Brazil reverting to paper votes amid budget crisis

One of the world's early adopters of electronic voting, Brazil, is reverting to paper votes because of budgetary woes. The decision was made by the Superior Electoral Court – in Portugese, here – in response to a roughly US$110-million (R$428 million) funding cut. The court is in the middle of a $51 million (R$200 million) …

[Turtle]

Not Good.

Electronic voting is a bad, bad idea.

[johnB]

Yes,

Electronic may be easier to count, but for me doesn't meet the bill of being easily understandable, nor do I trust it.

Paper - a big pile of easily-examined votes for candidate "A" can be compared against the pile of votes for candidate "B", by any ordinary person.

Electronic needs intermediaries to examine the data & compile the results, with the non-expert being unlikely to be able to detect. And, given the pass of a few years, both the hardware & software are likely to be obsolete (think punched cards), effectively meaning analysis by later generations is difficult if not impossible.

[Dan Paul]

New York State in USA

went to "electronic" voting but with a paper ballot that is scanned into the system at the voting booth location.

The paper ballot shows all the candidates and provides a small circle next to each that you fill in with a black marker.

For an example, think SAT (Scholastic Aptitude) test form. Still can be verified as a paper ballot but much faster to count into the system.

The only thing I don't like is after this ballot is scanned in, you lose all traceability.

I would much prefer a method that would allow secure direct entry electronically by me from the comfort of my own computer. Something that I can verify and "watermark".

However, we would need a completely independent division of the State to administer such a system, one that includes the death penalty for ANY kind of fraud. Also needed would be a change to the entire voting system to truly allow "One Human, One Vote" and abolish the "Electoral College" that prevents that.

If that were a possibility, then the government could see results of citizen opinions on much more than just general elections and we could have a far more responsive government that was more in tune.