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Comment by remify | Hacker News Reader

The vote situation in the US is so fucked ! It's unbelievable.

I'm glad France is sticking to simple paper and ballot are publicly open.

As long as they actually are simple - there have been instances (e.g. in the US) where poor design of the voting paper caused confusion as to who you were actually voting for. Then there's the case of improperly filling them in, invalidating a number of voting papers as well.

Maybe do a combination? Voting machine that prints a hard copy of your vote. Activate by scanning your passport or other proof of voting right, centralized secure repository of who has voted or some kind of deduplication of votes when counting.

It’s not like digital UIs are any more immune from poor design issues that make it confusing to determine who you’re voting for. Plus you have the problem of poorly calibrated touch screens where you think you’re tapping one name but it turns out the other got activated.

Maybe do something like this: https://youtu.be/LXzJR7K0wK0

I don't understand how is it possible to design a paper ballot that is confusing. In France, you have 1 paper for each candidate with their name + party on the paper. You receive each paper by the post before an election AND there is always all the papers in the voting place anyway.

You just put the paper of the candidate you want to vote for in the ballot box and that is it.

I understand there is more complicated voting system (e.g where you can rate candidate), but when do you need to choose one option in several, why would anybody want to use a different voting paper design ?

> I don't understand how is it possible to design a paper ballot that is confusing.

Say hello to the butterfly ballot: https://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html

> You receive each paper by the post before an election AND there is always all the papers in the voting place anyway.

That opens the possibility to observe people picking up the paper of $CONTROVERSIAL_CANDIDATE and dropping it into the box, thus revealing who they voted for.

They usually are behind a closed booth, at least in Spain.

> That opens the possibility to observe people picking up the paper of $CONTROVERSIAL_CANDIDATE and dropping it into the box, thus revealing who they voted for.

You are supposed to pick at least two papers and usually there are enough paper so that everyone can pick one of each. Then you go to a booth, hidden behind a curtain and put one of the paper in an envelope (given after the official has checked your elector's card), discard the other paper in a basket case, then drop the envelope in the ballot box.

Of course it limits the possibilities of the vote: one person can only vote for one candidate, on the other hand, it's easier to understand for the voters.

US ballot is a lot more complex than in most western European countries in that voters have a say on a lot more stuff! You vote for president, senate, congress, sheriff, education board members, a bunch of other offices, and also constitutional amendments. All on the same day/occasion - if spreading it out many election days would be needed!

A google on “US state general ballot sample” gave me this: https://cdn.ballotpedia.org/images/3/33/Colorado_sample_ball...

As others said, sometimes we are voting on a lot of offices and a lot of initiatives/propositions. A voter is in several different type of districts, and the boundaries often don't line up, so your neighbor may be in the same federal congressional district, but not the same state congressional district, etc. Commonly in California, I voted on congressional districts, water district, lower school school district, high school school district, community college school district, water district, sanitary district, flood control district, vector control district, county supervisors, and I wasn't even in a city to have city supervisors or mayor. Almost all of these electrions are timed together, in order to increase turnout and reduce the election expenses.

Ocassionaly, we have hundreds of candidates for one office (ex California governor recall replacement that got Arnold Schwarzenegger into office).

Activate by scanning your passport or other proof of voting right

There are two problems with that:

1. People consider it discreminatory unless the US mass-distributes some voter ID thing that is near-forced into the possession of everyone who can vaguely verify their identity (which I disagree with but whatever)

2. More importantly, someone will fuck up the 'secret' part of the secret ballot, which will get leaked/hacked into the public, which in the current level of public discourse would probably end in WWIII

>> Voting machine that prints a hard copy of your vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter-verified_paper_audit_tra...

>> Activate by scanning your passport or other proof of voting right, centralized secure repository of who has voted or some kind of deduplication of votes when counting.

This part (i.e - authorize the voter) should always be separate from actual voting system to protect the system of secret ballot for a true democracy.

In some election, we start to have voting machine. They are rolling out slowly but they are coming :/

Voting machines can be safe(r). It's just that there seem to be no incentive. Contractor should pay at least twice the money he received in case a security flaw is found among clearly stated attack vectors. No contractor wants to take such offer? That means we are not ready for voting machines yet.

> Voting machines can be safe(r).

Please expand.

As is, voting machines are the worst idea imaginable. I have yet to read any positive argument for voting machines.

Positive: Easier / (much) faster vote counting, not prone to human error or counter bias / agenda.

I'm not a fan of insecure voting machines myself but I can come up with some reasons why one would want to use machines.

> Easier / (much) faster vote counting

Irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. I would much rather wait one more day to have the definitive name of my new president than have a machine decide that for me 24hours earlier.

> not prone to human error or counter bias / agenda

That's why vote counting is a public ceremony; and also why the "voting neighborhoods" are quite small. See e.g. https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F16828 (in French). At least 2 people count the votes, etc.

Agree, in Italy every "voting neighborhoods" has a committee that needs to agree on criteria for unclear or invalid votes. (obviously the people on the committee often have political affiliation, but there is a selection process to ensure some kind of balance)

You know people can just forge or manipulate paper ballots. There was even an instance that happened live on Russian TV where they were stuffing ballots.

In the US, forging/stuffing to the point that it matters in any regional election, to say nothing of national elections, is sufficiently hard that it is literally easier to outspend your opponent in advertising in the race.

You've dismissed the potential benefits, so it's a hard argument to make, but I very much like the idea of the style of machine that let's you pick electronically, then prints a paper ballot displayed to you - you accept it and it goes into the same sort of secure container ballots always have, or you reject it and it is trashed.

We get the benefits of electronics with the benefits of a tried and tested paper ballot system. We no longer have people arguing over stray pencil marks or trying to cross out mistakes.

We even get some extra checks on the paper system: today, if there is a discrepancy between the count of people coming to vote and the number of ballots we don't know which is wrong - this would introduce a third number to compare against.

Electronic voting machines were rushed in following the whole "hanging chad" thing, and were done terribly, with credible accusations of corruption involved (see Diebold, who are still out there under a different name) when a better ballot design process would have done the trick, but that doesn't mean we cant get some benefits from electronics, so long as we put accuracy and verifiability first.

At some point we will want voting from home (outside of mail in) and I'd rather shake out bugs gradually than expect some future generation to get it right the first time

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