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Comment by notroot | Hacker News Reader

Ask anyone if their vote was counted. The only honest answer is, "I'm not sure." That is concerning.

Seems like a good kind of work to spread, thanks for sharing.

In the last election, I was able to tell that my early-voting paper ballot actually reached the counting machine because of the receipt system.

That doesn't cover every failure mode, but it's pretty good compared to nothing.

(And do you really think calling any other answer dishonest is going to help the discussion?)

What if every vote had an ID / random number attached to it, identifying you, and then when they are counted every number that was read and counted gets posted up on some database or broadcast, or even in paper form to be collected at another polling station, so you know for sure your vote counted?

Just spitballing here, because it seems like an easy problem to solve, the US is just notoriously stubborn when it comes to mixing up the election process.

>What if every vote had an ID / random number attached to it, identifying you

Votes must not be attributable to any given person, or else the potential for coercion exists.

Or vote buying.

I read GP as simply verifying that a particular ballot made it into the count, not verifying what the votes on that ballot happened to be. That seems less problematic with respect to buying or coercing votes. I'm not convinced that "lost ballots" are a big problem, but such a system would be a way of checking that.

That would destroy the secret ballot, so isn't appropriate for a democratic country.

Many developed democracies either never stopped using a pure paper ballot, or have gone back to it over the last decade or so. For all its flaws, it's easier to make safer than electronic voting.

I get something similar in CA. I can look online and see that I voted.

That’s public info and should be audited.

The part that remains secret is who/what I voted for.

Edit:clarity

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