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Comment by munk-a | Hacker News Reader

The beautiful thing with paper ballots is that the case is clear cut and strong enough without even dredging any of that up... it's just that partisan politics has become so entrenched that even mutually beneficial bills need to be passed with concessions to the less interested party.

I'm fine with a debate on the specifics but paperless voting machines have no place in the world. What you're giving up far outweighs the marginal benefits.

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The problem is that it isn't mutually beneficial in terms of the next election cycle.

It absolutely is, while the winner may be influenced by the lack of a paper trail the real cost to society is the erosion of trust, there is a not insignificant portion of the country that currently believes our last election was no democratic[1]. If the Dems win in 2020 and the GOP similarly questions the legitimacy of the election - whether legitimately or not (say if Trump were to refuse to leave until a recount could be conducted) then that proportion will grow. There is a level that proportion of mistrust can reach where the US will devolve into anarchy, then everyone loses the game forever.

Just to note, please don't read politics into this, I've attached my own leanings clearly in case anyone thinks I favor one side or the other but I am trying to state this without it being partisan in nature.

1. And while I'm a progressive, I'm not in this camp.

There are actors, who were involved in that election, who see discord, chaos, and a weakened US as a bonus, no matter who the winner.

I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about blockchain here... we need democratization of information. How can one trust the vote counters? Put it in a distributed ledger with checks and balances.

Is there a good solution that covers voter anonymity, guarantee of record, immutability and verification without exposing the voting process to vote stealing? I haven't seen one that seems to cover all the bases in terms of security and, while I adore computers, I think while we're on paper we can rely on societal pressure to cover up some of the more minor defects in our system while transitioning voting to blockchain opens us up to computer based attacks... to reword, we're sort of benefiting from security by obscurity simply by the volume of how many checks are currently on the system and how difficult it is to simultaneously break all those checks - my concern is that in an entirely electronic system executing a time sensitive attack where multiple actors need to be compromised in a co-ordinated manner before they can communicate their compromised state becomes much more do-able... if your attack relies on Sharon transferring the ballots to a secure van at the same time as Leonard in the next county over then it'll fail since people are unreliable, but computers are more predictable.

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