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from the newer-is-not-necessarily-better dept.
The Intercept reports
The nation's secretaries of state gathered for a multi-day National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) conference in Washington, D.C., this weekend, with cybersecurity on the mind.
Panels and lectures centered around the integrity of America's election process, with the federal probe into alleged Russian government attempts to penetrate voting systems a frequent topic of discussion.
[...] One way to allay concerns about the integrity of electronic voting machine infrastructure, however, is to simply not use it. Over the past year, a number of states are moving back towards the use of paper ballots or at least requiring a paper trail of votes cast.
For instance, Pennsylvania just moved to require all voting systems to keep a paper record of votes cast. Prior to last year's elections in Virginia, the commonwealth's board of elections voted to decertify paperless voting machines--voters statewide instead voted the old-fashioned way, with paper ballots.
[...] Oregon is one of two states in the country to require its residents to vote by mail, a system that was established via referendum in 1998. [Oregon Secretary of State Dennis] Richardson argued that this old-fashioned system offers some of the best defense there is against cyber interference.
"We're using paper and we're never involved with the Internet. The Internet is not involved at all until there's an announcement by each of our 36 counties to [the capital] Salem of what the results are and then that's done orally and through a confirmation e-mail and the county clerks in each of the counties are very careful to ensure that the numbers that actually are posted are the ones that they have," he said. "Oregon's in a pretty unique situation."
[...] In New Hampshire, the state uses a hybrid system that includes both paper ballots and machines that electronically count paper ballots with a paper trail.
Karen Ladd, the assistant secretary of state for New Hampshire, touted the merits of the system to The Intercept. "We do a lot of recounts, and you can only have a recount with a paper ballot. You can't do a recount with a machine!" she said.
America's paper ballot states may seem antiquated to some, but our neighbors to the north have used paper ballots for federal elections for their entire history. Thanks to an army of officials at 25,000 election stations, the integrity of Canada's elections is never in doubt.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 20 2018, @02:46PM
As with most things theres the exoteric explanation thats an opiate to the masses and the esoteric true reason.
The exoteric reason for the electoral college is pretty lame so you get lots of complaining.
The true esoteric reason is they were engineering a new culture and you need a balance between Florida recount fiasco butthurt for the entire country vs expediency instead of arguing everywhere all the time after all elections. Its kinda like gerrymandering or pro sports in that it provides a certain sense of belonging and lack of conflict on a small scale even if there's large scale conflict elsewhere among other people.
The pro football analogy is interesting. The loser loses by a lot of points, lets say 50%; however the loser isn't a mere 50% of the athleticism of the winner. If you measured each teams athleticism to determine the winner of a match by having them run dashes and bench press and add them all up, then the difference between winner and loser team might be less than a percent, and people are going to freak about corruption and cheating. But manipulate the results into 14 vs 28 and they're a little calmer about losing.
Maybe another argument is its like rounding. If the election is decided by rounding errors, maybe that's an indication the result doesn't really matter anyway on a long term. Voting doesn't always provide good leaders or avoid bad ones, but sometimes likewise it doesn't really matter and that situation would be the definition of it. 49.9999 vs 50.0001 in the election results isn't a tragedy, its a success, overall, thats kinda sorta what the electoral college system is saying.
Sort of an opiate of the masses WRT elections. Can't have infinite irritation and pot stirring every election, yet having elections between typically hand picked candidates means not much changes yet the populace thinks it has power to change. Sometimes they get Trump'd. But usually it works and the system is engineered to keep people calm and uninvolved while feeling involved.
I'm just saying we'd have more riots than we already have if votes counted more than they do.
Its kind of a oil calming the waves on the pond thing; probably not ecologically sound in all conditions all the time, but sometimes gotta do it?