Public trust demands open-source voting systems

Paper vs. electronic voting

• Many argue that hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots are effectively “open source”: simple, fully observable, and resistant to large-scale fraud because manipulation must occur in many locations under many eyes.
• Others counter that manual counting is error‑prone and slow for large electorates, and that machines are good at repetitive counting if backed by paper and audits.
• A strong faction insists public trust demands no software or programmable hardware in the official count; machines may be used only for convenience or secondary checks.

Open source and software trust

• Open-source voting software is seen as necessary but not sufficient: transparency helps expert review, but does not prove that the audited code is what actually runs on the machines.
• Remote attestation, reproducible builds, and TPM-based verification are proposed as partial answers; skeptics say the whole stack (compiler, firmware, hardware) remains unverifiable to the public.
• Huge dependency trees and lockfiles are cited as evidence that even “simple” voting software becomes too complex for meaningful mass audit.

Paper trails, audits, and process

• Broad agreement that any electronic system must produce a voter‑verified paper ballot that is securely stored and auditable via risk‑limiting audits or full hand recounts.
• Several commenters stress that the process—multi‑party observers, public counts, chain of custody, and statistically sound sampling—is more important than the code.
• Some note that many jurisdictions already combine paper ballots, precinct‑level optical scanners, and post‑election hand audits with good results.

Mail‑in ballots, in‑person voting, and ID

• A subset wants “paper, in‑person only” and abolition of mail‑in ballots, plus strong photo‑ID rules; opponents argue this disenfranchises people and that mail‑in has worked for decades in some places.
• There is disagreement over whether national ID schemes are neutral infrastructure or tools that can be weaponized to shape the electorate.

Internet, phone, and crypto/blockchain voting

• Proposals for smartphone or web voting, and for blockchain-based systems, draw heavy criticism: hard to reconcile identity checks, one‑person‑one‑vote, and secret ballots without enabling coercion or vote‑selling.
• Cryptographic research (zero‑knowledge proofs, advanced e‑voting schemes) is noted, but the dominant view is that real‑world implementations would be too opaque and fragile for national elections.

International experiences and specific systems

• Multiple non‑US examples (Germany, Netherlands, Ireland, Taiwan, Chile, Australia) are cited as evidence that fully or largely paper‑based elections with public counts can scale and deliver timely results.
• Experiences with electronic-only systems in countries like Brazil and India are described as politically contentious and hard for ordinary citizens to independently trust.
• The featured project is clarified to use open‑source software only as a paper‑ballot assistant: ballot‑marking devices plus optical scanners, with ADA and multilingual benefits, offline operation, and attestation and audit tools.

Deeper theme: trust and power

• Several comments argue election security is primarily a social and political problem: billions of dollars and power at stake create strong incentives to undermine any system, analog or digital.
• Eroding belief in election legitimacy—regardless of actual fraud—is seen as a key route to authoritarian outcomes.
• A recurring conclusion: systems must be not only secure, but simple enough that ordinary citizens can understand, observe, and participate in them.