Yes, banks are relatively secure. But they wouldn't be if you had no way to renew your transactions or know what your balance was.In fact, I suspect there are a lot cases where people have access to their spouses bank accounts. People provide access to debit cards or automatic deductions tied to their bank account all the time. Its not only plausible, but likely that political parties and campaigns would "bank" people's voting numbers so they can just automatically vote them.
With only an electronic record there is no way to verify that the count actually reflects how people voted. History, not conspiracy theories, tells us that if it is possible to rig the vote count, someone will do it. A tangible ballot is really the only way of assuring auditing for an accurate count.
The third problem is privacy. It may be possible to create an electronic privacy envelope that makes it impossible for the elections officials to know how you voted. But it does not appear to be a non-trivial task. You need to create a process where a vote counter can read the ballot but can't attribute the ballot to a specific individual. At the same time the voter has to be able to verify that their ballot was received as sent.
In short, electronic voting will likely never work. But it is almost certainly not ready to work now.
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Yes, banks are relatively secure. But they wouldn't be if you had no way to renew your transactions or know what your balance was.In fact, I suspect there are a lot cases where people have access to their spouses bank accounts. People provide access to debit cards or automatic deductions tied to their bank account all the time. Its not only plausible, but likely that political parties and campaigns would "bank" people's voting numbers so they can just automatically vote them. With only an electronic record there is no way to verify that the count actually reflects how people voted. History, not conspiracy theories, tells us that if it is possible to rig the vote count, someone will do it. A tangible ballot is really the only way of assuring auditing for an accurate count. The third problem is privacy. It may be possible to create an electronic privacy envelope that makes it impossible for the elections officials to know how you voted. But it does not appear to be a non-trivial task. You need to create a process where a vote counter can read the ballot but can't attribute the ballot to a specific individual. At the same time the voter has to be able to verify that their ballot was received as sent. In short, electronic voting will likely never work. But it is almost certainly not ready to work now.