Voting: Paper or Electronic?

[dposse]

Which do you think are better for the upcoming November election? Is it finally time for our outdated system to be updated, or will it just lead to widespread problems?

Personally, i think that as long as we have a system in place that can make sure that voting corruption and fraud doesn't take place, it should be ok. How hard can it be to create a fully operational electronic voting system in this day and age?

[Corporate Evil]

Unless the electronic is completetly contained, away from all other outside connectons, it should be fine. If not, stick to paper.

[Archbio]

Stick to paper. (http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/)

[DarkLadyNyara]

Paper. I trust government officials about as far as I can throw them, and the machines are far too easy to fuck with.

[Muffin Mage]

And paper isn't? At least machines will be far cheaper in the long run.

[Krylo]

Check Archbio's article.

The machines are all easily hackable, and it'd be rather easy to do either with sleight of hand at the box or just breaking in after hours.

With paper at least you need to be in constant contact with the ballots for long enough to sort/destroy them, and there's some kind of physical evidence.

With the electronics this simply isn't the case.

Further, the paper ballots go through machines, and are tallied both as paper and as electronic tickers. Thus allowing for two ways of tracking which would have to be 'hacked' in exactly the same way/amount in order for it to work.

The purely electronic version simply is not secure.

[ApathyMan]

You gotta go paper. There are plenty of serious security issues at hand, as Krylo noted, but the biggest problem is probably going to be computer errors more than anything. There were plenty of stories of computer systems crashing in the last national election, and we still have yet to make a system that is any more stable! Imagine a mere glitch in the system causing massive uncounted votes in various localities across the country.*

Also, the compromise of paper reciepts just causes more problems: The machines would have to be refilled with paper many times and cleared of paper jams as well.

Granted, there are many benefits to these programs, such as foreign language settings (instead of the plethora of ballots printed in foreign languages every year), better handicap accessibilty, and an easier and less costly process of forming each ballot for the states, but the costs of the electronic ballot are still much too high.

*Yes, I understand that voting has always been a messy system (coughFLORIDAcough), but usually the problem is caused by poorly styled ballots than anything. We should consider having a more standardized style of paper ballots... and that style should be the very simple one we use in Massachusetts: filling in circles with a marker, none of that "popping chads" bullshit.

And while we're at it, let's get rid of that horrid Indiana style ballot, where you can check one box and blindly vote for all the candidates of a certain party.

[Selfish]

Kill the trees.

Electing officials via electronic means is frightening. Every technically savvy consumer knows how fragile a computer / counting system can be.

You are talking about electronic data held in magnetic media spinning around on either metal or glass plates (or tape) at speeds of up to 7200 rpm. Place this all in an electric device, and marvel if the thing BOOTS UP let alone KEEPS your data.

A presidental vote isn`t a thing you want to screw up because voters were swayed over the course of a weekend and needed to revote, due to an electronic failure.