Advocates say paper ballots are safest

While I agree with you that the risks are not worth it, there is the counterargument that votes are expensive. If votes were made less expensive it might be feasible to put more things out for popular vote

Edit: typo. Stupid autocorrect set for the wrong language

Totally agreed, but there's a variation on electronic voting I've heard proposed that I think would be very, very helpful. Long story short, the machine doesn't record the vote, it just produces the ballot.

You enter all your choices on the machine, then the machine spits out a piece of paper, and the paper itself is your voting record. You verify that it is correct before it goes into the ballot box.

Nothing's perfect, but this doesn't seem to have any weaknesses that existing paper ballots don't, and it gets rid of a few. It has potential to greatly reduce ballot problems, both crap like hanging chads, "voter used an X mark instead of filling in the circle", and real errors like overvoting. Software shenanigans are almost pointless, because the piece of paper is the vote record, and the voter checks it.*

Machines can also be more usable for people with input/output difficulties (poor eyesight, motor control, whatever).

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*I say "almost" because we all know that plenty of people won't check it. Vision problems are also a concern here, but not any more so than with plain paper.

We have a great compromise in New York. Paper ballot. Electronic (optical) tabulation. The efficiencies of digitisation with the robustness of a paper trail.

> "Why can we have electronic banking, but not electronic voting, vowelless?”

Secure transactions with your bank are doable, because there is no need to ensure anonymity from your bank (quite the opposite: your bank needs to know your identity).

Secure transactions while keeping the secret ballot is very very difficult to do. And secret ballot is one of the cornerstones of democracy.

> Votes happen months before one needs to take office.

In your country, perhaps, but in my country (Denmark), it's usually two weeks. But still manage to count our paper ballots. Usually within 2 days.

> Votes happen months before one needs to take office.

Not always. There are jurisdictions voting is done just a week before takeover.

you can make an electronic system safe, safer than even paper ballots which can get lost and even altered.

Simple have the machine print two reports. the copy given to the voter clearly states there vote and produces a bar code type mark at the bottom and top of the form. at the back sealed is a another copy of all bar codes printed.

when an election is contested the roll of bar codes recorded can be compared to the electronic reports. a voter can also use their phone or scanner at any government office to verify their vote again and verify it was counted.

however we still need some form of picture id that can be issued and encoded into the vote so that both sides are satisfied.

The UK manages to produce counts very quickly with paper ballots one constituency managed 60 minutes.

Paper ballots are safe only if everything else around the election is safe. It's very easy to stuff fake ballot papers into the ballot box or take out ballots you don't like by unsealing the box. If you don't like the way a constituency has voted, it's very easy to fire ballot box and burn the papers. It takes time and manpower to secure ballot boxes for a long time required for manual counting and to secure and transport ballot papers before that. You need to have multiple supervisors witnessing counting of each vote to prevent the counter from manipulating the count which takes time and slows down counting. All this and more has happened in the history of paper ballot elections in India - which is partly why India moved to electronic voting which is a lot harder to tamper with. Paper ballot works only in a utopian world where you assume simple thuggery doesn't happen

I gather you've never seen an Australian senate vote.

There are so many candidates, we have hit the limit of the printing presses (a ballot paper 1.2m or so wide). No doubt that width seem reasonable at the time at it is wider than the ballot boxes - so you get a ballot paper can't actually lie flat.

Sadly that wasn't enough to fix the problem, so that had to shrink the font used. In fact that shrank it so much people could no longer read it, so they issued a magnifying glass with each paper.

Just so you have the picture clear in your mind: the ballot paper is so big it won't fit in the ballot box, ad the writing on it so small they issues magnifying glasses. Seeing all candidates names is literally impossible. http://www.abc.net.au/news/6870332

Now onto the next step. The voting system is so complex, the outcome it's known for at least a month. As this is Australia they do use computers but someone has to accurately enter all those marks on a paper that has to be read with a magnifying glass.

So while electronic voting may not make much sense where you live, there are places in the work where it is the only sane option.

