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Comment by kirillzubovsky | Hacker News Reader

Glad they are doing this. Had my vote returned to me in Washington for the same dumb signature mismatch reason. Lucky enough it was in due time for me to update the signature and re-submit (I think). It's 2017 and our elections are still done using a paper signature matched by a human eye. Kind of mind-blowing how archaic it is, isn't it?

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Signature mismatch? You have to sign your ballot? Doesn't that identify that it was your ballot?

It's been a couple of years since I last voted in NZ (election in 3 weeks, and it's every 3 years) but I definitely don't think you're allowed to put any identifying mark on your ballot here..

You generally sign the envelope in which you send your ballot in, not the ballot itself.

This is about signing the envelope on a mail-in ballot. The ballots themselves are not signed. Once the ballot is removed from the envelope, it can't be identified as yours.

Washington does all vote-by-mail (except for people who need assistance or who don't have a permanent address). For the vast majority of voters, you get a ballot, a big fat book with statements from all of the candidates, and your return envelope in the mail a few weeks before the election.

After you fill out your ballot (with no identifying marks), you slip it into an inner envelope (with no identifying marks) and put that in the outer envelope (which includes your name and you have to sign).

When a ballot is received, elections officials check the signature on the outer envelope. If the signature matches, the inner envelope containing the ballot is removed from the outer envelope and dumped into a pile so no one can match the submitted ballot with the original envelope, and then the whole pile is taken in to be counted. There's an observation deck in the facility and cameras running the entire time the elections officials are counting ballots to make sure no one is cheating and checking who voted for who.

For those following at home: you sign a ballot return form to ensure only enrolled voters vote, and that they only vote once.

We don't have inner envelopes on mail-in ballots in California, though.

The inner envelope is essentially a safety mechanism to ensure that the person who might have read the name on the outer envelope does not accidentally see one of the voter's choices on the ballot.

Rejected in FL in 2012 because my signature didn't match up to when I signed my license back at the age of 16. I'm not sure how I thought they would verify but I wasn't smart enough to attempt to forge my signature from over a decade ago.

Yup. Exactly. They basically said that my signature didn't match the signature on my driver's. So... the signature on the ballot envelop was maybe 1 inch by 3 inches, but the digital screen to sigh for the licenses was like 1/4 inch by 1/3 ... no duh they didn't match. Driver's signature is a checkmark at best.

It is mind blowing because we have the technology to do it electronically but nobody can trust it because we don't have the social systems in place.

Are you saying that companies responsible for making this electronic systems can be trusted to not botch up something simple like making sure AWS config files are correct?

I'm saying we can't trust the companies to do a competent job or the government to hire someone competent.

People trust things they understand. Counting votes manually is easy to understand. It's hard to trust an electronic system.

That and in the past electronic voting systems have been designed badly. For example electronic voting systems implemented in Microsoft Access which simple increase a counter number.

It's trivial to tamper with such machines.

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