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Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea

Tom Scott explains why electronic voting is a bad idea. Elections must be trusted by everyone and attacks on software scale in ways attacks on paper do not, so open source or blockchain fixes do not solve it.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN treats it as the go-to layperson-friendly argument against e-voting and links it in nearly every voting-technology thread.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
Tom Scott
Topic
electronic voting security
Format
explainer
Level
general
HN recommenders in dataset
11
HN mentions in dataset
20
Recommendation years in dataset
2020–2026

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • Tom Scott still has the best argument against e-voting IMO [1]. Briefly: an election only counts if everybody can believe the results. Making an expert level understanding of CS a requirement to verify your voting system means that Joe Q. Average who doesn't hold a …

    greenduck on Hacker News · 2020-11
    In Let's put e-voting where it belongs: on the trash-heap of bad ideas (2016)

  • Tom Scott made an excellent summary of why electronic voting is a bad idea, and explicitly covers both open source and blockchain as proposed solutions (hint: they don't solve the problems that make e-voting bad) [VIDEO]

    Qub3d on Hacker News · 2021-01
    In Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

  • I think the Tom Scott video on electronic voting from years ago remains the most convincing argument to me that it's a bad idea ( [VIDEO] ). To summarize, even assuming you can solve properties like correctness, censorship resistance, privacy and coercion resistance. The fundamental …

    space_fountain on Hacker News · 2021-10
    In Blockchain voting is overrated among uninformed but underrated among informed

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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