Where white people live it's easy to get ID, and white people are more likely to have it for other reasons. Where black people live it's harder to get ID, and black people are less likely to have it for other reasons. Both are minor differences.

Best case interpretation from my vantage point: bigotry of low expectations. Apparently some people believe that poor people or minorities in America find it harder than even the poorest Indians to go get identification.

The really poor in the US don't tend to have ID. They often can't afford to take the time off work to go through the process of obtaining it, especially if they don't drive. Additionally, it's an extra expense some people can't afford.

Also, voter fraud isn't much of an issue in the US, so it's a solution to a problem we don't really have.

Sometimes I wish those crying voter suppression would amend voter ID proposals to make getting ID free and easy and just put this whole issue to bed. Unfortunately with REAL ID, things are only going to get more difficult and expensive.

Identification is hard to acquire in many parts of the United States, especially for poor people. Enforcing some sort of voter ID would prevent many poor people from voting, who are disproportionately poc. In other countries, ID is not difficult to acquire, in some cases acquired at birth or at a very young age.

Not American, but from my understanding it is because US citizens don't have mandatory ID documents. If getting documents necessary to vote is voluntary but requires time and money, going to an office in the next bigger town, bringing documents not everyone might have, ..., disadvantaged people have a harder time to obtain them and are less likely to have them.

If you get ID automatically or are required to hold it in other parts of life, it's less of a hurdle.

Easy access to getting ID. If you don't drive (many poorer people don't have access to either a car or education on how to drive one) getting an ID is surprisingly hard. If it was a mandatory law that all people are given a national ID card and it was made readily available, then I think much criticism would go away. But in the current state of laws, poor people struggle to get ID, minorities are poorer statistically, and more poor people are Democrats statistically. Hence why it becomes a partisan issue in a similar way of gerrymandering.

The second part of this is the obvious motivation - with voter fraud being so low as to be nonexistent (as shown with recent news about the "voter fraud" committee that has done and found absolutely nothing), what is the motivation for the laws given how many people it would negatively affect?

Places where voter ID policies are unproblematic have ubiquitous national ID cards possessed by every citizen. The United States famously does not have a national ID card, and instead uses a patchwork of state level IDs which require different levels of effort and cost to acquire. Many citizens do not have a legal ID at all, and some citizens even lack the paperwork necessary to acquire them under current law. If every voter had an ID, or if the government went to great lengths to ensure that every citizen could get one, voter ID laws wouldn't be problem. But as it stands voter ID laws prevent hundreds of thousands of citizens from voting, and those citizens are disproportionately poor and racial minorities, meaning that voter ID requirements have deeply distortionary effects on the composition of the voting electorate.

Basically, even now the party in power makes it as hard as possible for the minority power to vote. Making elections on work days, registration required 6+ months before election day, understaffing polling places in certain districts, changing polling places, etc. This has a nasty history going back to the jim crow days.

That, mixed with the fact that in person polling fraud pretty much never happens, means we shouldn't want another tool in the hands of disenfranchisers.

It’s just politics, trying to get brownie points. If you're poor you probably need a state ID moreso than richer folks. Any benefits need IDs, school you need ID, medicare/medicaid you need IDs, etc. Basically any state or federal benefits require an ID. Controlled goods like cigs and beer require ID.

All of the sibling comments mention that it's unfortunately difficult for some people, but from the other direction: voter ID requirements solve a problem (fraud) that doesn't exist.

If it didn’t suppress Democratic votes then you wouldn’t have Republican politicians nearly universally in favor and Democratic politicians nearly universally opposed. I take that as prima facie evidence.

We have the same debate with early voting, how long polling places are open, and where they are located.

For whatever reason, conservative voters tend to be more motivated to vote. So any friction in the voting process tends to disproportionately affect Democrats.

As an aside, there are structurally racist policies that suppress Democratic votes both historically and today. To give one example, most states do not allow exconvicts to vote.

As to why many Americans are opposed? Because for so long this country has tried to prevent anyone but white men from voting.

