Some things just work, like paper ballots. No reason to re-invent the wheel or to "verschlimmbessern" what works.
We vote a lot in Switzerland on a lot of issues but we do so on paper ballots which we can either drop directly in the box or send in the post. When there is a close vote the maximum wait for a result is usually around 4-5 hours so that isn't really an issue either. Counting is a highly distributed effort and IMO that also reduces the risk for large scale fraud.
It absolutely doesn't work. All paper elections have some (acceptable and accepted) level of fraud. We should move to mathematical system, that still uses paper but let's the voter confirm that thier vote was properly counted. There was a TED presentation about this many years ago.
I agree with you. the counter that some people make (that I personally disagree with as being a reason to not do it) is that anything that lets voters confirm that their vote was properly counted also enables 3rd parties to influence said voters (i.e. buying a vote is more valuable if one can validate that bought vote was actually delivered).
Personally I find other mechanism to heavily criminalize vote buying as being effective to discouraging that behavior and providing a slip of paper to the voter that enables them to post factor validate that their vote was counted as they believe it should have been to be much more valuable.
but its important to address the issue that some people have.
It sounds like "3 out of 3" is too risky, as you're basically tripling the risk of losing a key (but you're reducing the risk of compromise). Something like "3 out of 4" would have been a better balance, in my opinion, but I think there were technical issues in requiring such a quorum (I think I read that the encryption scheme didn't support it, but don't quote me).
Readit News
A cryptography research body held an election and they can't decrypt the results - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46020596 - Nov 2025 (38 comments)
We vote a lot in Switzerland on a lot of issues but we do so on paper ballots which we can either drop directly in the box or send in the post. When there is a close vote the maximum wait for a result is usually around 4-5 hours so that isn't really an issue either. Counting is a highly distributed effort and IMO that also reduces the risk for large scale fraud.
Personally I find other mechanism to heavily criminalize vote buying as being effective to discouraging that behavior and providing a slip of paper to the voter that enables them to post factor validate that their vote was counted as they believe it should have been to be much more valuable.
but its important to address the issue that some people have.
Paper elections are simple and everyone understands them. The controls are largely that there are a lot of observers.
Trust is vital in elections.
Like fine wine