- vote marking machines (eg it marks a voter readable ballot that is the official record). You get fast preliminary results and improved voter accessibility but still have very high tamper resistance.
- risk limiting audits in all jurisdictions
Several states use Scantron, and a few jurisdictions (IIRC) still use punch ballot.
The state of Georgia uses these modern "digitally select, then print a ballot with QR code and legible names" ballots. They're great and feel optimal.
I understand why we don't do that - it would enable people to pay for votes with confidence, or to influence the votes of others via intimidation - but it would certainly make me feel better.
When they count your vote later, they have a high-speed system that can scan all the QR codes almost instantly. It's why we know the results in as little as an hour.
If there are any questions, or if the race is tight, a team of auditors can look at the ballot pages to check for any discrepancies. They'll check to make sure the machines themselves weren't tampered with by checking that the printed names and other ballot initiatives match the QR codes.
I think the main thing is that we have one federal, one provincial, and one municipal election per 4ish years (give or take…). And these are generally voting for one race.
American elections can have dozens of different races/questions. This causes them to depend on technology to count, as a full hand count is too impractical for that many different votes.
> You get fast preliminary results
A non-problem. Exit polls can do this if you really need it.
But in the end you're dealing with people who point at a bunch of large but near-empty counties being red and only a few (very high-population) being blue as proof of a "landslide" in a race where their guy won with less than 50% of the votes cast going for him. They don't understand really basic shit. There's not much sense in going out of your way to get through skulls that dense. Whatever you do, if their leaders say "jump" they'll say "how high?" If their leaders say "fraud!" they'll say "yeah! Hang the Democrats and their collaborators!" Bend over backwards with even more safeguards, and they'll just keep being upset over the same stuff if the right people tell them to.
I guess you "care about improving people's lives" by imagining a world where everything is awesome and pretending that it's real!
A machine prints your ballot with your choices in large, human-readable font. You can read it before you drop it in the submission box.
A QR code on the same page digitally encodes your choices.
You can get near-immediate results after the election, and everything can be perfectly audited and accounted for.
Simple, cheap, fast, and easy to audit.
I don't really see why this isn't the standard beyond very dense populations needing bigger election offices or ideally extended early voting.
The state of Georgia finally has the perfect voting machine setup after many years of "hackable" digital-only voting machines:
- Voters are given a signed, electronic card to make choices at a voting booth (same as before, in the suspicious "hackable" era).
- As of 2020, after you make your elections, you receive a full-page paper printout which records your choices on A4-sized paper. This is your ballot. The names of your choices are clearly visible so you can physically review all of your votes in a large, easy to read font. All of it is crisply printed with no "hanging chads", misprinting, or under-inked results. There's only one page.
- The paper ballots also have a large QR code that can easily be machine-read, but the human-readable portions are permanently linked with the QR code for later auditing.
- You scan and deposit your paper ballot and card together in a secure lock box that cannot be opened without key.
This system feels perfect.
How do you ensure secret ballots when it's printing an opaque identifier (the QR code) on your ballot?
After the elections you sample the ballots to make sure they match. If you find any instances of error, that immediately raises red flags about the entire vote set.
In a close election, you comb over the results.
If such a scheme was ever discovered, it would make national news.
Combined with risk limiting audits you have a very strong system
There's no way to design a voting system that won't confuse some percentage of the population.
But when I said "scantron" it's not an actual scantron. The ballots look like this [1]
I don't really see how you could make that easier to fill out.
EDIT: Gah, they make it hard to create these links.
Click on district "1921" to see a sample ballot.
?? In NYS the main process for voting is voter marks their paper ballot and then scans the marked ballot into the “reader” (DS200). Optionally, there is a “marking” machine (Automark) which has accessibility features. But this machine only marks the ballot, and does not read. The marked ballot must still be scanned.
Are you proposing to eliminate the single scanner and have a new machine developed which marks and scans ballots?
If that’s the case, that would be incredibly expensive and greatly slow the voting process. I say this having worked at polls for 15 years.
Also, in the article—
> “…the SAVE Act got a lot of attention […] because it requires in-person registration with specific documentary proof of citizenship (like a passport or State ID + birth certificate) that millions of citizens lack.”
Some confusion in this, because while a passport may prove citizenship, it is not sufficient to prove eligibility to vote. Why? Because it doesn’t show your address, and eligibility from the Bureau of Elections standpoint is residency in an Assembly District/Election District. IE, you vote where you live because of local candidates and initiatives.
Ballot design has a big impact on self marked ballots. Most of the time it’s fine, but some times it fails badly and a significant number of voters fill it out wrong without knowing.
Second, for a small but significant fraction accessibility is an issue (visually impaired, language issues).
This approach is fairly standard and affordable
- voters have three chances to vote if they make a mistake, knowingly.
- the Automark helps with accessibility and independence, and you can ask a trusted friend/family member to assist.
As to voters choosing the wrong candidate unknowingly, I don’t see software/hardware changes the problem. Just as easy to made bad design choices here (imho they’re worse than paper).
As to affordability of hardware, that is not clear to me at all. The comparable costs of printed paper ballots and two machines (I think it’s per ED, or 750-1000 ppl in NY), versus 5-6+ units is not obvious.
And where are these marking machines “standard”?
The disabled and community has been very clear (reasonably) that hey deserve to vote on their own, without assistance
> See, the SAVE Act got a lot of attention in the media because it will take away eligible Americans’ ability to vote because it requires in-person registration with specific documentary proof of citizenship (like a passport or State ID + birth certificate) that millions of citizens lack. State ID alone is not enough. 47 states don’t print “U.S. citizen” anywhere on them.
Given the context that the federal government is currently rounding up US persons and detaining or exiling them without due process, it’s a doubly asinine argument.
For 80% of people, national ID is a no brainer. The other 20% are the issue, and it's a problem that won't be solved in this framework of government in the US.
With specific relevance to voting, what happens to the exceptions? 1% of the US population is 3.5M people.
Birth certificate provenance and lack of procedure at birth is only one source of exception. Other examples:
- elderly people who lose access to records
- children whose parents fail to secure documents.
- non-custodial parents who refuse to provide documents to their children
- women whose names change from marriage/divorce
- native americans whose tribal papers
- minors who cannot get required identity documents because their social security card is lost and onerous to replace. (requires in-person appearance and takes 9-24 months)
Voting is a fundamental right. You can establish with high certainty the identity of a individual using easy to obtain proofs. The number of non-citizens voting illegally is a tiny number. This whole controversy is about suppressing the votes of the poor and infirm, as denying their rights has a clear ROI to one of the political parties.