Besides that, voter ID is a solution in search of a problem. There’s just not a plausible way to commit large scale fraud at the polls. You’d have to round up bus loads of people willing to commit voter fraud, take them from polling place to place, then have them sign their names as some other voter on the rolls at that polling location and hope that the real voter hasn’t and won’t show up to vote. I lack the imagination to see how this could occur without detection.

In any case, what everyone should actually be concerned with is that the voting system accurately captures the will of the people. In which case, voter fraud at the polls, in America, is the least of our problems. Our attention should be focused on things gerrymandering, first past the post, and for presidential elections, the electoral college, among other issues.

It’s only disenfranchisement for those who desire votes from illegal aliens, and individuals who illegally vote more than once (alive or dead).

The fact is anyone can vote on a provisional ballot, and if the verified ballots provided a close enough race, the provisional ballots are scrutinized and counted. This is presently happening in KS with 10k provisional ballots which could skew a 96 ballot spread amongst almost 300k.

Those whining about disenfranchisement simply want fraudulent votes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_ballot

So for one thing, which doesn't directly address the question, voter ID laws are being pushed for the most part from one side of the political spectrum, and some of those have acknowledged that they are doing it with a partisan goal [1]. So given that it's pushed by only one side, with no clear evidence that it's trying to solve a widespread problem, it smells to those on the other side that they are trying to win elections not by advancing the better argument, but by keeping their opponents away from the polls.

As to why it's seen as disenfranchising, there are no general requirements in the United States to have a form of ID to exist in daily life. Poorer people who live in cities are less likely to have the resources or need to own a car, and if you don't own a car, why would you have a driver's license, which requires spending potentially hours at the local motor vehicle department, getting access to documents like birth certificates (which may well be in another state), and paying a fee [2]. Some states have free state photo IDs, but many do not, and even those IDs take some time and effort to get. Estimates of how many people are deterred from the polls because of lack of ID are tricky, and while the numbers are fairly low, America was founded on the idea of liberty and justice for all.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/us/some-republicans-ackno...

[2] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...

Due to the necessity of personal automobile transportation in most US cities (poor public transit infrastructure), many Americans have state driver's licenses (~87%). We do not have a national ID card.

Consequently, many voter ID laws presume that all voters will have a driver's license as a form of ID (or even less likely forms, such as a passport or birth certificate).

While there are non-license forms of ID that can be obtained, all of these are bureaucratic processes.

Driver's license IDs are problematic for two reasons: (1) poorer and/or minority Americans are less likely to have a driver's than wealthy and/or white Americans (by ~5%) & (2) poorer and/or minority Americans are far more likely to have their driver's licenses taken (due to policing and economic inabilities to pay court fines or other charges).

Voter ID laws thus (1) create additional barriers for minority or poor Americans to vote, (2) are legal (in that aren't directly suppressing minority voting), (3) do not impact wealthy white voters.

> Can Americans explain why voter ID is seen to be disenfranchising or sometimes inarticulately simplified as "racist"?

It adds a barrier to voting. We don’t like having to trust our government to be benevolent—the track record of such populations is poor.

The risk of voter fraud (in the form of people who shouldn’t be voting, voting) is low. The ease of forging an ID is high. The risk of tyranny therefore dominates (I enter the massive corruption and security gaps in India’s Aadhar program as Exhibit A.)

It's not objectively racist, but contextually, it kind of is, because a) some parties have definitely used these kinds of things for voter suppression and b) systematically, all of these hurdles tend to favour concientious folks, i.e. 'small c conservative', who have a tendency to be more right wing. So it does tilt things a little bit even if it's entirely objective.

Having an ID is important for so many reasons, it'd be great if the US gov had a standard state/federal ID system that could facilitate so many things. Of course it would also be abused :)

I don't really ever see anyone say it's racist, so even just bringing that up isn't likely to lead to a productive discussion.

