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Comment by Scea91 | Hacker News Reader

How would you ensure that someone can't vote for another person? How would you ensure that the person is alone when she votes?

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Your argument stands on tenuous ground because you just pointed out all the flaws that exist with "mail in" ballots. Did you know that states like Oregon only have mail in ballots?

So, despite all the flaws that you point out, why are these legal but a mobile app is not?

I am actually from Europe so I don't know the specific details of your voting system. Mail-in ballots are of course a weakness, but it doesn't mean that we should further weaken the current system.

Here in Czech Republic we receive voting tickets by mail about a week before election and have to physically put them into a box behing a curtain in a voting room. I also see weakness here, and don't understand why we receive voting tickets by mail, because it allows you family relatives filter your tickets. Better system would be if the voting tickets were available only in the voting room.

Still it is better than web app. There are more security concerns with online voting, you can read more about it here: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/15417/online-go...

It's worth remembering (for non-US residents) that US voters don't just vote on a few legislative and executive candidates, but on a very large number of them. The California voter information booklet about who is running and what issues the voters can express a preference on regularly runs to over 100 pages. A completed ballot can easily involve >50 different decisions - hence the ubiquity of machine counting in the USA.

Good point, and I'm not being sarcastic: we shouldn't have mail-in voting either, for exactly those same reasons.

The mail-in ballot I sent in from home did not provide these benefits.

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