this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
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Electronics are superior to paper for many tasks but voting for your share of representation in government ain't one of them. Without indentifying who voted for who (red flag) and verifying it then you can only hope the software was counting properly at run time and not subverted. You can watch people miscount paper in real-time and call them out.
The idea of using zero-knowledge proofs to avoid identifying voters has been proposed. Don't know if this is just theoretical at this point or if machines implement it, but that would solve the issue you mention.
ZKP solves the math problem.
It does not solve the trust problem.
Well the implementation would still need to be audited, but you could argue this is more objective and practical than overseeing manual counting.
The problem is not that its impossible to establish trust in an electronic voting system. A qualified individual with the necessary knowledge in formal verification, cryptography, and computer science (maybe I am missing a field or two here) might be able to audit a system and verify that it adheres to certain standards and criteria.
But I cannot do that, the average adult certainly cannot, and the bottom 5% percentile (of whatever criterion/metric might be applicable here) is so far removed from the problem that they are probably already having trouble operating such a machine.
We were able to organize our own elections in elementary school to elect class representatives, and every kid understood how they work, and was able to observe the election process themselves, establishing trust in the system. If I have any doubts if my vote is going to be counted correctly in an election, I can go to my polling station and monitor the election as an independent observer or join the election board and do the counting myself. Every citizen eligible to vote has all the necessary tools available, both in terms of access to the polling station and counting of the ballots (which is public), and in terms of mental capacity and required prior knowledge. (Well, the last two points at least apply to a large majority of voters). I don’t need to trust the local government or dubious “experts”. The public’s ability to establish trust in the election system is essential in a democracy, and establishing trust cannot be delegated.
No, you could not. In any way.
It's been proposed for age verification too, but shockingly it doesn't seem to be a priority.