But what people do often say, rightly, is that of the population who would don't have ID's and thus wouldn't be able to vote if you enacted a voter ID law, they're disproportionally likely to vote democrat. You can take from that what you want, but it's almost entirely republicans who are for voter ID and almost entirely democrats who are against it. That's not a coincidence.

Combine that with the fact that voter ID doesn't actually solve any current problems we have (in-person voter fraud is virtually nonexistent), it just seems like a distraction when what we should be having is a real conversation about the actual security of our election systems from hacking.

(EDIT: s/democrats/likely to vote democrat/;)

Surprised nobody's mentioned this yet: The most common form of ID in the US is a driver's license. To get one you need to meet a bunch of requirements and then take a driving test at a local branch of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). If you are ever looking for a great example of government inefficiency it's the DMV offices [1]. All of them run horribly, most have massive wait times for simple procedures, and the employees have a reputation for not giving a shit. Not to say all of them run like this, but in California it's so bad that the government officials have their own secret DMV office to avoid waits [2].

If you were a poor person who really only has the value of their physical labor to feed your family you might not want to waste spend hours and hours of your incredibly (relatively) valuable time for something you can make do without. Since these poor people are often minorities voter ID laws disproportionately affect them.

The question of racism being a factor for supporters of voter ID is kinda muddied. Voter ID laws seem to make a ton of sense on the surface, but a little bit of knowledge about the American election system makes it clear that voter fraud is really not a big problem. There's no doubt that racists would support voter ID laws as they do suppress the election turnout of the poor, but I haven't seen any evidence that racial factors contribute to the majority of people's support for voter ID laws. Like every topic in US politics, it has become hyper-polarized to the point where both sides talk past each other to try to demonize their opponents.

[1]: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-DMV-so-slow

[2]: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler...

They can get an ID. You can't even get a legal job without a state-issued ID and federal social security number.

If it's racist, well...

Requiring an ID is a barrier to voting. Maybe not a particularly burdensome one, but it's still a burden that can prevent people from participating in elections.

Better to err on the side of expanding access to the democratic process, instead of restricting it. Particularly since voter fraud is not a very enticing crime, or a very common one.

The 'racist' angle comes from various court rulings that have stated that certain laws intended to restrict voting rights disproportionately impacted people of color. One particular ruling in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Texas state law which banned student IDs as acceptable voter ID was racially discriminating against people of color.

I assume you are asking in good faith but that is a big ask - yes it is "racist"

It goes back to Civil Rights era activities and the Voters Rights Act. It's been slow ratchet effect of constantly changing requirements.

First they require ID even if you are a registered voter. On the surface this isn't so bad. Then they only accept certain forms of ID. The accepted forms of ID are only available from certain departmental offices, like the DMV. Those offices have their own ID requirements to get their acceptable ID. They also are understaffed with limited office hours (10-4PM and 2 hours lunch). Due to budget cuts they also have fewer offices that can create your ID.

So the simple act of voting becomes a catch-22 of needing ID but not being able to even get ID.

This is a good question, but you should realize that it's a very contentious issue in the US. Most people will assume that you are "trolling" even though you are likely asking genuinely.

Explaining from scratch, the US has two approximately equally dominant political parties. It is presumed (by both sides, and probably correctly) that reducing the ID requirements will primarily benefit the more urban Democratic Party, and that making the requirements more stringent will benefit the more rural Republican party.

Possibly motivated by self-interest, the result is that about half the population believes that requiring greater voter ID is "obviously" a good thing, and about half believes that it is equally "obviously" a bad thing. The side in favor ID expresses this with concerns about fraudulent voting, and the side against ID talks about disenfranchisement.

Because you cannot commit voter fraud nearly as easily with Voter ID, and a disturbing portion of the nation and establishment media (and their purse holders) will tell you literally anything that can stick to the wall in an attempt to continue to hijack the nation.

It is horrendously racist to claim that any race is "incapable" to be able to get an ID, and the math doesn't work out in its favor anyway. But it's the current argument du jour that allows the power to be removed from the people, so it continues to play.

