Why don't we have electronic voting?

peemac

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Surely in this technological age an electronic voting system that prints a record of how a person voted in a secure hold for sporadic checking can be easily and quite cheaply be developed.

They can still announce results round by round to add some theatrics, but it would get it over and done with quickly.
 
Could the counting be done using manual or automatic scanning? Surely if all the the votes were in a secure database it would just be a matter of pressing "calculate"and hey presto you have your winners. If the database is not connected there is no possibility of it getting hacked.
 
Manual counting of votes is not particularly hard, once you have the manpower.

The absurd recount situation in Ireland South could have been avoided simply if more staff had been there from the beginning.
 
Yea but isn't the issue with e-voting the possibility of hacking. If people scan their vote in once completed you could have an instance count. It would be way less labour intensive also.
 
I dont think we need evoting just limit it in eu elections to 1-2 preferences only. The constituencies are too large.

If evoting I prefer the scan into system approach.
 
They had around 200 - it would be difficult too manage a lot more

Yes but by the end they only had 80 as people went back to their real jobs.

The management is pretty simple for a few people who know what they are doing. After that you just need more hands and eyes.
 
Surely in this technological age an electronic voting system that prints a record of how a person voted in a secure hold for sporadic checking can be easily and quite cheaply be developed.
It's supposed to be a secret ballot, so if you can determine how a person voted, e.g. by printing a record of how a person voted, it's not secret.

Here's a current example from Switzerland that shows the problems. It's not sufficient just to provide a secret ballot and do the count. The system must not only be non-hackable, but be capable of proving it has not been hacked. ttps://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/12/swiss_evoting_system_vulnerability/.
 
I think e-voting was trialled in 3 constituencies in 2002. Apart from the concerns about security, etc that arose later, there was also a concern that getting the results at "the push of a button" obscured the intricacies of our PR transferrable vote system. There was quite a widespread view that the hand-counting method helped people understand better the value of voting right along all, or most, of the preferences. People are unlikely to tune in to some type of tutorial on multi-candidate PR voting but they picked up the rules by following the hand counts, if only casually. Like a sport, I suppose.
Also, that people were likely to feel more trust when they could witness, or hear ongoing reports, on how transfers were going.
 
It's supposed to be a secret ballot, so if you can determine how a person voted, e.g. by printing a record of how a person voted, it's not secret.

Here's a current example from Switzerland that shows the problems. It's not sufficient just to provide a secret ballot and do the count. The system must not only be non-hackable, but be capable of proving it has not been hacked. ttps://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/12/swiss_evoting_system_vulnerability/.
Under what I said it's still a secret ballot. It's a printed record of what a voter who turned up at the polling station decided. No identifying mark is on it, but allows for checking.
 
I think e-voting was trialled in 3 constituencies in 2002. Apart from the concerns about security, etc that arose later, there was also a concern that getting the results at "the push of a button" obscured the intricacies of our PR transferrable vote system. There was quite a widespread view that the hand-counting method helped people understand better the value of voting right along all, or most, of the preferences. People are unlikely to tune in to some type of tutorial on multi-candidate PR voting but they picked up the rules by following the hand counts, if only casually. Like a sport, I suppose.
Also, that people were likely to feel more trust when they could witness, or hear ongoing reports, on how transfers were going.
The main issue was fear. People were told that there was "potential" for fraud. There's massive potential for fraud in the current system too (especially postal votes)

The other issue that the media hated and therefore got behind the "fear factor" was the instant result.

That's corrected by simple stage management.
 
I think e-voting was trialled in 3 constituencies in 2002. Apart from the concerns about security, etc that arose later

As a technologist I was involved in lobbying against the introduction of e-voting in Ireland. The theoretical and practical security concerns were well known before the pilots were run. See e.g. http://www.internethistory.ie/articles/EVoting

What problem does e-voting solve for Ireland? A delay of a few days in determining a result is not a big deal.
 
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The main issue was fear. People were told that there was "potential" for fraud. There's massive potential for fraud in the current system too (especially postal votes)

Yes but with e-voting one hacker can change the result globally. In our current system that would require a concerted fraud by multiple parties tampering with physical ballots or falsifying many postal votes - far harder to conceal. Also, every step in the process is externally observable. No system is perfect, but the one we have is good.

That's corrected by simple stage management.

The then governments (and three successive Ministers) tried that and it didn't work. Their own independent international experts agreed with us.

The one actual advantage for Ireland is that e-counting would allow us eliminate recounts and (coupled with legislation) the random (re)distribution of surpluses, giving a slightly fairer result.
 
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I think e-voting was trialled in 3 constituencies in 2002.

It wasn't just trialled - about ten TDs legally took their seats on the basis of the use of e-voting machines!

The problem with the machines it is that it is extremely difficult to prove or disprove their misuse.

Having doubts lingering like this undermines the democratic process.

With paper ballots it is very clear to anyone hanging around the count centre what is happening.
 
Under what I said it's still a secret ballot. It's a printed record of what a voter who turned up at the polling station decided. No identifying mark is on it, but allows for checking.

Long candidate lists and proportional representation mean that arbitrary unique patterns can be embedded in ballots. Publishing even a subset of such ballots opens up the possibility of buying or otherwise coercing votes, thereby destroying one of the benefits of the secret ballot.

Also, suppose your vote was tampered with and you want to complain after the fact. Knowing it was tampered doesn't help, you need proof or you're just a disgruntled voter/conspiracy nut. The obvious answer is a voting receipt. I don't want a system where nefarious parties can decide the integrity of my knee caps based on my willingness to prove how I voted.

Not that a physical receipt or a record in a secure hold actually proves that the record matches the ballott actually counted ...once you assume a global lack of trust it becomes very hard to design-in a technical fix after the fact. Physical observability of the entire process becomes really valuable.

There are some proposals to counter this in the academic literature, and perhaps blockchain voting has a role here, but why bother if e-voting is not solving a real problem to begin with?

Arguably a more pressing problem than speeding up our count process is stopping the electorate and traditional media being mind-hacked via sockpuppet propaganda on social media.
 
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Always find it strange, people are happy to manage their money (ebanking) online, pay and sort taxes (ros.ie) pay and manage all their household bills online, sort health insurance etc etc. Yet when it comes to voting for the local councilor everyone gets paranoid about security and transparency.

I have never once been asked for ID at a polling station once i have my voting card that is posted out, which is surely far more insecure than any electronic system.
 
I have never once been asked for ID at a polling station once i have my voting card that is posted out, which is surely far more insecure than any electronic system.

Same here, and they're so easy to reproduce. Then, when you make it easy to obtain copies of the register....
 
We wasted €50M+ on e-voting in the noughties. It was always a bad idea. The most you could argue for is e-counting but that would only really be useful in the oversized EU constituencies . . methinks it's not worth the overhead.
 
It's costing €1M for a single recount with this years european election, €50M is peanuts as a once off cost.
 
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