I often say that election security is by far the hardest technical problem I've ever encountered. Why? Four reasons:
1) Contradictory critical requirements, particularly vote secrecy vs. transparency.
2) No truly neutral trusted third parties.
3) Election do-overs are generally impossible, so the ability to merely detect problems is insufficient. You have to reliably prevent them.
4) Much of the technology than can manage the complexity of elections is inherently untrustworthy.
The only good solution I know is to have a physical box, have everyone check that it's empty, have all the ballot papers put in the box by voters while everyone watches, then shuffle the papers, then take them out and count them while everyone watches.
@neroden @mattblaze I know you’re mostly joking. But that suggestion only works if your election has a small number of candidates for a single position.
The last election I voted in had 4 positions, 3 questions. Each position had up to 120 candidates of which I could choose up to 10. This one was counted by a scantron machine and I have confidence that nothing underhanded happened. Still, elections can be complicated.
One way to make it more possible: Most countries simply don't have *nearly* as many races as the US -- you may vote for one representative to Parliament, and one local mayor (at a different time), not the very long ballots we have here.
The "box" system is scalable as long as the voting system is "precinct-summable" so that you can count in each precinct and then add up.
UK still counts ballots by hand.
https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-britain-counts-its-votes-41265
@neroden @aeisenberg @mattblaze Ireland also counts votes by hand, and unlike the UK it not just a simple plurality count but a proper proportional representation system that requires many counts (it's similar to what in the US would be called instant runoff in multi-seat electoral districts).
The count can take a day, but that's OK and expected. In fact I find the drawn out count drama to be one of the most interesting parts of the process.
Matt Blaze
Nathanael Nerode
Andrew Eisenberg
Imbolc