Voting in France: Paper ballots, cast in person; no machines. French voters in Sunday’s presidential election will use the same system that’s been used for generations

20 comments

  1. I search how you can fraud in France, it’s nearly impossible. You can but you need so much effort and energy to avoid all check.

  3. How is this news? It works the same here in Italy too.

    Paper ballots are MUCH harder to tamper with, because to pull off any sort of significant percentage shift on a national scale you need a massive operation and it *will* be noticed by observers.

  7. It didn’t stop some people here to propagate the idea that Dominion was in charge of the counting, and somen others to believe it.

  8. Excellent. As has been demonstrated over and over again by the CCC and other hacker groups, voting machines are insecure. That’s a principal issue, even the chips and the (non-deterministic) compilation chains can contain backdoors.

  9. isn’t this how it’s done everywhere?

    edit: it might be a state-by-state thing for the US, but if you use a machine in North Carolina at least it spits out the paper ballot which you can verify was marked correctly by the machine, and you still have to put it in the box. The machine doesn’t actually count votes.

  12. I see no reason to change it, except if we tried to implement more advanced voting system (which could be a pain to implement with paper). I’ve helped counting several elections, it’s only annoying when you have to deal with people who have low attention span, which may explain why some countries use electronic votes. Even if you don’t know how to count, if you are focused on what you do you can count votes. I’m not joking. It’s also nice when we have an apéro after the vote.

  15. I do counting after the vote place close down. There are several tables of 4 personnes (mostly 4 tables by vote place where I live). 1 person open the ballot, 1 person reads it and the last two write the voices and the blank on a special paper. When the counting is finished, everyone count the ballots and the voices. If there is a différence, we count again.

    I think digital vote can be helpfull for people living far away or who cannot move. But as it is, I don’t think France has the correct digital infrastructure to make it completely secure against fraud.

  16. More details on the French system – you go to one table with watchers delegated by the different parties. You present your electoral ID which is only valid in one specific place, the mayor’s offices which are always near by. You may also vote for an absent person with their permission. You get one printed sheet for each candidate and an envelope. You go into a private space and select one name and put it in the envelope. When you are voting for multiple offices, the system is repeated but each set has a different color. You go to the second table with more watchers and push the envelopes through a slot into their separate urns. When voting is finished, the watchers count the votes together and certify the tally.

    Then the tallys are summed. Total votes are counted, each one equally and with no consideration of who voted or where. The totals from each mayor are public information.

  19. We do the same in Ireland. But since we have PR-STV we have several rounds of counting that often go on for days. I’d hate to see it any other way

  20. Mandatory XKCD link : https://xkcd.com/2030/

    Transcript from ExplainXKCD :

    [A Megan-like woman, with bushy hair, is holding a handheld microphone and interviewing Hairbun and Cueball, standing in a line]

    [Heading above the panel]:

    Asking aircraft designers about airplane safety:

    Hairbun: Nothing is ever foolproof, but modern airliners are incredibly resilient. Flying is the safest way to travel.

    [In a frameless panel, Hairy is holding a handheld microphone and interviewing Cueball]

    [Heading above the panel]:

    Asking building engineers about elevator safety:

    Cueball: Elevators are protected by multiple tried-and-tested failsafe mechanisms. They’re nearly incapable of falling.

    [Ponytail is holding a handheld microphone and interviewing Megan and Cueball, standing in a line]

    [Heading above the panel]:

    Asking software engineers about computerized voting:

    Megan: That’s terrifying.

    [Zoomed in on Ponytail, Megan and Cueball’s faces]

    Ponytail: Wait, really?

    Megan: Don’t trust voting software and don’t listen to anyone who tells you it’s safe.

    Ponytail: Why?

    Megan: I don’t quite know how to put this, but our entire field is bad at what we do, and if you rely on us, everyone will die.

    [Zoomed back out, showing Ponytail, Megan and Cueball standing in a line]

    Ponytail: They say they’ve fixed it with something called “blockchain.”

    Megan: AAAAA!!!

    Cueball: Whatever they sold you, don’t touch it.

    Megan: Bury it in the desert.

    Cueball: Wear gloves.

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