Elections are the way by which Democracies use to "measure" people´s will and thus to assign political power. Therefore the electoral mechanism is of primary importance for any democracy since mistakes and fraud can give political power to those who should´nt have it. Our ancestors knew that very well and thus pretended counting procedures to be open to the public and verifiable.

In the 21th century we, the people, still need counting procedures to be open to the public and verifiable. Infact this is the only way we can hope to have honest results even in case elections are dishonestly managed by incumbent governments or fraudulently attacked by politicians, economic lobbies, criminal organizations, terroristic groups or foreign countries.

For Democracy to exist it is absolutely necessary that the electoral mechanism simultaneously:

1. allows to vote only those having the rigth to vote,
2. ensures a verifiable correspondence between results and electors´ will,
3. ensures that each vote is kept secret from everybody.

The adjective verifiable (point 2) is extremely important: it doesn´t mean we trust the way ballots are colleced and results counted, but that we can precisely verify electoral results. No matter how perfect the electoral mechanism might be, if results were not verifiable we should rely on any figure provided to us: nobody would call "democracy" such situation.

Secrecy (point 3) is an absolute necessity since the existence of records that could be used to identify the voters and their vote means the end of political freedom. Infact, if there is a risk of voting preferences becoming known to interested parties, voters will inevitably be influenced: they could undergo illecit pressure to vote as somebody else likes. This is not a theoretical problem, but a real one in many parts of the world where criminals (and/or governments and/or politicians) have enough power to compell people to vote in a certain way. Any form of vote disclosure could even be used to discriminate people in giving or denying promotions, jobs, contracts, etc.




As an example of very good democratic control on elections´ procedures and results, please have a look at the way paper ballot elections are done in Italy.