I keep seeing comments about how Canada avoided a similar fate because of its strict use of paper ballots; the US must have changed its system to include these electronic and possibly not airgapped machines.
I keep seeing comments about how Canada avoided a similar fate because of its strict use of paper ballots; the US must have changed its system to include these electronic and possibly not airgapped machines.
100% we need to switch back to entirely paper ballots, even if it takes months to determine a winner.
I don’t understand why it’s so difficult. In France voting is done entirely on paper and results are often released later that night, and almost all the results are in by the next day. Same in the UK, although it generally takes them a few hours longer, probably because the polls close later in the evening.
In California we’re all mailed paper ballots, which we can return by mail (no stamp needed) or designated ballot box, or in person at a polling place up to closing time on Voting Day. My ballot (in a westside Los Angeles district) had 37 items, (on about 7 pages iirc) some of which were yes/no on propositions, others of which had a choice between 2 to 15 candidates for various offices. From school board to US President. It was very clear, just needed a black pen to fill the circles, and I could have gotten it in a dozen different languages. It’s also accessible for my quadriplegic husband, who can’t get to a polling place. But it took time and thought. It wasn’t like the pictures I’ve seen of French ballots which were just a single name on a sheet of paper, take the one from the stack of your choice, I guess? So counting them takes more time. Plus counting ballots that were mailed and postmarked by the deadline, those are allowed 2 weeks to arrive.
*(A couple of edits to clarify details)
I heard Ireland does too, but they also use Rank Voice Voting so it takes them about a week. Seems like a potential benefit that the process of democracy is so visible, imo.
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Some places have hybrid machines; an electronic interface but gives you a printout of your choices (like a Scantron form filler). I’m fine with this option so long as hardcopies are preserved for 2 years minimum and randomized checks are performed before and after an election on EVERY machine.
Kansas has the hybrid style so I fill out a paper ballot and it is scanned and the results tabulated electronically with a paper trail for auditing. This actually seems even more reliable to me than only paper or electronic with printed out copies for a paper trail.
Same here. Paper ballots that can be machine scanned and stored for manual audits seem like the best possible method.
Trump’s Justice department just demanded all records on 2020 and 2024 federal elections from Colorado.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/11/nx-s1-5426097/trump-justice-department-voter-data-colorado
Washington uses paper ballots absentee only and only needs more than a few hours to figure out results unless there’s a very tight race.
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Where I live, we have voting machines with a paper receipt. Voters use a touchscreen and then get a printed ballot. The voter can then check to make sure that what they cast electronically is correct, and then the paper ballot is scanned and saved. You can perform an audit anytime you like to compare the instant electronic results to hand counted ballots.
Yes cause so much harder to modify a paper ballot, especially the mailed ones. No way one of the USPS employees, or a corrupt election worker, clerk, etc. would ever do anything wrong. If anything, our recent elections have shown us really people are infallible & honest, and it is computers that are inherently flawed.
It’s far harder to achieve mass manipulation of the ballot when it’s all being handled by a lot of human hands. If it’s managed by computers, then by finding a bug or other vulnerability in the software or database you could alter the whole election.
Meanwhile, to manipulate a paper ballot & hand-counted election in the same way you’d need the cooperation of a huge number of people, and you’d need them all to keep their mouths shut. That’s far more difficult than defeating a computerised system
It’s actually much easier, especially with mail-in ballots. Paper ballots can discarded, modified, etc. Many of them sit in election boxes that aren’t under reliable surveillance. The election workers, usually only two, come and put them into giant trash bags. They are not monitored at that point either, allowing them to modify the ballots. I haven’t seen any reliable checks of the envelopes at that point either, where if they’re opened & resealed, it wouldn’t even raise flags. You also have no way to confirm the tally of your vote to ensure it wasn’t manipulated. If you want to have multiple checks with multiple isolated computer systems, you absolutely can.
I for one, actually believe a blockchain ledger system of voting like that of Monero would provide a great option. Most of all, they could anonymously verify their vote which to me is the most important. Having some verification that my vote was actually calculated as casted is extremely important to me. Furthermore, you’d have top academics, mathematicians, cryptographers providing the exact details on its design with an open source solution that anyone could search & scan for vulnerabilities, meaning it would receive a significant amount of review & testing.
You also would have a huge amount of people like myself that actually understand the tech, and plenty of individuals willing to explain its design & safety in a format comfortable for you. It is a shame people are so opposed to new ideas & real progress, especially after Democrats just lost to Trump. I guess just keep what you’re doing & we’ll finally get a viable third party.
Correct. It is. Because to do enough to change the result you need to do it alot, and that’s really hard to get away with.
In Canada we count the ballots with witnesses (called scutineers) to validate.