> I think a lot of the verification problems for electronic voting could be solved by simplification and using old 'outdated' technology. You don't need a full fledged PC to tally votes, you need the computing power of a 30 year old calculator that could be built on a 2-foot wide board with large and simple traces. Something somebody at home with a multi-meter could probe around and test.

Yeah, no thanks. We had that in The Netherlands. The NEDAP voting machines were running on m68k machines. With very weak cryptography. In mid '00s.

What we need to do, is keep this last part of technology out of our democratic process. When people count ballots, there are many eyes, and you do not know of each other which candidate or party you represent. Hence, the system works. It isn't broken. Why fix it with a worse solution? A solution not everyone understands? Yet everyone age ~5 and higher understands manual counting.

I've volunteered 3 times thus far (end of may is gonna be my 4th time) as ballot/vote counter in my country (NL). I can highly recommend to just try it once, to learn what it's like. Its also (mostly) fun to work in a diverse team with people of different backgrounds and ages. You never know who you're gonna get beforehand. One footnote: do not discuss politics while counting ballots. Its inappropriate (since you're supposed to be neutral and not know each other's preference) and pointless (won't affect the outcome anymore in any way).