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Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

>Technology just introduces black boxes that citizens are somehow expected to trust

oh please. People trust the lock sign on HTTPS all day without understanding it. (or mastercard or the bridge they drive over or well anything).

Avoiding superior technological solutions just because the man on the street doesn't understand them is a bad approach. If society did that we'd still be in the 1800s.

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> oh please. People trust the lock sign on HTTPS all day without understanding it

Yes, and the internet is an absolute cesspool when it comes to security. Do we really want to hold up the internet as a shining success that we should be applying to probably the most important institution we have?

And people are quite OK to trust these. In these cases there is a central authority from which trust can be established. Voting is the opposite. During voting the central authority is being changed by the man on the street. He therefore needs to understand how it works otherwise how is he in control?

People don't trust the lock sign on HTTPS. They don't know what it means. That's OK for some website, things work anyway.

If an election goes against you and you don't clearly understand and trust the voting mechanism, you're not going to vote next time because why bother? It's all rigged anyway.

The understanding is an important part of voting, not in general use of technology and the parent did mention this:

> The most important feature of elections

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