"In Switzerland, my vote goes into a ballot box, guarded by people from different parties. They are counted by citizens from different parties, with many people in the same room. "
I very much agree to your point, that laypersons need to be able to understand the system. At least the basic concept. No dark magic.
After all a vote is just encrypted information going to a server.
The details are more complex, sure, but there is a growing number of tech literate people.
So not all people might understand it all directly, but if their neigbhor does (and indeed also checks occasionally), then this might be enough.
A vote is not just "encrypted information going to a server". The law says that every voter must be able to vote once (and only once), and that the vote must be secret, towards other voters and towards the government. A vote must be authenticated, it must be ensured that it's only counted once, but the counting system may not know what you voted (at least as long as the vote is tied to your identity). This means that you cannot use classic encryption algorithms, because for tallying the votes, you must be able to sum up votes for which you're not allowed to know what the vote is. This requires "novel" schemes like homomorphic encryption, zero-knowledge proofs, etc. (Not novel in the academic sense, but in a practical sense, there is still quite little practical experience with this kind of cryptosystem, compared to TLS for example.)
I have yet to find someone that can explain me how homomorphic encryption works in a way that I fully understand. And I'm a software engineer. I understand RSA or Diffie Hellman. A lot of people understand RSA or Diffie Hellman. Almost nobody understands homomorphic encryption. This means that almost nobody even has the necessary base knowledge to even being able to review an e-voting system.
Without voting secrecy, I'd say that building a robust system would work reasonably well. With voting secrecy, it's a different story.
"Without voting secrecy, I'd say that building a robust system would work reasonably well. With voting secrecy, it's a different story. "
Sadly this is true and I agree to that. I am also a fan of open voting, but I can see that general society is not ready for that.
And to your other points I mainly agree, but I am a bit more optimistic, than one can build a system of open trust, even though I have to admit, that I also do not understand the specific system, but I also did not really look into it.
I very much agree to your point, that laypersons need to be able to understand the system. At least the basic concept. No dark magic.
After all a vote is just encrypted information going to a server.
The details are more complex, sure, but there is a growing number of tech literate people.
So not all people might understand it all directly, but if their neigbhor does (and indeed also checks occasionally), then this might be enough.