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You can't rig paper.


Ballot box stuffing? "Losing" boxes from certain districts?


Both impossible if votes are submitted and counted in public without transportation of the ballot box.

And before you say this is impractical, that is exactly what they do in the UK:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOMlxtvPeWU


Also in Spain. Votes are counted literally in the voting table, right after closing it. The counting is verified by three (randomly chosen) citizen and also by one person per party. Then the tallies are aggregated. And the vote distribution per table is then made public (which then can be compiled by the press to make interactive maps like this: https://elpais.com/politica/2019/05/01/actualidad/1556730293... ).


We have similar system in Russia. The votes are counted after closing the polling stations, and the result table is signed by election commitee members and signed copies are given to candidates' representatives and observers. Later the results for every polling station are published on the Internet. Also we have cameras that stream the video on the Internet in real time.

Of course this system still allows falsifications. But it is still better than any electronic system because the violations are easily noticeable.


Yes, there are attacks on paper voting systems.

Yes, there are procedural countermeasures against many of these attacks.

One of the greatest advantages of paper voting systems is that we have decades (if not centuries) of experience with subversion attempts and appropriate defenses and that these defenses are often procedural, not technical.

This means that many attacks can be prevented and you don't have to be an expert to do so.


Which doesn't mean that paper is not riggable, it means that the attack methods on paper ballots are well understood and we have created systems and institutions which making current paper ballot systems effectively un-riggable.


Also in Italy. Local members of political parties often look at counting operations to check that nothing bad goes on.


Oh yes you can. It's in how and what you count.




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