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Comment by colejohnson66 | Hacker News Reader

> ...so there must be an ulterior motive for pushing on tech solution so hard

I know someone in the industry who thinks software voting will solve the issues. It’s not ulterior motives; People actually believe it will help.

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Agreed, I see a lot of "if Estonia can do online voting, why can't we?" When I talk to some of these people, who work in the SV as software engineers, I realize not everyone has a wide ranging context on security and privacy. Not everyone religiously attends or watches DEFCON presentations...

There is also a continuous push to make results available faster, basically instantly. The media is as guilty as everyone else here. Like we can't wait for a few days for results.

Lastly reducing the amount of total paid workers and volunteers in the field to reduce costs likely looks like a shiny object in many managers eyes.

> not everyone has a wide ranging context on security and privacy

Hey, it sounds like you just came up with an excellent screening question for interviewing potential software developers for any project with security and/or privacy requirements.

"Do you think electronic voting is a good idea?" A "yes" answer would suggest strongly that the candidate does not have a deep understanding of software security and privacy issues.

If they went to a single DEF CON talk on voting they'd strongly favour paper.

Nothing beats the relaxation of voting by mail. Secure? Better then most.

Keep in mind that mail-in ballots are counted by centralized OMR which generally provide the voter less assurance that their vote was successfully tabulated than a precinct tabulation system. For example, a mail-in ballot that is erroneously marked or overvoted (too many choices in a race) may need to be simply discarded for that question, while a precinct tabulator will reject such a ballot and return it to the voter for correction or to be spoiled (replaced). Mail-in voting systems also generally use a permit system to allow voters to check online that their ballot was received, but the need to maintain a secret ballot means that permits (actually the outer envelope usually) and ballots are separated at tabulation and so mail-in voters have less assurance that their ballot actually made it to the tabulator than voters in precinct tabulation jurisdictions where they insert it themselves.

All of this said, the convenience and accessibility of mail-in voting is extremely beneficial and so an ideal solution may be a hybrid arrangement in which voters have the option of mailing in their ballots or submitting them for immediate tabulation at a precinct or early polling location. This system actually exists in several states although the "mail-in option" tends to actually be an extension of absentee voting (basically, you are allowed to vote absentee by mail even if you just want your ballot sent to your own house inside of the jurisdiction), but awareness of the mail-in voting option could be significantly improved.

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