All the propositions were defeated. I admit I voted in favor of the communistic Prop 79, but I never really thought it would pass. Oh well
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You don't want to provide a way for voters to *prove* how they voted; that enables vote-buying and intimidation. So having the ID numbers checkable online is out.
The optical-scan ballot seems so obviously the right solution (I've used them in all my elections, in St Paul, Minneapolis, and now in SF) that I'm bewildered people would consider anything else. I make marks on the ballot, I put the ballot into the machine, it beeps "yes your vote was counted" and the number goes up. And then the ballot goes into the locked ballot box for recounting. The system continues to work (though without automatic tabulation) if power goes out. Recounts are fast and easy (just feed 'em through again). The ballots are robust. The ballots are readable by any even minimally literate person. The only concern is that the ballots and machines are somewhat more expensive in principle than a DRE+voter-verified-receipt system. I think the benefits are worth the cost, especially as the machines are by far not the most expensive part of an election.
If every vote is on the web and they're all associated with a number, there's no way to prove that any vote you bring up belongs to you. You could show your receipt, but the receipt is just a number printed on an anonymous piece of receipt paper. They'd be incredibly easy to fake, so there's no way to prove a vote is yours.
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Curse them, curse them all.
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The optical-scan ballot seems so obviously the right solution (I've used them in all my elections, in St Paul, Minneapolis, and now in SF) that I'm bewildered people would consider anything else. I make marks on the ballot, I put the ballot into the machine, it beeps "yes your vote was counted" and the number goes up. And then the ballot goes into the locked ballot box for recounting. The system continues to work (though without automatic tabulation) if power goes out. Recounts are fast and easy (just feed 'em through again). The ballots are robust. The ballots are readable by any even minimally literate person.
The only concern is that the ballots and machines are somewhat more expensive in principle than a DRE+voter-verified-receipt system. I think the benefits are worth the cost, especially as the machines are by far not the most expensive part of an election.
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