[TooBrokeToBeg]

> Because voting softwares don't solve any real problem while creating a horde of its own

It solves some problems that have been introduced over time in most election systems. Primarily, time to count/verify, ease of access and verifiability. To say that paper doesn't have these problems shows a lack of understanding or a willful intent to mislead. The boxes of uncounted votes from the Bush/Gore election (https://www.theacru.org/horace_cooper_bush_v_gore_redux/) were a watershed moment that could have affected change beyond the locality.

> Paper ballot is a perfect technology once you introduce optical readers, and when in doubt, you can always re-count everything again.

There are weaknesses with transport or tampering the same as any mechanical recording or electronic recording.

It's important to narrow the intent of a typical modern voting system, with "should haves" rather than hand waving away useful tools.

* Votes should have only been counted from voting membership (registered voters, for example).

* The intent (choices)/member information should have confidence that this data is opaque to inspection without a private/public key respectively. Yes, voters would have to generate their own, as that's an attack vector.

* A voting member should have the ability to track that the vote was counted at all in a given race via a reversible process, which would necessarily include the public and private key.

> You can't get that kind of transparency with voting software.

You can, but the US wont. It's an important distinction that is patently obvious.

Today, most vote tracking systems are electronic, although the ballot was paper. What's the point of half the process being paper? The US government is too inefficient, demotivated, and lacking the impetus to retrain the populace to make any system that is reliable.

[yongjik]

> To say that paper doesn't have these problems shows a lack of understanding or a willful intent to mislead.

Of course using paper doesn't magically solve away your problems. The point is that paper-based systems without these problems do exist in the world and they've been successfully used for decades. You just have to copy the successful ones.

Or, put another way, if your government is too incompetent to run paper-based ballots, using electronic system won't make them suddenly competent either.

> There are weaknesses with transport or tampering the same as any mechanical recording or electronic recording.

The really really really nice thing about paper is that the required size of the attack gets proportionally large as stakes get higher. If you try really hard, you can probably sneak a few votes and change one of the twenty town council members, but does anyone care? On the other hand, to hack a presidential election you will have to exchange at least a thousand boxes or so. With a thousand co-conspirators. While everyone is watching.

...And if you're worried about organized gangs replacing a thousand ballot boxes on your election day, you have more problems than voting systems.

> What's the point of half the process being paper?

That it works. Technology is not meant to be cool; it's meant to work.

[TooBrokeToBeg]

> if you're worried about organized gangs replacing a thousand ballot boxes on your election day, you have more problems than voting systems.

The US certainly does. Should we throw up our hands and call it a non-issue? I don't think so.

[Zardoz84]

I read a few articles suggesting that the electronic voting systems in use on the USA wasn't working very well. Even suggesting some kind of malicious manipulation.

I would keep using the paper system that we have on Spain. It's secure and confiable, as a lot of eyes tare watching that no body is doing something dirty. The recount is done by a few random citizens plus a few political parties representatives watching it. And it's fast. Usually takes 3-4 hours to know is who win.