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‘Mischief and problems’: rightwing activists ramp up drive to hand-count ballots
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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Few legal documents have the anonymity requirements of ballots.
The problem is that voters need to trust all of the devices between the voter, the database, and the person who declares the winner. With software, that's hard. How do you convince Jane Public that the iPad is reporting accurately across some Verizon network to the IBM Db2 instance which is telling the truth to the state election official? Even when it's working perfectly, it's opaque to most people.
The great thing about paper ballots is that representatives of all interested parties can watch the whole thing and audit the results. Representatives of each candidate are present at the ballot counting, and they forward the counts to the campaign HQ. It's easy to watch and explain.
I'm not sure how an electronic system can provide that level of openness.
It shouldn't be too hard to have two separate databases. One with personal identifying info attached and one without. It could even allow voters to look up their vote later if they wanted to confirm how it was cast. The database without identifying info could be made public so people could compare results on their own vote counting software.
There's always a relevant xkcd:
How many people who are pissed with the results might claim an alternate cast vote later on just to bring the machines into question? It wouldn't take many to do this to create a fair amount of distrust.
Opposed too now? People already claim the votes are counted wrong.
Perception. People trust a vote that is more transparent and completed by two independent people.
Personally I trust the electronic one entirely but I could see it a bug occurring that puts some future election results in question. Would you trust it if an AI wrote the program?