Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

> This probably only works properly in the developed countries. In developing countries like India we suffered through decades of "booth captures" [1] where armed gangs would take over a polling booth and cast votes for their political candidate at gun point. Villagers would be disallowed from casting their votes. In many instances, the polling booth itself would be set on fire, ensuring that those votes are never counted.

Yeah, but these are visible! They provide evidence that the voting was not fair.

Compare to electronic voting, where a capture might be done and no one ever finds out.

We want rigging of elections to be visible. That's the whole point.

I don't think any system can do much if things have degraded to the point where armed gangs are running around with impunity. I think systems (paper or otherwise) presuppose a certain level of functional civil society

I mean looks like booth capture can only capture a booth at most and to capture more you practically need armed rebellion. But if we automate it, then you only need to capture a location to capture all booths in the region.

> Not saying this is not possible in developed countries. It could very well happen sometime in the future where armed gangs take over polling booths…

I fully expect this happening more as the systems degrade in the west and, arguably, it already has happened several times now in many different ways, even if executed in more “sophisticated” ways that make it less apparent.

What do you call the many “color revolutions” the US and EU have now perpetrated in many different ways and places? The ”gang” was just a state level actor with immense resources and methods that exceed the local capacity to prevent them… just like a local gang using arms to take over a local polling booth.

There are declassified versions of old and obsolete CIA guides on how to conduct the precursors of such “color revolutions” through long term “capacity building” that is then activated if/when necessary. That’s the voluntarily declassified manual of the CIA; someone might suggest there are more effective instructions that are classified.

There have also been medium sophistication level events like what has happened over the last several years in Europe, where Merkel ordered an election result cancelled through technicalities because she/the literal The Party, did not like the result (I guess you can take the woman out of the dictatorship…), the EU simply used the judiciary to force a “runoff” because the election results were not to its liking, de facto canceling elections, or even all the subtle measures like visually misrepresenting election results where the bar or pie chart does not match the numerical data to suppress public mandate and perceptions about results, i.e., higher result numbers being represented by smaller bars than lower numbers.

I would argue they are all examples of the very same things you describe, the equivalent of “…gangs take over polling booths…” only it’s done through process, authority, policy, or even law and those in power tell themselves they’re doing it for “our democracy” and justified through similar dystopian, narcissistic, megalomanic, authoritarian mindsets; “I need to be in power for your own good because you don’t know any better”.

It could go both ways, either things will increasingly start degrading even more as the power slips out of the “gang’s”hands, and the system starts crumbling around them; or if “digital voting” is fully implemented there will essentially be “backdoors” to make sure the powers can “preserve our democracy” just like they need OS backdoors and media control to “protect the children”, which coincidentally seems to always coincide with them remaining in power and control and the people not even being asked about major upheavals of their society and their votes being effectively meaningless because the agenda is continuous regardless of election results.

It’s like those people who used to play slot machines at the casino, (now doing so digitally on their phones) pounding at the buttons that do absolutely nothing since the algorithm is what determines where the spin ends, not them rapidly hitting an essentially dead button just because the “clicking”, the “voting”, makes them think they have control. . . . “our democracy” where you and I are not part of that “our”.

In Washington State we get mailed ballots, which we fill in and mail in.

But the ballots are not even printed on security paper. They don't have a serial number on them, either.

It's not fraud is difficult to do, it's difficult to do so without people noticing. The problem of r-country is not that fraud is not discovered, they problem is they are not capable to course-correct (in general, but in regards to having elections specifically)

This. The process in my precinct is roughly...

- Enter queue

- A front of queue, show ID of some sort (various accepted) to volunteer

- They scratch you from the list and hand you a paper scantron sheet

- Go to private booth, fill out scantron

- Go to exit, scan ballot (it scans and then drops into a locked box for manual tally later, if necessary)

The "easy" ways to vote fraudulently are also easily caught... fake ID documents, voting twice, etc.

For people who forget their ID or have address changes that haven't propagated through the voter roll, there is provisional voting - you do the same as above, but they keep the ballot in a separate pile and validate your eligibility to vote at a later time. IIRC, the voter gets a ticket # so they can check the voter portal later to see if the ballot was accepted.

As noted, the number of fraudulent votes are astonishingly small, given the amount of money spent on proving otherwise. The current GOP has spent 100s of millions or billions on proving wide-spread fraud and so far, all they've managed to prove a few voters, most of whom were actually GOP-leaning, have committed fraud (and most of them were caught day-of already).