> If we can have a secure and audit-able banking system (and every other aspect of our lifes), surely we can have the same for voting?

There's one major requirement in voting systems that throws a huge wrench in everything, anonymity. In order to prevent vote buying and coercion voters can't be tied to specific votes. So any system that allows a person to check that their vote got counted for their candidate isn't workable because that violates the anonymity requirement.

There's a million reasons that votes change as they're counted and recounted. For one in some states absentee ballots can be postmarked up to the day of the election so they can trickle in for a while after the day of. Another is machine breakdowns and just mistakes as the complete numbers are gathered.

The way this (anonymity) is handled in the Estonian system is that votes can be validated out-of-band for 30 minutes after they were cast, then they're locked. Additionally, a voter can overwrite their previous vote at any time during the vote period, so they could always prove their first vote, and then overwrite it privately later.

There are several other major problems with their system [0], but I think they should at least get credit for their approach.

0: https://www.aaspring.com/ccs2014/ivoting-paper.pdf

There's still the voting server where the (voter,vote) pair exists and could be exfiltrated in theory. It does solve the low level organized vote buying/coercion campaigns at least.

The numbers change with electronic ballots too, so again, what's the compelling reason?

Why would they change?

> What's wrong with electronic ballots?

First of all, you can't observe the counting project, and now if somebody want to mess with the results, it becomes super easy to do so.

Electronic voting is a great opportunity for dictatorship.

Are you saying no one ever messes with the results of paper ballots? There's plenty of dictatorships committing voting fraud as it is.

>Are you saying no one ever messes with the results of paper ballots? There's plenty of dictatorships committing voting fraud as it is.

And we know they do, because it's trivial to observe. Without paper it would be totally opaque, you would just have a raw number and nothing else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTvQXQLoq8Q

That's the paradox with e-voting/internet voting. You need to verify the voter is who they say they are, but it also has to be completely anonymous. The banks know who you are and what you do with your bank account, you can't have that with voting.

Bank records aren't anonymous, and people are allowed to challenge their individual results, up to and including suing in court.

The US requires that once you leave the polling station you must not be able to prove to anyone how you voted.

Banking doesn't require ballot secrecy.