper ballot. 3 were me showing up to the polling place and pressing buttons on a monitor. The 4th mails me a ballot, I fill things in, and send it back (so no receipt either).
Given my experience, and that several others tell me they do similar things, I don't understand your counter argument. We already do not have paper ballots to check. There is ZERO verification currently. If those ballots are printed out from the electronic machine that I voted on, well you still have to trust that a corporation did not mess with anything and printed out the wrong ballot, or just didn't print yours out. The way we are doing things and the way we used to do things don't enable the trust that you are suggesting.
But let's assume that the year is 2000 and we're voting on a paper ballot. We don't get to take a copy home. Once we leave we don't know what happens to that ballot in the box. Has our vote been counter? Did we fully punch out the paper chad? Did our ballot get lost when a country wide controversy started and my ballot got mailed around the state several times? Can I verify that the government's decision of how to count my vote reflected my actual intention?
The answer to these is that you can't do any verification of this. So I rather kinda like the idea of a website that I can go to and check that my vote was counted correctly and matches. The triviality of it from the voter side makes this process easy. Does it solve all verifiablity problems within the pipeline? No. Does it solve some? Yeah.
Personally I'd rather take a step forward, even if that step is small.
You are also able to volunteer to take part in the counting, or to observe the whole process. Sure, when you leave, you don't know that nothing bad happened, but you don't have to leave until the end of the process. In my jurisdiction, you can be part of the process that determines whether a vote is distinct (and should be voted) or not.
It sounds like you've already taken many steps backwards in your voting system, so this further step doesn't seem so bad, but it's still worse than a properly run paper system.
My voting system or the systems in the 4 states I've voted in? Which, I'll remind you, one uses paper ballots.
The year 2000 example I gave was literally what happened in Florida. Besides the chad part (which was a _MAJOR_ part of what I was suggesting as unverifiable), I'm also suggesting that given the close call there were many more opportunities for fowl play or accidents.
Really we don't care about verifiability in elections that went as expected. We care when they are close. Where mistakes make a difference. With thousands of ballots everywhere, it isn't hard for a few to get lost. Also, there were plenty of complaints about the ballot layout and how it confused people (Buchanan). You're also not going to be able to keep an eye on the ballots for 36 days (how long it took before the supreme court got involved).
Unless you have a receipt and a database you can easily access you can't really verify that your vote was counted. I'm not aware of any state that has this.
> it's still worse than a properly run paper system.
I also cannot think of a case where this is being done. I'll also note that according to this list[0], I voted with "Paper and DRE without paper trail", but I definitely did not vote on a piece of paper. I was put in front of a machine, so I'm not sure why this is called paper.
[0] https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...
If you have strong opinions about how elections should be run, the best advice I've seen is Matt Blaze's: volunteer to be an election judge in your district, to get firsthand experience.
I don't understand this argument. From my understanding the computers (I'm not using algorithmic counting because that's not a distinct enough word. By hand you're still doing an algorithm) are already counting and the paper is a backup. If we can still count up all the ballots after and have a verifiable method, then I don't see anything lost.
If you look up how elections get rigged, there are all sorts of opportunities for corrupting the election, which actually happen all over the world -- ballot boxes getting swapped out, literally stuffed with extra votes, being hidden and forgotten completely, getting "lost" or "accidentally destroyed" to prevent a recount along with forged results, the list goes on and on.
Yes the UN can send unbiased people to observe elections, but there just aren't enough to be present at every polling station and verify every step of the way. And the police tend to be happy to deny "unauthorized" people from observing... in the name of "security" to promote election integrity.
So considering that even official UN observers historically have been unable to verify the trustworthiness of many elections, I don't understand how you think "anyone who can count" could possibly do so.
You are right that ultimately it's based on trust, currently. But with technology we can have far greater certainty, and follow the phrase Reagan popularized: "trust, but verify". Elections deserve nothing less.
I'm describing elections where you can literally watch the box before it is sealed, to being opened, to having the votes counted and the count being published. If you're in a place where you are not able to do that, then yes, of course, you're running a high risk that the election is not fair.
You don't even need people to be unbiased, you just need a selection of people with different allegiances who will be able to cry foul if they see something happening that is not right because they think it will damage their side.
> But with technology we can have far greater certainty
I have yet to see any technological solution that gives greater certainty than the ballot box system. Most of them allow the voter to prove their vote or involve many more actors that must be trusted. They also provide new central points of attack, where a well run paper vote is very distributed.
I like Schneiers analysis of the papal election protocol: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/04/hacking_the_p...
Except it's not, which is the whole point.
Half the country cries foul based on observational samples but without systemic proof, and the other half of the country says they're inventing stories and cherry-picking irregularities, and that there are just as many irregularities in the other direction to cancel them out.
And the average citizen, of course, has absolutely no idea what to think. Both sides sound entirely plausible. And even if there was manipulation, nobody has any idea if it changed the outcome by 0.1% (a few bad actors) or by 10% (the president directed it), if it was enough to tip an election or not.
By introducing foolproof technological verification, all this goes away. And I don't understand how you think this doesn't exist -- isn't this HN post just one example of multiple proposals?
You can watch the box that the votes are put into, you can be present at the opening of the box...
It's happened numerous times in the Bay Area that boxes of ballots have been "found" days after an election, with votes curiously inconsistent with others from nearby precincts.
I’m a reasonably intelligent software engineer and I would not trust myself to audit the described solution to know it does what it claims.
I can, however,
* review the receipt produced by the voting machine and ensure it matches * observe the random audits of submitted receipts to tabulated votes to be sure they match
I can also trust that a wide section of the public can do those things as well.