Comment by teruakohatu
2 years ago
In my country, New Zealand, we have fast reliable vote counting and it is all paper based and counted by hand. I don't understand how electronic systems make voting less complicated or cheaper.
We also have advanced (early) voting. You can vote one or two weeks early, election day is stress free.
Early votes counting starts at 9am in election day. So by the time that polls close most prelimary counting is already done.
The official count does take a couple of weeks, but around 10pm enough of the preliminary count is done that most electrotes have a winner.
Brazil is area is 32x bigger than NZ, 42x bigger population. We have election results 5h after election ends and there is no evidence whatsoever of fraud.
> Brazil is area is 32x bigger than NZ, 42x bigger population.
How is that relevant? Australia is 29x the area of New Zealand and 5x the population; and like New Zealand, it uses paper-based instead of electronic voting. I see no reason why a paper-based process can’t be scaled to work for a country of any size, even one bigger than Brazil.
> We have election results 5h after election ends
A slower but more trustworthy process is superior to a faster but less trustworthy one. Nobody needs results ASAP
> and there is no evidence whatsoever of fraud.
Elections should be held to a higher standard than merely “no positive evidence of fraud”. We should demand everything reasonable has been done to make fraud as hard as possible. I think elections in Australia meet that standard (and probably several other countries too, such as New Zealand and Germany). I think Brazil, and the US, among others, fail it. Their election systems fail to take every reasonable measure to prevent fraud, and hence fraud is inherently more likely - and the absence of any specific evidence does nothing to alter that conclusion. Even in the absence of any specific evidence, claims of fraud are more likely to be true in a system which makes fraud easier
> How is that relevant?
Due to its size and historical reasons, we have regional power that many times could try to benefit from physical voting receipts. It was common for local leadership to offer favors in exchange for votes.
> Nobody needs results ASAP
You don't know Brazil. The system's speed reduces the change of undemocratic action by those in power. Since 1889 Brazil has faced ten coup trials by the army (eleven if we consider what happened on 8th Jan of this year), and six were successful. Our current system's new republic is the most prolonged period of political stability (and the most successful from the socioeconomic perspective) in the country's history, largely due to our election system. Australia, New Zealand, and other countries have different histories and, therefore, different needs.
> Even in the absence of any specific evidence, claims of fraud are more likely to be true in a system which makes fraud easier
Everything is auditable. Both civil and state institutions audit the system. It could be better. Making all open-source would be a massive step in transparency. But there are multiple mechanisms:
- random sampling checking comparing digital and printed results (each machine prints a summary of the votes)
- voters receive a number to double-check if their vote was counted (however, they can't see who they voted for to guarantee vote secrecy).
- parallel voting: in randomly selected locations, the vote is cast to a shadow voting machine and computed in parallel to identify discrepancies.
- public software and hardware inspection: any institution, civil or not, can inspect the entire system. The army (yes, the one that is proud of the multiple coups) was acting to reduce the system's credibility and did an inspection and could not find anything substantial.
We can't compare different countries without a historical and social lens. NZ electoral system in Brazil would be a disaster.
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