I worked as a poll clerk in a Canadian federal election once and counted ballots and the experience left me with full confidence in the system. It would be impossible to game on a large scale and incredibly difficult on a small scale.

From what I recall, our polling station, which served only a small portion of the city, was broken into several polls, each run by 2 or 3 poll workers.

At then end of the day the poll workers personally counted the ballots they collected at their poll (so every ballot was counted at least twice, and each individual only counted a fraction of the ballots at the station.) Monitors from the different political parties were free to watch the whole process.

I'm definitely getting some details wrong, but generally the whole thing, plus automatic recounts for tight races left no doubts for me.

I worked one election as a scrutineer and came away with the same thought. It's an amazing ballet of process that is challenging to hack, and it makes me irrationally upset whenever I see politicians here trying to import vote irregularity BS from elsewhere.

Depending on where you are in the US, hand counts are not realistic. California ballots are notoriously long, with upwards of 50-something contests on a single ballot: regular "pick one" elections, ranked-choice voting, and many ballot initiatives.

The US has indeed largely moved towards "voting machines," but I should be explicit about what this means. These aren't the touchscreen computer-only (direct-recording electronic) machines that were hastily deployed after Bush v Gore. The overwhelming majority of states and municipalities now use some kind of optical-scan paper ballot technology, like scantron forms that are tabulated and kept safe in a box with a scanner bolted onto it. So even if the scanner is broken, there's a reliable record of voter intent.

https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...

I can't help but wonder if this utter complexity of voting led to many of America's current problems. It's a unique approach with unique problems.

It's a contributing factor, but not something to solve. It arises from our multi-layered forms of government, where states are very strong and hold a lot of power to themselves. Some states have ballot initiatives. Some don't. Some states allow for ranked-choice voting for certain offices. Some don't. Some states (like California) love direct democracy and having lots of elected offices that are normally appointees in other places. This is why it's states--not the federal government--that run elections; each state has a different political system that sets the requirements for elections.

I voted in the last Canadian election and showed my American correspondences. They were so upset by how low tech it was. But that’s a feature. I’d never want our democratic system to be Americanized.

Hand counts and paper in the UK too. It's just not a problem you need to solve with machines, and while UK politics is deeply stupid, flawed and unserious in many ways, at least this endless, endless bullshit and screeching over chads and machines and hacking and conspiracies and all the other nonsense the cousins get up to is not part of it.

Results don't take long to count, even though there are about 30 million ballots. Polls close at 10pm, the first constituency declares some time between 11 and midnight usually, it's 90% done by about 6am[1], and the last will be some time on the second day if there are multiple recounts. Due to the FPTP system, it doesn't really even matter about the rest once the post is already reached - which is its own problem, but it's not like machine-based recount drama doesn't drag on for ages too.

[1]: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-...

The "problem" isn't that hand-counting is too inaccurate or too slow (as if governments can be changed so quickly that a few days delay matters). The problem is that to compromise hand-counted, paper elections, you need to compromise a lot of people.

The machines aren’t the cause of the endless screaming. The conspiracy theorists also claim to find plenty of “evidence” of tampering with physical ballots and the counting process.

Everyone should be invested in ensuring votes and the ballots are error free and untampered. Everyone should be in favor of accurate counts.

We should also not be accepting votes with date stamps past election day. Or votes with no date stamp.

If we go all-in on electronic ballots, I think this is the place we could use a block chain to ensure security, traceability and accountability.

First paragraph is very reasonable. Second is insane. It clearly does not follow from "Canada does accurate hand counts" that "voting machines are inaccurate".

In fact voting is extremely accurate throughout the democratic world regardless of counting method, and this fact wasn't particularly controversial for decades and decades.

The idea that we somehow have a problem to be solved is the actual attack on democracy. And it's working. I know it sounds like hyperbole, but there is a very serious risk that the USA has already seen its last peaceful democratic handover of power. The people with control of the levers of power seem extremely disinclined to accept loss of that power.

"insane" is a little rude, that's not a great reply to my comment by any stretch.

Voting machines are far easier to hack than human processes, and there have been numerous presentations on this particular topic.

American politics being off the deep end is an entirely different topic.

TFA is about the US. It cites cases where hand counting has resulted in higher error rates in the US.

Voting machines are have proven to be reliable in the US. Dominion Voting continues to rack up huge defamation wins in court over this. You're just FUDding.

You let machines count your money don't you? Who insists on a hand count of the currency to verify your monthly checking or brokerage account? They don't even count cash by hand, it's all done via machines.

That's a terrible analogy, and it's impossible to list all the reasons why.

Money doesn't work like ballots. All ballots are the same value, and each voter is entitled to one only.

If the pennies in my account are miscounted, I certainly won't give a damn.

Something as powerful and important as political control shouldn't be relying on something as brittle and vulnerable as software. Even NASA launches with software bugs, from time to time; and the electronic voting vendors aren't up to those standards.