Germany Refuses to Use Voting Machines Like US Over Fears of Fraud, Will Only Use Paper Ballots

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[–]Alan_Crowe 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I'm not an American, so I might be misunderstanding the situation over there, but there seems to be an interesting twist to the story.

Why did Americans accept electronic voting machines at all? It seems that American's weren't stupid, but insisted on paper ballots and a paper audit trail, so that the electronic tallies could in theory be checked by hand. So they were reassured by the possibility of auditing the results and went ahead with using electronic voting machines. But it turns out to be mysteriously difficult to actually get the results checked by hand.

So I'm thing that there is a broader lesson. You get talked into doing something, based on assurances that there is a backup system in case things go wrong. Then things go wrong and the backup system doesn't work. You shouldn't be surprised by this.

Perhaps one approach is to insist that backup systems only provide confidence if they were routinely tested. Imagine if 5% precincts got hand counted, every election, just to check, even when there was no suspicion of fraud. That still does the money saving/quick results thing, but now the systems for hand counting are in working order and are available if needed.

[–]Rationalmind 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Why did Americans accept electronic voting machines at all?

Culturally, we’re taught to think new means good. It might be the consumerism or lack of history.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Moreover, most Americans - and especially Boomers - want to believe that their government would not allow for voting machines that can be hacked, even if they can see evidence of hacking if they would just look for the videos and articles explaining the hacking process, and the politicians' investments in voting machines. There is also a long Boomer tradition of not engaging in in-depth discussions about political concerns, until 5 or 10 years ago. Americans should be much more politically active.

[–]Rationalmind 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yea, that’s true. I also think that technology evolved so rapidly that older generations just do not understand its vulnerabilities on a thoughtful, critical level.