Control. If you can centralize all voting results in a single place you can control distribution of them. If you are the only entity able to read the results then everyone else has to take your word for it.

Paper ballots with physical marks are easy to track and recount. Digital paper trails are ephemeral. Whom does this benefit? The people counting the ballots.

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throwaway5752 2 hours ago | parent [-]

As the article notes, the Swiss do both. The normal system is a paper ballot based system. This was for secure e-voting for those unable to use paper ballots.

The separate question, of why people are obsessed with it - implicitly in the United States - is a separate question.

sonofhans - to reply to your follow up here, I mostly agree with you. But I would soften it to say it is a tool that can be used for good or bad ends, and I felt the Swiss were using it more towards good ends. But I agreed that the ability to misuse it is intrinsic.

	▲	luz666 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In Switzerland, it is only done in few cantons and only up to 30% of the population.[1] I have no idea how it is intended, but I personally interpret it like this: - It is mostly an experiment so far. - If it fails (thinking about exploitation), Switzerland does not lose a lot and just goes back to 100% paper-voting. - It is a free service to other countries to show what e-voting can be in best-case. - It does not show what could happen in worst-case. - The riskiest part of this experiment is the interpretation. [1] https://www.news.admin.ch/en/newnsb/ZLw6w1GV_UdJKDocuT0sX
	▲	rayiner an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> The separate question, of why people are obsessed with it - implicitly in the United States - is a separate question. It’s not a United States issue. Look how Taiwan does vote counting: https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo. They don’t do it this way because of anything distinctive about American politics. Being self-evidently difficult to manipulate, without requiring voters to trust an opaque system, is an intrinsic benefit for voting systems.
	▲	sonofhans 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You are suggesting that it is a separate question. I am suggesting that it is not.