The number of people actually tabulating the results is still very very small - especially in key swing state districts.
You cannot argue much with a public algorithm doing public tabulation, where you can literally follow your vote.
You cannot argue much with a public algorithm doing public tabulation, where you can literally follow your vote.
But like OP said, volunteers could see the process. The recounts were actually pretty damn close; it was just the election was way too close for that to be acceptable.
In general the US system, as crap as it is (first past the post is garbage; no possibility for 3rd parties as with ranked or MMP systems), the electoral and state-based rules do mean that election fraud isn't too big a deal. New York will likely always go Blue. Tennessee will always go Red. Even if there is same fraud there, it doesn't matter that much because of the way votes are allocated per state. It's not fair, but that's the system the US has.
Fraud matters greatly in states were elections are close (Florida, Ohio, Arizona, etc.) and it will get even worse thanks to National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, if that gets triggered.
Potential fraud in swing states or NaPoVolIterCo are incredibly dangerous right now, because what we cannot have in America is loss of faith in the election system. That will be disastrous. We would not survive the 2000 Bush/Gore election today.
This shows that recount disputes almost always boil down to whether to accept a particular ballot one way or another. It's not fraud. You're just bound to run into ambiguity once or twice in a large election. It usually doesn't matter, but it can pop up when an election is really close.
There was a literal tied election in Virginia a few years ago that stemmed from an ambiguous mark for delegate: https://wtop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ballot_94_AP_cro...
I'm guessing you watch a lot of CPG Grey. You should check out Cardinal Voting systems[0], specifically Approval[1] and STAR[2], as these better fix a lot of the problems. Fargo recently had great success with approval[3]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_voting
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting
[3] https://www.electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/fargos-f...
But that also means the guy with the big wrench can follow your vote and so see whether you voted the way he told you or not, and that allows him to decide whether to smash your kneecaps in.
Electronic voting enables corruption.
But consider: at this very moment, right above you is a comment with a picture of ballot that was filled out improperly and lead to a tied election. If we can’t teach people to fill in a circle properly, how in the world do we expect them to use or understand a system that guarantees verifiability as well as anonymity.
We already have these systems in deployment. My precinct uses optical-scan paper ballots where any mark inside the bubble is valid. You can fill, dot, cross, check, whatever---the machine will count it as a mark. If you have a stray mark that results in an overvote, the machine will reject your ballot, then prompt you to either correct the overvote or override the error. The scanner will also accept ballots fed in any orientation as long as it's not folded or wrinkled.
It's surprisingly robust and user-friendly.
Teaching people to use and trust an insanely complex system is. I’ve yet to hear any proposal for an electronic voting system that offers any advantages over current systems AND doesn’t require a PhD in mathematics to grasp.
The simple answer I've seen is giving people a hash or code that can be used to verify their vote in a database. Obviously you have to trust the database, but you also have to trust the people counting. I do think there are enabling technologies like zero-knowledge proofs and locally differential privacy that do help with many of the problems, but my understanding is that neither of these is mature enough for use in voting, yet.
But as to general advantages, I think there's two major ones I see. 1) Electronic voting better enables access to voting since people can vote in the comfort of their homes (especially relevant in a situation live covid). 2) Enables better research about candidates. I live in a state with mail in voting and how I vote is with my ballot in front of me while I research all the candidates. In fact, I spend several days voting (sure, not everyone will do this but it makes it easier). Links to official campaign pages or voter guides (we have this in my state with the ballot) would be helpful (and encourage candidates to create them! Because often they don't even have a website, at least on local levels).
As a minor advantage I do see having the ability to perform different voting testing and better answer questions to things like ordinal and cardinal voting systems (by participation not forced A/B testing).
Just because enabling technologies aren't there yet doesn't mean we should shutdown the conversation about how to solve those technological challenges.
The instructions aren't just for those filling it out. The reader should only have interpreted the properly filled in circle. The ones with marks through them are a near universal indication of "Don't count this," everywhere I go. I've also been known to either annotate, leave an instruction to th He reader, or say screw it and ask for a new ballot.
Given the significant other was completely flummoxed though when asked cold, I see your point.
Also jurisdictions can do risk-limiting audits (RLA) to spot-check that the electronic counts are in line with the results. "Following your vote" is dangerous because it opens up the possibility of at-scale voter intimidation or vote-buying. "Receipt-freeness" is a desirable property because it eliminates this risk. RLAs allow for aggregate verification while maintaining receipt-freeness.
Yup, an "I voted" sticker is OK. An "I voted" sticker with your ballot's serial number isn't.