It is always good to remember the difference between mathematical models and reality. A coauthor and I recently had a paper on voting rejected by an economics journal because the assumptions we made were considered to be too unrealistic. Then a friend sent me a link to a fascinating New York Times magazine article that discusses the difficulties of automated vote counting. It seems that in practice (in the USA at least) the error rates of electronic voting machines are enormous, the source code is not available, the election workers are not properly trained, etc.

New Zealand still uses paper ballots, although I am not sure how they are counted. For large electorates such as in the USA, some form of automation is probably necessary. Given the inclusive nature of the voting process, and the multitude of errors that voters can make, it is obviously quite difficult to come up with a voting process that is simple enough for voters and yet amenable to quick and accurate tallying, and the possibility of recounts.

A salutary reminder of the need to balance theory and practice!