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Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

IMO secure isn't enough. You also need to make it auditable. As far as I can see, it's pretty much impossible to do this satisfactorily with a digital solution. It also seems entirely unnecessary. Manual counting systems work well, and allow people to feel like they are participating in the democratic process (because they are).

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Ballot boxes that scan ballots are auditable because they keep the paper ballots.

In my state, election workers have to ensure that the number of ballots is the same as the number recorded by the ballot box on election night - although we don’t recount who voted for who. The ballots are preserved.

Most states use paper ballots that are then run through electronic tallying machines. This process is completely auditable. This is how people lying about the 2020 election were able to do all of their sham audits in Arizona and Wisconsin.

> This process is completely auditable

Presumably the auditing process would involve tallying the votes manually... in case why bother with the electronic process? Unless you only run the audit if there's a complaint. Which I guess works. But personally for something as important as elections I would much more comfortable with a system where the transparent, hard-to-corrupt process is used by default.

You are missing the part that somebody could add additional ballots which is a claim that is being made. Supposedly there was a water leak and then people brought in some extra ballots.

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