Seems to me that I've seen more interesting videos, alarming articles, and research studies of problems with e-voting than with old-fashioned hand-count paper ballot elections. We hear about many ways and reasons to doubt election results that use machines in some part of the process, and about how "all manual count" elections are the "gold standard." Good soundbites. But I wonder:

Are there actually any elections that are "all manual"?

I don't think so. Certainly the tabulation of results, the transport of results up the chain, the tracking of warehouses full of ballots, the design of ballots, the collection of voter registrations, and the creation and management of poll books, must use computers all along the chain. Is there a single state or county where computers are used for none of these activities? I suspect not.

So, where are the cool videos and PR campaigns illustrating the ways in which an all manual count could be compromised? I've seen magicians do some impossible things while manipulating pieces of paper. And there are a lot of magicians.

And by the way, we also use computers... to control whether and in what direction to launch missiles,  to control the brakes in my car (oops, bad example :),  to "land a man on the moon", and of course our whole financial system only exists inside of the black boxes that are called computers.

Yeah I know the litany of differences between these applications and elections. I am well aware of them. But the differences don't stop me from questioning the ultra-black-and-white, ultra-soundbite, that I hear all the time:

computers/internet=BAD, manual/physical=GOOD

It might as well be

atoms=GOOD, electrons=BAD

I know as a society we don't like nuance, but as people who are devoted to making things better, techies and non-techies alike, I'd like to see and read fewer statements like: "We will never ever do X", "Y is the absolute only way to do this."

Things are never that black and white. And while we may need to keep it simple to win the argument, it's more than about just winning the argument. It's about discovering real weaknesses (and there are always trade-offs -- I can hear the black-and-white crowd saying: "We should not ever make ANY trade-offs when it comes to our Democracy", which is my point, exactly) and so we should always be seeking honest ways of imagining and testing to discover true improvements.