The winners of an election are usually satisfied with the outcome, but it is often more challenging to persuade the losers (and their supporters) that they lost. To that end, it is not sufficient that election results be accurate. The public must also know the results are accurate, which can only be achieved if conduct of the election is sufficiently transparent that candidates, the press, and the general public can satisfy themselves that no errors or cheating have occurred.

Unfortunately, the advent of paperless electronic voting (e-voting) is moving us away from election transparency. E-voting technology is extremely opaque. No one can scrutinize some of the most critical processes of the election, such as collection of ballots and counting of votes, because those processes will be conducted invisibly in electronic circuits. Voters have no means to confirm that that the machines have recorded their votes correctly, nor will they have any assurance of that their votes won't be changed later.

Related: How to Make a Election Audit Statistically Significant