One problem with it is that it would eliminate the secret ballot—one could cross-reference the times on the ballot and the sign-in sheet to find out how everyone voted. I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with a way around it. I’m wondering if a smartcard ID might provide the answer—those perform encryption entirely by themselves; the idea is that any machine into which they’re plugged NEVER sees the encryption key. You insert the card, type in a PIN, and you can use it to authenticate. I’m wondering if some sort of encrypted QR code also on the ballot could be used to eliminate the possibility of someone forging your vote.
Ultimately, though, we face several problems:
1. Someone attempting to vote in place of an unwilling voter (like us).
2. Someone attempting to vote in place of a willing (or uncaring) voter.
3. Someone destroying votes outright.
#1 and #3 are more tractable, but defeating #2 will be tough. I think it’s going to take a biometric scan when signing in to defeat that (iris scan, fingerprint scan, etc.) Many business laptops now support fingerprint scanners (including mine) to try to deal with the authentication issue. I’d like to see a state take a crack at it. Many people will howl at having their fingerprint scanned, but bear in mind—if you want a security clearance you have to get fingerprinted anyway. Clearly, according to how the Left behaves, voting requires a level of trust above the honor system.
If the Greeks could hold clean elections using nothing more than buckets of black and white stones there is no reason we can't get paper ballots right.