Because once there is a layer of "electronic" between you and the vote, there are millions of things that can be done to falsify one side or the other.
4% of the time it prints a different paper receipt, it just makes the electronic numbers go in someone's favor by a few percent in a couple choice districts. Or it uses crafty UX to make people vote for people or things they normally wouldn't.
And what if the numbers don't agree? Are you just going to pick one side? Are you going to hold a re-election? Will the re-election have the same turnout? Will people not go because their side won by a landslide before? Will some people change their mind because the media is reporting that side "X" is behind the discrepancy? Or will it just give side "Y" the few extra weeks they needed to campaign and win?
I can understand the risk of having a layer, and I do agree paper ballot does give better transparency. Here is the proposal:
Cast the ballot on paper. Every ballot has unique counterfeit patterns (totally randomized). The ballot is scanned and send to server, with both the scan of the ballot and the eletronic reading. Voter should be asked to verify (but we know half don't do it). The paper ballot is casted the same way as it has always been. We can also read the paper ballot one more time if we have to during the first round of counting. You can't have a fraud unless you cab mainpluate both paper and eletronic. Either both come to same number or they don't. I am just not familiar with how we verify eligibility tbh.
When we count paper ballot, we scan for the counterfeit. If the final number has mismatched, we either have a miscount or an error. Paper ballot will alwsys get recount when there is dispute.
Have we had a re-election in the entire American history, or at least in the past 30 years? Regardless, paper ballot fraud can lead to reelection so regardless of what proposal we will face re-election if we have to, but we normally don't.
This seems like over engineering, but we have to take into account people living abroad almost always now rely on eletronic voting if EV is offered.
Maybe not, but we should never stop entertaining other possibile improvements. The fact that mailing in ballot can be intercepted or even discarded is a problem. Sure sometimes the most primitive and simplest solution is often the best. Reasons we are having this conversation is because eletronic voting has flaws, and having a few people watching a locked box also has problem. The whole counting by hand also has problem. Is there an intersection we can meet between traditional method and technical method?
I am a novice on the whole voting system, but just off the top of head my proposal would seem to work in ideal situation. The fact we have a record of ubique vote electronically and on paper is cruical to the integrity of each vote. There must have been a few dozen studies already on this topic. I'd suprise if no one has a bullet proof system yet. It CAN'T be that hard. Just emulate cryptography here.
4% of the time it prints a different paper receipt, it just makes the electronic numbers go in someone's favor by a few percent in a couple choice districts. Or it uses crafty UX to make people vote for people or things they normally wouldn't.
And what if the numbers don't agree? Are you just going to pick one side? Are you going to hold a re-election? Will the re-election have the same turnout? Will people not go because their side won by a landslide before? Will some people change their mind because the media is reporting that side "X" is behind the discrepancy? Or will it just give side "Y" the few extra weeks they needed to campaign and win?