> > To rig an election would require millions of votes to be tampered
> > with. So millions of people would know for certain that their own
> > personal vote had been tampered with. Such blatant election rigging
> > would be far too risky an endeavour.
>
> In Australia (about whose electoral system I'm completely ignorant,
> as befits an American), that may be so. Alas, our wonderful Electoral
> College makes it a matter of perhaps a few thousand votes in a perhaps
> a single state.
Bill is wrong; in Australian federal and state elections there are often times when a seat is won by only a handful of votes. The late great Frank Hardy liked to remind people of the many, many ways in which "democratic" elections could be subverted, the basic rule being: "vote early, vote hard and vote often" ;-)
I can't see how can any electric or electronic voting system ever be as secure and private as ink on paper.
And to respond to someone else's suggestion, I fail to see why a purely technical change would necessarily increase the number of minor party reps elected, as there is no change to the fundamentals of the electoral system, especially the various ways in which votes are actually counted (e.g. first-past-the-post, proportional, preferential/transferable, mixed-member-proportional, etc.)
Grant.