this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2026
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I don't really understand why voting machines are complicated enough that there are feasible vulnerabilities. They have one job, and it's to count. It really shouldn't be too tough for a crack team of competent devs to write the software required to make them work securely. No network access, a memory safe language, and strict business rules should be relatively trivial to setup. Double that will external audits and you've got yourself a stew.
How do you know the software running on the voting machine you're about to vote on is the software that was audited?
You go get all the machines together, make sure all the software runs on the newest version and it's correct and it's configured properly with the candidates. When you've got to distribute them to the polling stations, they've got to be kept securely between audit and polling day. Your adversaries are foreign state actors who want to manipulate your elections.
And then at the end of the day you have to get the results off the machines. You have to trust that the machine gave you the correct numbers and then you have to get those numbers all together without anyone having the opportunity to manipulate them.
Usually at this point someone comes up with the idea of a paper backup so the machine prints like a receipt of who you voted for that you can put in a ballot box.
If you're doing that and then count all of the paper ballots to verify the machine count, why even bother with the machines? Just have people vote on a paper ballot with a pencil and count them by hand. The ways to attack paper ballot just don't scale. You might be able to manipulate a few votes in one polling station, but you'd need a massive operation to do it across the whole country.
Answer: confidentiality of the vote
Problem is we buy these things from the lowest bidder