>> What's important to rely on is the fact that people are able to verify that their own votes are consistent with what's in the public votes
> But will people do this at scale and do people trust that they do so? The latter is the most important.
Yes, absolutely. This is the most important, and that's what makes it all so easy! If you don't trust, verifying your own vote is a click away. If you think there's something fishy in your town, ping a few friends and ask them to verify. Journalists and international observers can sample a few thousand randomly chosen people and verify that the election is at least 99.9% accurate.
Because we all know that if journalists find even any pattern of people whose votes aren't getting counted, or were changed, it would be front-page national scandal news.
The whole process you're describing for physical polling places is a million times more work for any individual. It requires a massive amount of time and attention.
Meanwhile, with electronic/online voting, all you need to do is see if people are reporting discrepancies that hold up upon further investigation. If they're not, then it all works. I don't understand why you think people wouldn't trust this. It's dead simple.
Well, agree to disagree. :D
I see your points, and I would agree that the majority would still keep their trust.
> I don't understand why you think people wouldn't trust this.
Because people are not always rational beings, often don't understand statistics and, in my experience, the set of people not trusting journalists and having doubt on past elections having significant overlap. If you are not convinced the press isn't lying, and maybe just prints what the government wants, you will not expect that they uncover election intervention. And your friends may be on a list of the city hall, "they" know that they vote for certain parties[1]. This is basically verbatim what voters sometimes tell you, why they don't vote via mail. It's easy to transfer those fears onto electronic voting.
It's very hard to keep believing in serious election fraud if you see how (this kind of) analogue voting works, though. You have to trust nobody, only yourself, at least in regards to your local polling station.
> The whole process you're describing for physical polling places is a million times more work for any individual. It requires a massive amount of time and attention.
Yes, I don't disagree. It's significantly more work, inefficient and antiquated. All true. I'm just not convinced that the convenience of electronic / online voting is worth the risk that a) a fuck-up due to any kind of bug / security problem and b) people losing even the slightest bit of trust into elections because of "magic computer", even if they are caused by delusions, would pose.
[1] Germany has no "registration" as Republican or Democrat (w/ German parties of course) like the US has - they don't have such lists
> But will people do this at scale and do people trust that they do so? The latter is the most important.
Yes, absolutely. This is the most important, and that's what makes it all so easy! If you don't trust, verifying your own vote is a click away. If you think there's something fishy in your town, ping a few friends and ask them to verify. Journalists and international observers can sample a few thousand randomly chosen people and verify that the election is at least 99.9% accurate.
Because we all know that if journalists find even any pattern of people whose votes aren't getting counted, or were changed, it would be front-page national scandal news.
The whole process you're describing for physical polling places is a million times more work for any individual. It requires a massive amount of time and attention.
Meanwhile, with electronic/online voting, all you need to do is see if people are reporting discrepancies that hold up upon further investigation. If they're not, then it all works. I don't understand why you think people wouldn't trust this. It's dead simple.