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Comment by mzitelli

2 years ago

> 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.

> 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 vote

That’s not how paper voting works in Australia or New Zealand. The voter never gets a “receipt” to say which way they voted - that would be illegal.

In Australia, the voter’s name is marked in a roll book (to detect duplicate voting), and then they are given ballot papers. They mark them with pencils and put them in cardboard boxes. Everything that is done with those boxes, and the counting of the ballots in them, is physically observed by representatives of the candidates/parties (scrutineers).