this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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There's nothing wrong with using technology in voting, it just has to be done in an open, verifiable way.
The problem is how difficult it is to ensure it is open and verifiable. Not to mention how much easier it is to scale up attacks on digital voting systems.
If I want to forge enough paper ballets to swing an election I’m going to need a few hundred people in on it, with a group that large, someone is going to squeal, or get caught doing something dumb and uncover the conspiracy, if I want to forge digital ballots, well, I just need one person with know how and the right exploit.
It is certainly possible to make a digital voting system that is immutable once the votes are submitted, it is nearly impossible to make one that ensures that the votes being submitted are legitimate.
It’s a lot of effort and increased risk to roll out an acceptable electronic voting system, it is much easier and safer to just keep using paper ballots.
OK, cool now teach your family that calls their web browser "The internet" enough computer science to adequately understand and audit this proposed open system and convince themselves that their votes are counted in a fair, verifiable and secret manner. Also that the implementation does not have obvious side channels and what is actually running is built from the published source code.
Like, If I was part of some shady powerful elite I'd love a fully automated setup. Most people will not be able to check the system deeper than "phone displays green check mark" without an unreasonable time investment.
On the other hand, "room full of people opens box full of papers and counts them while verifying each other" is intuitive enough for almost anyone to grasp and gain confidence in.