zero-knowledge proof is very nice... and could be used to prove election results: https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/466.pdf
That's a whole other kettle of fish.
There's no way the small efficiency gain from automation is worth that cost.
Which raises the question- why do we use the really awkward, blackbox and sometimes networked machines that we do, manufactured by weird companies rather than whoever makes scantron machines or whatever?
And this isn’t just about “dumb Republicans” or what have you. Here’s Scott Aaronson [1] in 2016:
> For that matter, if Russia or some other power hacked the trivially-hackable electronic voting machines that lack paper trails—machines that something like a third of American voters still used this election—there’s an excellent chance we’d never find out.
“Antivirus on voting machines? You’re doing it wrong.” [2]
The thing that really gets me is, even if you wanted to use machines, you wouldn’t use the weird machines made by shady companies that we do. Different counties would buy standard scantron machines used to grade high school finals off the shelf, and verify it in ways that are obvious to all of us.
Because they’re cheap, states have to fund their own elections, and no governor will ever fund an election over schools or infrastructure.
The real question is why elections are not federally funded. The answer is that states are afraid election funds will be withheld over speciously related issues, just as highway funds are withheld over drinking ages. IMHO the correct change is a constitutional amendment guaranteeing federal funding for all state elections that can’t be withheld for any reason.
At most you could make an argument that federal elections should be federally funded. But I don't even know whether the US actually has any federal elections that the wider public participates in?
Eg the election for president is officially an election for some state officials that then go off and participate in the real federal election for president. (Of course, this is oversimplified.)
It is just that we choose not to do this. A provably convincing election isn’t actually some hard, unsolved problem. (And yes- if you mention zero knowledge proofs in your story of why the election is safe, people will look askance because an observably valid election is a solved problem, and many countries manage it)
And by this I mean an election where, somehow, an individual would be able to see their individual ballot make it from wherever they cast it, to the counter, and could see how their specific ballot impacted/didn't impact the broader vote, and where (again, somehow) there was proof that no artificial or false votes were cast in the name of citizens who either don't exist or didn't participate.
Even if there was a livestrem of the vote counting, that would mean nothing if we didn't see every step of transportation for every single vote from the ballot box to the counters office.
A truly observably fair election is practically impossible if you mean to have any significant number of voters.
Our ballots go into a transparent urn, you need to be registered in a voting office and show an ID paper to vote, and people counting the votes are typically a mix of local state employees and volunteers citizens (and given that most people don't want to spend their Sunday evening counting ballots, it's quite easy to get a place).
Now I guess it moves the trust onto the ID system and the aggregation of local counts into national results.
> A truly observably fair election is practically impossible if you mean to have any significant number of voters.
Just broadcast the counting live.
In some countries people would like to have undisputably valid elections, but can't, so I wouldn't call this a solved problem.
But I have a feeling you knew that already.
You mean that the vote is tied to the voter, so everyone can tell X voted for Y? That sounds horrible.
If you mean that paper votes are simply counted under recorded observation (and observation by representatives of all parties) I would point out that didn't help in the US.
And I mean a ballot stub that is separated at the time it is cast is tied to a voter.
And I have no idea in what way your system differs from the status quo in the US. Most states use paper receipts and those were recounted. All that stuff about "bamboo fibers" was because of the paper ballots.
How do you reliably identify them without an ID card (which, as I understand it, the US doesn't have), or without an election-related "ID card" (which is pretty much the same thing)?
Trying to use SSNs will of course result in economically disadvantaged people having no right to vote, the same goes, more or less, if trying to rely on driver's licenses.
On the other you have a narcissist who actually tried to overthrow democracy to stay in power and throws around utterly baseless claims of an organised conspiracy of direct vote subversion and interference in the election mechanism itself, who was also caught trying to coerce others to do that for him over the phone.
These situations are not really comparable.
We have a second who has actually tried to have a democratic result overturned and tries his best to undermine it at every turn, through 'soft' pressure by cajoling officials, through many failed court cases, through inflammatory rhetoric and eventually through raising a mob. A person who continues to attack the election result and throw accusations of vast, entirely unevidenced illegal conspiracies.
These are not the same. It's a ridiculous false equivalence. I'm not American, I have no particular love for Hilary Clinton, but I saw the footage of January 6th and I know how out of the ordinary that is. Trump's conduct is far more than someone mithering about a loss they perceived as unfair, and to attempt to put these on a level is disingenuous at best.
More context: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/oct/05/glenn-youn...
She was talking about voter suppression and other tactics rather than the election results being tampered with.
This is important to point out, because the GOP is hellbent on messing with future elections and want an air of whataboutism regarding election integrity.
What Clinton (and I would bet most other folks that you're alluding to from the years prior) had meant by "stolen" elections or "illegitimate" president was emphatically not the same as Trump's wild allegations. She was not claiming "people cast fraudulent ballots" or "the votes were counted incorrectly" or the like. She was not denying what actually happened. Rather, she was using "stolen" to refer to things like "you can get the most votes but still lose the electoral vote, and thus the presidency", or "they make it difficult for your supporters to vote", or things like that. It's unfortunate she used the word "stealing" to refer to that, given that that apparently gave some people a very convenient opportunity to paint a false equivalency between both sides, when in reality she was using that word to make a factual statement about how votes are cast and counted in the system, whereas her opponent was using that word to to hurl unsupported (and "unsupported" is incredibly generous here) allegations of fraud.
Imagine if you were about to get a heart transplant. Someone grabs the donated heart sitting in the operating room and runs. "She stole my heart!", you panic. "Oh don't worry honey, my wife stole my heart too. It's pretty common! It happens to all of us." Imagine the sheer exasperation when you're on life support and now have to spend the remainder of your energy replying to that as a serious comment.
But you’re giving Clinton too much credit.
For one thing, neither Clinton nor Trump received over 50% if the popular vote. It’s tempting to think the Green and Libertarian voters wanted Clinton more than Trump - but third party voters have weird ideas.
Winning the presidency by getting the majority of the electoral college isn’t a steal.
If there were concerns about disenfranchised voters, maybe she would have a something.
But it was low turn out, plain and simple.
The election wasn’t stolen in any way shape or form. Nothing fishy happened. It wasn’t insanely close like in 2000.
She simply lost.
Not as bad as Trumps insanity. But not innocent either.
If you "understand [as you admit; emphasis mine] the big difference" between what Trump and Clinton were referring to and merely intended to argue "Clinton is not innocent", then by all means, go ahead and say that directly, instead of casually leaving an incredibly misleading comment claiming Trump's allegations were "not a unique claim" because Clinton and others have been making "similar" claims. "Big difference" and "similar" are not only dissimilar, they're about as diametrically opposite as you can go.