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Comment by GJim | Hacker News Reader

> Where I live we vote by mail

The problem with this, like internet voting, is that you can be coerced.

e.g. a family member or your boss can tell you who to vote for and force you to submit that vote.

Whereas a polling both is utterly private; you are alone and free from coercion. Nobody else knows who you voted for and they have no way of telling.

In the UK, our voting is also done by paper and pencil. The votes are counted overnight by humans (with plenty of checks, independent oversight and rights of recounting) with the result typically declared the next day.

Its secure, and it just works.

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If you limit your perspective to the people who can do it, yes. If you feel it’s important to enable everyone to participate, it doesn’t “just work”

Given the ample attention recently, with no evidence of impactful fraud, it sounds like disenfranchising citizens for no reason other than unrealistic fears.

But now that one party sees their voters increasingly use mailin, I expect to see a shift in opinions quickly. (Recent evidence suggests democrats benefit from low turnout more)

You can be coerced with paper and pencil too. In Sicily mafia gives you a voting paper with a predrawn X on the candidate they want, and you must come out with a clean voting paper so they are sure you did leave the pre-voted one.

In the UK, you are handed a ballot paper in the voting room by an official immediately before you go to the polling booth; the ballot paper has an official mark on it, meaning no pre-printed or duplicate ballot papers are possible.

This makes the attack you described impossible (short of having every official in the voting room being corrupt).

Isn’t it still possible for the voter to not cast this ballot paper and bring it to the coercer who waits outside? Then the coercer fill this ballot and ask the next voter to cast it and bring back a blank ballot paper?

> e.g. a family member or your boss can tell you who to vote for and force you to submit that vote.

Where i live, you can show up in-person on election day to override a mailed ballot, if you're in a situation like that.

>The problem with this, like internet voting, is that you can be coerced. As an example against coercion, on belenios faq they say that they let voter vote several times (and they count just the last vote).

How do you authenticate yourself for voting? Is it possible for the "boss" to prevent you from voting again for example by changing the password?

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