Starting like that the author saves our time by letting us know that
1. This is a biased take. 2. There will be no attempt to asses overall security, its weak and strong points.
But I still have read it to learn that the author says that paper voting solves security problems. Here’s the bonus point:
3. The author ignores security issues with paper voting.
I think Schneier, and possibly everyone else, is overlooking one simple thing, nothing needs to be perfect on the first try. Iteration on electronic voting is possible all the way up until you hinge serious stakes on it. A country level organization experimenting with technology to improve the experience of voting and lowering the bar for exercising one's citizenship rights should make us glad, not dismissive. The article series Schneier is basing his critique on is getting this right:
> The e-voting system currently being developed by Swiss Post has been significantly improved. However, further developments, some of them substantial, are still required.
What experience needs improving in the paper ballots that needs to go beyond paper? What bar needs to be lowered and is that desirable?
Having to set aside a whole day to exercise your rights as a citizen is ridiculous in my opinion and we can do a lot better. (Seeing as the article is about Switzerland, I would say their mail ballot initiative is a step in the right direction but to me it also looks less secure than paper ballots).
Another one is speed. People in this thread complain that some regions in the US only had their final counts for the last presidential election days, if not weeks after the voting ended. How is that acceptable?
In my opinion, when voting is as easy as pushing a button in an application or on a website, the democratic process will have a wider reach and could be used for many more things than the very important ones, like presidential elections or referenda (again the Swiss already do this AFAIK).
It's true that in-person voting is safer. If you mail in your ballot, nobody can verify that you were truly alone and weren't coerced into giving your vote. And of course, it's not rare for e.g. a child to fill out the ballot for its senior parent etc. But it's still hard to commit large-scale fraud, as you'd need to be in control of the mail delivery.
Voting with paper also doesn't have to take all day - a few minutes at a polling station or even less by mail ballot (fraud isn't an issue of paper here).
Also, voting is more than a right, it is exercising authority and that might perhaps need at least some minimum of hurdle in it to get focus.
In terms of broader and more fluid democracy - perhaps, but need to be careful to maintain focus and not end up in something gamified.
Sorry, but why?
In my opinion _any_ method to get more people involved in the democratic process is a win.
It looks to me that you're looking at matters with rose tinted glasses to think for one second that the the people handling the current democratic process feel the burden of consequences for it.
That aside, you seem to advocate a pretty broad change to laws restricting voting when you want all(!) opinions and attitudes to count. What do you see as template there on how to shape the franchise (e.g., what to do about minimum age, insanity)?
I'm fine with the rules as they are for determining who is recognized to vote.
My intentions were for increasing participation in the demographics which are currently legitimate but are being kept out by external factors (they don't have child minders, they can't take a day off work, ie. the poor), or choosing by themselves to keep out of the process (it's lame to vote, all choices are the same, I have better things to do, ie. the young). You can't have a true democracy if these classes of people are underrepresented in your vote.
I just don't see how there is a causal link between these issues and paper ballots. Poor voting implementations could make participation difficult regardless of the voting method, for example. Similarly, political apathy of sorts isn't cured by abstracting away the politics.
The arguments some people are making in this thread that it -shouldn't- take a day, should only take a 'click', are misguided imo. There is value in slowing down collectively, participating in the process, and seeing the results of that collective action.
Reducing it to a task to be completed as efficiently as possible is horribly misguided -- but eliminating the barriers to participate collectively is conversely an admirable goal, which could easily be mostly solved via federal holiday.
Voting under duress, when a voter is forced to vote in a specific way and make a selfie of them with the filled ballot as proof. It’s solved by allowing to cast the vote electronically as many times as you like until election ends.
Voter suppression. Voting day can be a workday, ballot box can be in a remote location: those factors together remove day workers who can’t take a day off from voting. Partially amended by mail voting, completely eradicated by electronic voting.
And the biggest issue: trust. The less democratic a country is, higher the chance that the electorate commission is dependent on government. There’s no way for a voter in paper based election to check if their ballot was counted in the end. Once again, can be solved with electronic voting.
Pencil and paper solves the trust issue. And the issues of security around paper voting such as it's security, lots of guards, public counts etc, costing a bit more, are better understood than SSL, layer 1,2,3,4 securities, and verifiable systems.
Online scams are a human problem, not a computer problem. People also get scammed via telephone. If someone asks you for your CC number and you give it to them, then the medium is not that important.
There’s nothing in the human evolution that would prepare us for nonstop phishing attacks.
It absolutely is a computer failure because we haven’t changed, they have.
However, it's beyond simply the public needing simple systems; the number of experts that would be required to lie about the certainty of a system is low enough that you really do create a less secure system. Paper ballots are harder to cheat because the systems scale in a way that you require more people in on the heist, which is the hardest part of any scam.
Scrutability and accessibility go a long way in establishing trust. Putting elections behind technical complexity does the opposite.
I don't think that is a biased take. An attack on paper voting is always going to be more complex thus making it more secure.
Until some genius figure teleportation, then cats are out of the bag ;-)
Anyone knows if Star Trek figured that one?