What in the heck is wrong with South Florida elections?

[Spider-Dan]

I like the idea of the paper ballets that get scanned. That way there is always back-up to show how each precinct voted. As well ... I'm not a big fan of the mail in ballots. Seems to easy to falsify or even lose in the mail to me.

States that use vote-by-mail do not appear to have this problem.

In CA, the way vote-by-mail works is that when you register to vote, your signature is recorded.  Then when you're mail ballot is received, it is first compared electronically to your signature on file.  If that automated comparison is failed, it is then checked and compared by a human.

Under this system, you don't have to worry about someone voting multiple times because only one ballot is mailed per voter.

[Phishfan]

"Spending money" doesn't just refer to salaries.  It's buildings, security, ballot machines, etc.

I don't believe that you can't trust secure connections.  We exist online now.  Business happens this way.  We do our banking this way.  Taxes are digital.  You can buy a house....you can adopt a child.  All of these things are done online.  It is a fear and a control limitation, not a technical one.

Foreign governments don't care about those things. Why do you think our military runs nuclear sites on old mainframes that don't connect to the Internet? They don't do it out of cheapness.

[Phishfan]

Internet voting is the wrong way to go.  We should be looking to WA, who has done mail-in voting only since 2012.

While every form of voting is potentially subject to tampering, internet voting is uniquely vulnerable to tampering from foreign governments.  Do you trust EVERY county elections office in the country to properly maintain electronic security?  Because it only takes one instance of "Oops, we had 3.7 million votes cast in a county with a population of 50,000" to expose the flaws in the system.  I take the Battlestar Galactica anti-Cylon approach to voting: no part of recording or counting votes should be tied to the internet in any way.  The stakes are too big.

If the biggest argument for internet voting is that it takes too long to count the votes, there is no argument.  We have MONTHS before anyone is scheduled to be sworn in.

Thanks for the backup Spider. I find it telling with you working in the technology industry and my doing years of work for a technology company that we both understand voting is different than personal banking information and the inherent risk to our country.

[Dave Gray]

You guys make fair points and I'm open to keeping things off the net.

Could you have the Internet be a portion of the vote, but waive your right to a secret ballot, so that it remains trackable?

[Spider-Dan]

Sorry Dave, but internet voting is an unsalvageably bad idea.  Let me give you an easy example that is that is directly relevant to you:

Let's suppose North Korea hacks the Miami-Dade county elections office and casts a couple million votes for the Democratic candidate for President.  What do you do?

Throw all the votes in Miami-Dade out?  The Dems now have no chance to win FL, and the GOP has a huge leg up.
Keep all the votes in?  Now the GOP has no chance to win FL and hacking has been directly rewarded.
Keep some of the votes?  How many? The answer is unavoidably partisan.

The small benefit of slightly faster results are not worth the huge downsides of throwing an election.

[Sunstroke]

Let's suppose North Korea hacks the Miami-Dade county elections office and casts a couple million votes for the Democratic candidate for President.  What do you do?

Throw all the votes in Miami-Dade out?  The Dems now have no chance to win FL, and the GOP has a huge leg up.
Keep all the votes in?  Now the GOP has no chance to win FL and hacking has been directly rewarded.
Keep some of the votes?  How many? The answer is unavoidably partisan.

The answer...obviously...is to simply nuke North Korea into oblivion before the elections start.