CO mails paper ballots to everyone* about a month before election day. You can choose to vote in person, or mail in/drop off your paper ballot anytime prior to election night.
My understanding is what while the ballots are paper, many (all?) are tabulated digitally. It certainly appears to be laid out in a way that benefits digital reading, and i believe that is what the machines in question are responsible for.
* for some definition of "everyone"
I’m an overseas Colorado voter. They lump me in with the military voters so my voting process is super easy (I’m sure certain groups would love to make this harder, but not for the troops). I get an email that my ballot is ready, I go to the CO website, authenticate with my SSN (fucking yikes), fill out my ballot online, print a copy to pdf, slap a digital signature on there, and email it back to the SOS who presumably prints it out and throws it in with the rest, and then get an email saying my vote has been counted.
It’s amazing how easy voting can be when we want it to be.
Even this isn't secure now, because everyone can just photograph their voting card within the booth.
You're proposing that secret vote-buying conspiracy is going on and thousands of people are all keeping their mouth shut in order to keep getting that... $10, $50, $100 bribe?
Vote buying also does not appear to be a problem in the US electoral system, as another commented pointed out: in order to make a difference in the election, you’d have to buy enough votes that someone would be bound to tell on you.
It's not just about vote stealing per se, it's about any third party infraction of individual voting rights. It may not matter on a large scale, but it matters to individuals.
Not only that, but it matters that bosses can't coerce workers into voting for someone, or an abusive spouse, or any third party who might have an interest in swaying an election. It often doesn't take much to sway an election.
It becomes very problematic when a victim is unable to vote for someone who would stop abuse. For example, Russia decriminalizing spousal physical abuse. That same thing could happen anywhere, and then you'd have every asshole abuser at home forcing their family to vote for their choice.
Not having secure voting is a real problem, and one that is now unsolved thanks to smartphones.
With my remote voting, I can generate as many ballots as I want. If I want to make a dummy ballot that says I voted for any given candidate in order to fool someone it is easier than ever. Now instead of 1 physical ballot, I can generate multiple ballots, and do as I please with them.
There are checks to ensure votes aren't fraudulent, that's actually very easy and already done. You can send as many ballots as you want, but they need to be legitimised against a person. That's not such an easy grift. I believe
If you don’t want it to be possible for people to buy or sell votes, then you need to make sure every citizen is engaged and cares about casting their own vote, and you need to make sure the government has a stable and trustworthy system of checks and balances. And why not just make it illegal with massive fines to buy votes and post a huge bounty for anyone tattling on a vote buyer that gets prosecuted? It doesn’t seem that complicated to disincentivize vote buying in a way that eliminates any concerns about the method of voting.
Oh, hey, look: vote buying is already illegal in the US. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/597