Counterpoint: There’s a big difference between electronic voting machines and electronic counting machines.
The way we do elections in Canada, your vote is made on paper. The paper ballots are fed though electronic counting machines to get the initial tally, but the paper record is then kept and tallied up separately to check for discrepancies. This is both fast and secure.
Electronic voting machines, on the other hand, are an exercise in absolute insanity that security experts universally agree no one should be using.
Of course, Musk is railing against them because he’s drunk the far right Kool-Aid about stolen elections, but actual smart, educated people have been saying the same thing for a lot longer.
In a smaller local election a few cycles back, I got to trial a paper backed electronic voting machine they were testing out for people who have dexterity or vision problems.
You basically got the same paper ballot as everyone else, but then you slipped it into the machine and it colored the bubbles for you after you selected the option on the screen.
Then you took your piece of paper out and handled it like a ballot filled in by hand.
Wasn’t networked and didn’t see anything that could tie you to a vote.
I got to share my appreciation for the concept, but concern about difficulty verifying it filled things out correctly, and the potential for touch screens to be difficult to use or act funny, all the difficulties of ux work to handle fixing an error, and the need for the UI to be exceptionally clear, which was difficult on the smaller screen with the larger font.
I think it also has screen reader support, but I didn’t use it, so I’m not sure.
Counterpoint: There’s a big difference between electronic voting machines and electronic counting machines.
The way we do elections in Canada, your vote is made on paper. The paper ballots are fed though electronic counting machines to get the initial tally, but the paper record is then kept and tallied up separately to check for discrepancies. This is both fast and secure.
Electronic voting machines, on the other hand, are an exercise in absolute insanity that security experts universally agree no one should be using.
Of course, Musk is railing against them because he’s drunk the far right Kool-Aid about stolen elections, but actual smart, educated people have been saying the same thing for a lot longer.
In a smaller local election a few cycles back, I got to trial a paper backed electronic voting machine they were testing out for people who have dexterity or vision problems.
You basically got the same paper ballot as everyone else, but then you slipped it into the machine and it colored the bubbles for you after you selected the option on the screen.
Then you took your piece of paper out and handled it like a ballot filled in by hand.
Wasn’t networked and didn’t see anything that could tie you to a vote.
I got to share my appreciation for the concept, but concern about difficulty verifying it filled things out correctly, and the potential for touch screens to be difficult to use or act funny, all the difficulties of ux work to handle fixing an error, and the need for the UI to be exceptionally clear, which was difficult on the smaller screen with the larger font.
I think it also has screen reader support, but I didn’t use it, so I’m not sure.