Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN treats it as the go-to layperson-friendly argument against e-voting and links it in nearly every voting-technology thread.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 11 HN commenters across 11 different months, 2020 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec greenduck · 2020-11 · on “Let's put e-voting where it belongs: on the trash-heap of bad ideas (2016)”
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 PhD (or maybe even a college degree) has to rely on spooky experts telling him what to believe. If I were in his shoes then I would have no confidence that I participated in a fair and valid election. We kind of live in a bubble here on HN where most people are sort of in the tech space and could take a weekend or two to understand blockchain. I think its easy to forget that most people don't have the required background to learn
Strong rec Qub3d · 2021-01 · on “Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani”
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) [this video]
Strong rec space_fountain · 2021-10 · on “Blockchain voting is overrated among uninformed but underrated among informed”
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 ( [this video] ). To summarize, even assuming you can solve properties like correctness, censorship resistance, privacy and coercion resistance. The fundamental problem with digital is that any exploit of any of these properties you ever have scales really well. Messing with a paper election requires a lot of people working together across the entire country. A digital hack just requires one smart person
Strong rec david-gpu · 2025-07 · on “US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms”
Tom Scott provided an excellent explanation of why electronic voting is a terrible idea. Original: [LINK] Follow-up: [this video]
Recommends roywiggins · 2020-03 · on “Detailed audit of Voatz' voting app confirms security flaws”
Many bank transactions can be reversed, and the ones that can't can be covered by insurance or self-insurance. You can't practically speaking reverse a tainted election. Anyway, I'll let Tom Scott take it: [this video]
Recommends kfrzcode · 2020-08 · on “USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System”
Electronic voting is a terrible idea. Attacks on paper & pen ballot systems are much, much harder to scale. Here's Tom Scott with a great explanation of the basics. [this video]
Recommends lukifer · 2021-02 · on “YouTubers have to declare ads. Why doesn't anyone else? [video]”
Relevant to HN's interests: a compelling, layperson-accessible argument against electronic voting: [this video]
Recommends V__ · 2022-01 · on “It’s not still the early days of blockchain”
Obligatory Tom Scott videos: Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea - Computerphile | [LINK] Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea | [this video]