[rfugger]

Any political voting system will need a trusted third party to run the voter registration/identity system, so I doubt the lack of practical homomorphic encryption is blocking this. There are other voter-verifiable systems that don't rely on HE for trustworthy counting:

https://www.chaum.com/publications/AccessibleVoterVerifiabil...

The major problem with online voting is that people can be coerced into voting against their wishes outside the watchful eye of election authorities. This may be worth the increase in voting ease, but it's where the real debate is.

[k__]

How does online voting differ from mail voting?

The only difference I see, is, the mail is sent via the postal service and the online vote is sent via my personal computer and internet connection.

To get around this, the government could issue verified voting tablets that are locked down and use secured connections.

Otherwise, people can force me to vote different without the authorities noticing already.

[pessimizer]

I don't know that there is a difference, and I'm finding the fact that it's becoming more widespread a problem. There could already be a nontrivial number of coerced or paid voters. Voting by mail should be a tiny percentage of the vote, largely consisting of people who are overseas. Instead, we're starting to see a lot of elections decided by mail-ins.

[jcoffland]

> How does online voting differ from mail voting?

You cannot easily encrypt your voting information when sent by regular mail. If you have a unique unforgeable id, like a private key, and a secure voting device then your vote can be submitted and counted securely online. Granted, you could print your encrypted vote and mail it in.

[jcoffland]

> The major problem with online voting is that people can be coerced into voting against their wishes

The main problem is guaranteeing one vote per eligible voter.

Coercion is a related but smaller problem. It's much harder to coerce most of the people most of the time than it is to stuff the ballot.

[throwaway542134]

Worth mentioning that ballot stuffing is a problem with the people counting the votes/running the polls, not the voters. So it would be more accurate to say that the problem is preventing the entity that organizes the vote from accessing discrete votes.

[dark_glass]

I don't think that is a major problem, unless I am misunderstanding. Oregon for instance is all vote by mail, outside the watchful eye of any government authority.

[irrational]

What do you mean by "outside the watchful eye of any government authority"?

Do you just mean the ballots are filled out at home where a government authority is not looking over my shoulder? Because everything else is controlled by the government. The ballots and booklets are printed by the government (who authorize what can be on the ballot and in the booklet), are mailed by a government agency, are checked by a government authority, etc.

[jhayward]

I hope not.

https://sos.oregon.gov/blue-book/Pages/state/executive/elect...