>> One of the (many) issues I have with cryptographic vote verification systems is that they don't prove there isn't a "second set of books" that all checks out, meanwhile we use the crooked books to determine who won.

> How could you fail to use the totals indicated by the database and not get caught?

Because unless you get enough people to use the token (and use it perfectly), you can fudge the margin enough to win. Let's imagine a town of 10,000 people where 2,000 people use the token, and the margin of victory for the mayor is 3,000 people. You can verify 2,000 of these votes (again, let's say we can do that reasonably accurately, which is already a big lift), but that leaves 8,000 votes the corrupt mayor can play with. Unless you get > 7,000 people to use the token very accurately, this system doesn't help.

How would you actually fudge the vote you ask? My answer is that it's extremely, extremely hard to do, and therefore any system making this even harder to do isn't worth it. Someone else's answer is probably a person who wants a verification system like this in the first place; they might say bribery, machine tampering, whatever, all things we've never had even a single instance of ever. Well, there's this Republican County Clerk that maybe did something fishy, we'll see how that pans out, but yeah very very very few instances of.

And imagine the downsides. 2,000 people used the token, but 500 of them misremembered it, and when they went looking their vote wasn't there. Shenanigans! Do over! Stop the steal! Etc. etc.

And let's add on some other stuff:

- Recounts work, and are triggered when small margins matter. Crypto systems almost certainly make recounts much harder.

- Most of this system is already in place: the fact that you voted is already public record.

- Adding the information of who you voted for is also very easy, but we don't do it to avoid pay-for-votes (I know your argument here is such kingpins would force voters to use new tokens and we'd detect it, but 1 no we wouldn't because we couldn't disambiguate that from population changes or people just being forgetful, and 2 tokens would either be tied to a single election or contain a voting history so you wouldn't need a new one anyway).

- Any problems with this system introduce doubt into an election, and since it's very easy for a small number of partisan voters to do this ("hey my vote isn't in the system!"), we're asking for 5,000 diehard Republicans to call shenanigans in every urban Democratic precinct every election.

>> I also strongly support compulsory voting

> That reminds me of Soviet Russia and satellites that always had 90+% turnouts. I can't imagine any reason for compulsory voting beside maintaining a facade of popular support for the system. There's a difference between returning invalid ballot and not voting; in the latter case you shouldn't appear on the list of voters.

You can't imagine reasons for compulsory voting because, and this is gonna sound a little rude but I think that's where we are here, you don't know a lot about elections and voting and haven't spent a lot of time learning and thinking about them. I suggest starting here [1].

>> law enforcement initiatives against voter intimidation

> I think the hard part isn't agreeing that voter intimidation is bad. The hard part is specifying what constitutes voter intimidation.

It's not actually hard at all. There are two major forms of voter intimidation: the cops will lock you up, and someone will beat you up. Generally voters are made aware of these possibilities with phone calls, emails, direct mail, and police/vigilante presence at polling places. These things are easy to outlaw, in fact they're already illegal! We just need cops to enforce the laws. If you're gonna say that'll take more than money, then I'd agree with you.

> Ballot confidentiality isn't good enough, as someone could tell voters that an inside man will check how they voted.

People assume this is about learning how someone voted, but you can actually just keep certain people from voting and achieve that result. This is actually how voter intimidation works; you tell women that their husbands will find out how they voted, and you tell people of color the cops will be there. It doesn't need to be more complex than that, because it's already super effective.

>> and misinformation

> Carefulness here is essential to avoid sliding to an Orwellian dystopy

This is also pretty easy to tamp down on; this kind of misinformation is usually incorrect polling place information or time--sometimes it's more creative like "drop your ballot off at this (fake) mailbox", but that kind of thing is rare. Again this is also super illegal (the FEC exists for a reason), we just need cops to enforce the laws.

[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Br_LIFT...