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Comment by schimmy_changa | Hacker News Reader

Man, people are really negative about this, but it's a great idea.

In the old days, paper ballots would also 'go missing' from districts known to be favorable to the other side (aka be chucked out of trucks on a bridge over a river). The best option seems to be open source voting machines + paper audit. This way you get immediate counts and then an audit trail, so would-be manipulators have to mess with BOTH at the same time which is significantly harder.

Think you know a better way HN? Let's hear it.

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>In the old days, paper ballots would also 'go missing' from districts known to be favorable to the other side (aka be chucked out of trucks on a bridge over a river).

The problem with electronic voting, however, is that it takes roughly the same effort to change one vote than it takes to change millions

There are other ways to achieve an audit trail with paper ballots. Like cameras. Electronic voting is opaque by nature compared to a bunch of people in a room actually counting paper ballots.

Brazilian here, we've been using voting machines for quite some time now. We are currently facing nation wide protests at least partly due to suspicion of election fraud. People aren't accepting the election's results.

Questioning the legitimacy of the voting machines has also become illegal ("fake news").

(Because of unfounded claims of fraud, according to the losing candidate). It's a shame. There are many ways that the voting machines could be improved but that will be much harder now that the far right has monopolized the discourse on auditable paper trails in their self-serving attempts to overturn valid election results.

Your argument makes no sense to me. You think there's many ways the system can be improved. In other words, you think it's fallible. At the same time, you think any results produced by such a system are legitimate and should be accepted at face value. Why shouldn't "the far right" question results that are questionable?

If you really do believe the election was stolen, then I have a bridge to sell ya.

Where did I say I believed it? I said many people in my country believe it, and that it's okay to question such things. Nobody should have to accept a questionable election.

Remember, such questioning is being literally censored and supreme court judges are publicly saying the results are "unquestionable" and anyone who spreads suspicion will be treated as anti-democratic criminals. If you really believe censorship and judiciary dictatorship is okay I really don't know what to say anymore.

That's kind of what I was saying. The far right pulled all the oxygen out of the room with their clown show. Any changes to the system will have to wait a couple of years until everyone has forgotten about it.

Yes, that's why we have poll watches / volunteers from both sides.

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