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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

Estonia also has electronic voting that seems to work well. Wish more countries could be similar.

Electronic voting is a bad idea. Almost no upside, but lot of downside. Nobody can proof that the system works, nobody can keep it secure (noone cares about estionian elections, imagine the US...), nobody can proof authenticity in retrospect. And of course, they can’t really be anonymous.

And for what? So that somebody that is too lazy or too disengaged to fill out a paper form or spend 10 minutes at a voting both can have a say in the countries direction?

> Nobody can proof that the system works, nobody can keep it secure (noone cares about estionian elections, imagine the US...), nobody can proof authenticity in retrospect. And of course, they can’t really be anonymous.

Why do you believe none of this can be proofed or kept secure?

I'm guessing they are talking about electronic voting in general, and not the specific system Estonia uses.

And yet it works fine in Estonia.

Not everywhere has to be technologically backwards.

The electronic ID is a great idea for everything except for voting.

I can easily go to someone's place, make sure he votes for my candidate and give him 10$. A lot of people with low interest in politics would sell their vote, I suppose.

Polling booths are still safer than all other options (mail voting, electronic voting, etc...)

And then after taking your money I can vote again as many times as I want for someone I actually like. Only the last vote counts. And I think that next elections it will be possible to override your electronic vote on paper at the polling stations.

1. the vote buyer can lock the eID in the vault until the end of the elections

2. the vote seller can be paid only after the end of the elections, given s/he didn't voted on paper (it it all possible to authenticate wuthout eID on the voting station).

> Only the last vote counts.

Is it always like this? I could also go at someone's place one minute before the voting closes.

Voting at the voting booth is still more secure.

Mail voting already exists and works fine, despite the scenario you're positing. I live in Washington state where it seems to be the default.

In person voting at the voting booth is without any doubt more secure. For something so important like voting I would only use the most secure option.

I live in a country with only voting at the voting booth and I am perfectly happy with it!

In addition to this, the fact that you are not aware of voting fraud does not mean it does not happen. That's why it's important to care about potential voting fraud.

Unfortunately, voting fraud occurs even with in-person voting at the voting booths. Here election observer committees are made up of representatives of the various parties, and there are reports of the deals that split the votes of people who did not show up at the voting booth.

There was a proposal to install cameras on the voting booths, but it was rejected by the high court.

Surprisingly e-voting can solve these low-tech corruption problems, but it introduces a much larger attack surface.

Voting fraud might occur in any way, but I think it's quite obvious that from this point of view voting booths are better than mail voting.

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