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Comment by nopassrecover | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure I'm missing something simple here, but couldn't we combine electronic voting with a physical print-out that the voter receives immediately, including their vote and a unique (but anonymous) identifier.

The voter checks this print-out is correct and submits it to an audit box as they leave the voting booth.

If it is incorrect, they file an immediate complaint, and the data is later corrected based on their unique vote identifier (this could be recorded in the audit box with a vote correction audit form for that identifier).

The physical audit counts can then be retained, and spot-verified against the electronic counts if/as needed.

This assumes (as I think we must) integrity of the voting officers and of chain of custody of the physical audit voting boxes.

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There are machines that show a physical printout to the voter but the voter does not receive the paper. It remains within the machine. I know this is the case at my polling place in Missouri. I filled out a paper ballot because two of the three electronic voting machines were malfunctioning/non-operational when I voted.

>Some DREs can be equipped with Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) printers that allow the voter to confirm their selections on an independent paper record before recording their votes into computer memory. This paper record is preserved and, depending on State election codes, made available in the event of an audit or recount. -https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-equipment/

The problem is that the computer becomes effectively an expensive pencil. You haven't gained a lot, but the cost increases a lot. Worse, there is a huge increase in complexity which means more opportunity for bugs and a larger attack surface.

> unique vote identifier

This is also a serious problem if it is possible for the voter's copy of the identifier to recover their vote after they have left the voting booth. That would enable vote buying or coercing votes.

edit:

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with the detail of how mail-in ballots are handled. I should research that.

> This is also a serious problem if it is possible for the voter's copy of the identifier to recover their vote after they have left the voting booth. That would enable vote buying or coercing votes.

How is this issue currently dealt with in places that allow mail in ballots?

In Washington state (King County), the mail-in ballots are placed inside a privacy "sleeve" that contains a signed statement on the outside that you autograph. If your signature matches the signature of your voter registration, the ballot is removed from the privacy sleeve and put into an anonymous pile. It is then processed by a scantron machine. You only get a confirmation that your vote was processed into the system and counted.

But none of that prevents a Alice from forcing Bob to mark his ballot in the prescribed way, with Alice then taking it to the mailbox herself.

Bob may choose to deliberately change his signature so the ballot is at least invalidated, but that still takes a vote away from his preferred candidate, and would rely on Alice not knowing what Bob's true signature looks like.

> How is this issue currently dealt with in places that allow mail in ballots?

Good question. The best answer I have been able to come up with is that those places are simply hoping that mail in ballots are too rare to make them a target. Increasing popularity relative to in person voting could challenge that, but with today's abundance of handheld cameras, in person voting stops being much safer.

Cost is certainly lower than the cost of an unwanted or unchosen president.

This is totally viable and many countries are already using that approach.

You do gain a lot by going digital with the voting system as you can quickly count the votes.

But at the same time you can count on the integrity of the votes by keeping a physical backup with the paper votes, which can be checked if needed.

You do gain a lot by going digital with the voting system as you can quickly count the votes.

But what exactly is gained by that? The UK takes about a day, what are they losing?

That'd make sense but so would mandatory voting and not holding the bloody election on a Tuesday.

I was in and out of our last election in Australia in 5 minutes, and it occurred on a Saturday.

It'd be easier to simply count all the votes cast on a convenient day for most people than apply statistical modelling to look for anomalies in predictive data.

> That'd make sense but so would mandatory voting

> I was in and out of our last election in Australia in 5 minutes

Yes, but then countless people who pass voter ID laws and close polling stations in certain areas would be out of things to do.

That and then American politicians would actually have to work a lot harder, as right now they just count on mobilising their base to vote more than the other person's.

I'd love for voting to be mandatory, but let's face it, American politicians love the system in its current form.

As far as I know, there are people that have been advocating something very similar to this. It's not quite true that these people are being ignored completely, but on the other hand, this hasn't been done. I've never heard an actual objection to the idea. I think there's just a lack of enough people screaming loud enough. (Or maybe I'm the one who's missing something.)

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