All: The paper copy should be online. The voter and the vote can be unlinkable (secret ballot) although each is identifiable. The Witness-Voting System is a provably optimal design that is error-free, transparent, simple, scalable, robust, receipt-free, universally-verifiable, 100% voter-verified, and end-to-end audited.

it is a matter of trust and validity. The vote in a totalitarian state can be trusted to be technically reliable but it is not necessarily trusted to be a valid expression of the will of the electorate.

The key question is who is doing the trusting. “Experts” and the “electorate” are not synonymous. The electorate needs to be satisfied that the officials charged with conducting the election and counting the votes are independent and impartial and that the “system” is transparent and challengeable. there is a natural skepticism that the system can be manipulated by those in power. If the constituencies are gerrymandered then the accuracy of the poll is no guarantee of its validity. It may be reliable but it is not valid.

MA: Trustworthiness is determined by the voters, the public -- NOT the voting authorities. It depends on a copy of the ballot, as many as desired.

All: This can help reveal the value of trust, as data, to others. Data is stochastic, statistical, not a given number, not classical. This also affects cybersecurity and medicine. One has to always consider what is NOT in the data. Ignoring that is a major flaw of current systems, a la Sherlock Holmes, old logic. We need to process data considering an open-ended system. The "impossible" needs to be included. It is more like a quantum system, where every outcome is possible BEFORE. Nothing should be ruled out a priori. We must be able to learn from the computation.

The electoral system in every democracy depends on the integrity of the people involved, which is not at all reassuring. While the trends are complex and some anomalies inscrutable, I quite agree that the results should be subjected to statistical analysis in order that we might identify and root out tampering. An interesting story that has nothing to do with voting illustrates this point. Shortly after WWII someone noticed that thousands of Sears catalogs were sent to a single address: 901 East Palace Ave. This turned out to be the then "secret city" of Santa Fe. A similar thing happened in Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. We need to make sure that sixty million voters don't all share the same address in a graveyard.

international participation of obervers should be mandatory to fair elections

in Latin America and elsewhere.

That will depend on the country's governance and processes, which you can trust.

Trust can be seen as that which can break one's security policy. Thus, the least one needs to trust, the more objective the system is, the less it depends on a particular interpretation (i.e., seen as an attack). Ideally, an election system should not be trusted by anyone or anything.

Trust, and its misuse, is seen in elections. When in extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate a vote, this is but one example. We should recognize trust must be accounted for. Elections are not safe.

Some officials are calling for criminal investigations after someone pressured Georgia officials to 'find' votes to reverse his loss in the state. Yes, trust can be seen as that which can break one's security policy.

One needs to be more attentive and not just believe on politicians.

For example, according to France and Brazil, the airplane was invented by Santos Dumont, who flew around the Eiffel Tower, and though he won the International prize for it, this is not accepted in the US, it is not even mentioned.

I see that other countries do not believe in "America First." The leadership stands divided.

Some are just grateful to be born and live here, hopeful to make contributions. China is passing the US on 5G. In short, the more one advances, the more opportunities for others to contribute and have success.

Here, elections must be based on trust, not just voting. As Stalin said, "who counts the votes control the voting." Many countries don't even consider the US a democracy, because there is no direct vote here yet -- no people voting. The president is voted indirectly. Maybe the problem yesterday will do away with the slave-time Electoral College. Will see.

Second, from size, India has a bigger claim to "largest democracy."

Legislation, that could disenfranchise voters by potentially placing election results into the hands of state lawmakers is a setback for democracy. Allowing lawmakers to review election results "if needed" and grant the legislature the power to pick the state's presidential electors -- as many US Republican and Democratic lawmakers are promoting, is incoherent with democracy.

This can be seen as a project. Yes, it is basic scientific research, but is specifically connected to a specific market opportunity for a potential new product.

Any sufficiently advanced technology, as popularized by sci-fi, may seem like magic, but just at first sight. Even chaos has a mathematical rule, albeit unknown. Improving public elections seems to be what governments, universities and colleges need, in this competitive world.

No way !!!!

EKH: Justification please. And clarify what you seem to be against: safe and fair elections, with help from technology, or elections in any shape or form. In the case of the last option, what do you suggest to use?

We, at Safevote, realized after 18 years doing voting world-wide, with zero problems, and pioneering blockchain for it, that voting is not a problem -- it can be private and secure.

There are many voting methods, some better than others. Ours at Safevote was published as the first chapter by Springer Verlag, and not patented on purpose -- see it in Chapter The Witness-Voting System

But election remains a problem, and this is not solvable by blockchain.

Elections are not secure, as the US Jan/6 shows. It leads to the worst form of government, easily manipulated, history shows. Even its investigation can be manipulated, as Jan/6 shows!

Socrates said it, 2500 years ago, and it remains an open problem -- one doesn't choose a ship captain by election. One requires competence, and reciprocity. Voting does not provide these.

Modern technology, though, might be able to measure it ... and do it. One also has to add anonymity, and transparency. Democracy needs more than voting, to be trustworthy.

Even schoolchildren can do voting well. Elections are a notch higher.

Elections exist to justify human guidance. What a contradiction!