Anything else discussed in this thread with respect to the lack of American voter ID is just avoiding these facts. If the people want to take this nation back, they must pass voter ID and vote out (if they possibly can) those who oppose it.

well if anything it shows that you cannot trust paper ballots or that in a close contest no one will. electronic voting will work provided you can take a record of your vote, say a bar code, and scan it and verify your vote was recorded properly. so give them a paper copy with their votes printed out and a code they can scan either at home, their phone, any government facility, that says - yeah it counted.

when it comes to bulk counting the electronic version is used or a printout of every single bar code value is mass scanned back in.

how else can you have a paper ballot that cannot be altered?

Hand counting is another source of error or corruption though.

I like the idea of optical scanning with random audits. That is you'll scan them, then keep them locked up together with subtotals for each box. You can audit that the subtotals add up, and then randomly pick boxes to hand count. You can then verify that the votes in the box match the subtotals for that box.

"The people who cast the votes decide nothing; the people who count the votes decide everything!"

Joseph Stalin

You should really research the electoral college instead of just assuming it's unfair. There is a reason for it. You may disagree, but it's not just an obvious flaw or oversight. It was intentional.

Edit: to the downvoters, your downvotes won't magically and retroactively count as votes in the 2016 election. Why not participate in the discussion instead of the incivility? Or, you know, hypocritically participate in the HN equivalent of the Electoral College, those with downvoting ability.

haha that was actually my first thought.

The whole cryptocurrency stuff seems pretty shady but there are select applications where blockchain is ideally suited & this seems like one of them.

i.e. All those independent election monitors can set up their own node etc

I'm super bearish on blockchain, but this is one place I'd like to see it.

The machine gives me a paper record of my vote to keep. Meanwhile, it appends my vote to the blockchain. I go home and use information from my paper printout to verify my vote is indeed counted and on the blockchain. If my vote isn't on the blockchain, I have a paper record of it that can be used to append it, should the machine "fail."

You joke but there's actually a nice application here.

Consider a voting scheme where each voter is given a unique key in some fashion, probably with the same ID requirements as voting today. It's then used to place a single vote on the blockchain.

This system could have these nice properties:

* Verifiable number of votes and correct counting

* Each voter could verify that their own vote was counted correctly and they can see what they voted for using independently developed tools

* More eco friendly

* Cheaper

Yes it's not perfect, most people will still just trust an electronic box, but there is an interesting application here.

Edit: Several comments on privacy. Yes voter anonymity is crucial and it might be possible here as well.

Block chain was used to great effect in the attempted Catalan independence referendum [1]

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/mendel/status/914602521989193728

Plus, if you want to intrude physically into election sites, which can and has happened in the U.S., at least you have to have a lot of people involved in order to do it on a large scale (increasing the chances of getting caught). Electronic voting machines could potentially be compromised in many places by a relatively small group of people, some of whom might not even be in the country.

Congratulations! We've managed to develop a completely secure voting device, with a formally verified codebase. The machines cost USD$150,000.

Due to the cost, we will be able to deploy two machines at a single voting site in your county.

Please ensure you arrive with enough time, as lines are expected.

Sweden has paper ballots and around 85% voter turnout.

Voting from home would be very dangerous as it would undermine the secrecy of the vote. It would become much easier for people with power (employers, religious authorities, abusive family members, etc) to coerce others to vote for a chosen candidate.

Echoing the other comment about Sweden: The last Australian election had 91% turnout, which was the lowest since 1926. It is possible to have high turnout without computers.

You could, for instance, not have elections on a weekday as a start.

How about 99.99%? The Soviet Union managed that in 1984. If your elections aren't secret, you may as well not bother. And it's impossible to have secret electronic elections.

> The counterpoint of decentralization - there is a single point where final counts happen.

What voting system are you talking about?

It allows vote coercion, I can threaten you to vote a certain way and watch you drop off the ballot, and there's no way for you to change your vote later.

Having monitored physical polling stations where people vote in secret removes this opportunity, because I can only see that you voted, but not what you voted for.