"Until we can secure digital voting systems, we shouldn't use them."<p>Someone, please remind me again, why do we need digital voting systems? For the convenience of getting the results a couple of hours earlier? To save the climate? To eliminate recounts? Because using paper ballots feels too archaic for our high-tech modern society?<p>People tend to speak about electronic voting as a settled matter. I must have missed the debate.
In-person and mail-in voting, at least in the USA, is already quite insecure. Its amazing to me that with all the consternation about Russian bots influencing our elections we would even consider moving them online without strongly bolstering the level of identity verification. However, the argument has been that authenticating voter identity is racist and disenfranchises poor voters. I dont see how these two thoughts can possibly be resolved in a way that gives everyone confidence in the election outcome, so trying to do seems like a recipe for violent protests. I am not looking forward to the aftermath of this election if the voting mechanisms are changed.
> easy to destabilize public confidence in voting outcomes<p>The last few years of politics in the US has highlighted for me how brittle electoral democracy really is, and how important the public's presumption of fair elections is to the system functioning.<p>Those of us who work in the software industry and know how the sausage is made should consider using our voices and experience to share with family and friends just how buggy software is in the real world, and how inevitable problems are, both due to malice and simple mistakes.