
Why online voting is harder than online banking - furcyd
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/why-online-voting-is-harder-than-online-banking/
======
dividuum
Online voting should never be the goal. Computers make things easier and more
scalable, but that's not what you want for voting. You want a process that's
as distributed as possible so the blast radius of any kind of interference
with the voting process itself is as small as possible. It's way harder to
change votes at large scale if they have been made on paper. Same with
counting: I don't want a 32bit value somewhere counting votes. I want various
people manually counting votes and have them observe process. Yes: All that is
maybe more expensive than running some website or setting up magic machines,
but that's a cost I'm more than willing to take.

~~~
hrktb
I’d argue we want to make the process easier.

The internal handling of votes should be harden as you explain, but helping
more people to vote should be the goal. The reverse is also an attack on
democracy, and we already see this at so many scales.

Like setting voting stations at places easier to access for a specific portion
of the population (right next to churches on sundays, next to police stations,
hard to reach by public transport places, etc.). Reliable online voting would
alleviate these kind of issues.

Not saying it’s easy, but we should at least try.

~~~
sam_lowry_
If you want more people to vote, then just pass a law that mandates all
citizens have to vote.

That's how it is done in Belgium.

Think of it. If your choice is ether vote or risk a fine, you'd rather go and
vote. If you go and vote, you'll learn at least a bit about the choices you
have to make in the ballot.

P.S. While Belgium got mandatory voting right, it completely messed up
electronic voting. I remember being an assessor in a polling station with
electronic voting.

People voted, then the head of the voting station took 3 1⁄2-inch floppy disks
out of the machine, put them in an envelope and drove away to the district
polling committee. There was not counting, no protocol to sign. Nothing. I was
appalled.

~~~
godelski
> If your choice is ether vote or risk a fine

This is ABSOLUTELY not what I want. I for one want voting to be extremely
accessible. Everyone that wants to vote can. The goal isn't to make everyone
vote but rather that everyone has the ability to vote. That you don't have to
take time off to vote. That it is easy.

Universally accessible, not universally mandated.

~~~
xeromal
What's wrong with mandated voting?

~~~
foxrider
People who has no business voting voting. Imagine how many people would vote -
not from the informed voter perspective. They'll most likely vote for the
candidate they remember in a positive light. Imagine how much more sway would
a big ad campaign have. I would be ok if a blank ballot would be the least
effort option with no strings attached, but with a "wasting your vote" being a
stigma and a part of the culture I see no need in any mandate. I just really
don't want people who can't be bothered to go to a polling station on a
holiday specifically made for voting to caste their vote to vote at all. Some
times gatekeeping certain things is ok. There must be a balance.

~~~
filleduchaos
Apart from literal children (and felons in the US, I suppose), there is no
such thing as a citizen who "has no business voting".

That's the pesky thing about democracy, you see. If you want "informed voters"
then you actually have to work to have an informed populace, not gripe about
people's right to participate in the society they're a part of.

~~~
remarkEon
There’s no such thing as an informed populous. There never has been, and never
will be. There was never a “golden age” of democracy, where everyone dutifully
read their newspaper every morning that was filled with articles written by
unbiased and objective journalists. It’s always been a shit show. Having some
reasonable and well understood requirements for who does get to vote within a
jurisdiction is a means to ensure that those who do are doing so with care.
Perhaps that’s naive. But it’s no more naive than thinking “democracy”,
broadly defined, would improve if we had 100% voter participation.

~~~
filleduchaos
I know it seems utterly incomprehensible to Americans right now, but it
actually is entirely possible to have a _populace_ that is at large capable of
participating in government with quite a bit more critical thinking than the
bipartisan shitshow you currently have going on. Not having shitty education
(especially when it comes to social issues) or a culture that's proud of its
political ignorance/apathy would probably help.

Not everybody has to be your idea of an intellectual to be a part of a
democracy. And not only is that okay, it's precisely the point of it being a
"democracy".

------
chr1
Online voting is hard because people are trying to solve a wrong problem. Now
anonymity in voting is needed because a vote has too much value for the
politician who is being elected (four years of power), and too little value
for the voter (choice between two bundles of promises that almost certainly
will not be kept). Because of this asymmetry there is a large risk that with
non-anonymous vote people with power will force large number of people to vote
for them.

But if we could vote on individual laws and policies instead of people there
would not be such difference, and people would be able to use their vote
rationally. And if they make mistakes they will not be stuck with the mistake
for four years.

Openness of the vote would also allow more flexibility in the way people
delegate their vote
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy)
or trade support for issues to reach compromise
[https://voteflux.org/](https://voteflux.org/)

~~~
lehi
_> But if we could vote on individual laws and policies instead of people
there would not be such difference, and people would be able to use their vote
rationally. And if they make mistakes they will not be stuck with the mistake
for four years._

That's how you get Brexit.

~~~
blfr
People got what they voted for. The alternative here is some political cabal
subverting the results. Your disagreement is with democracy itself, not a
particular style of voting.

~~~
lultimouomo
> Your disagreement is with democracy itself

Nope. GP is disagreeing with direct democracy, a very specific type of
government which is not usually in favor nowadays. Most democracies in the
world are representative democracies, where you vote for people who then vote
on issues.

~~~
chr1
For the system to be a democracy the representatives have to represent the
desires of the people who have elected them. In ideal case the results should
not be different from the results of direct vote.

If there is no way to elect a representative that would support certain idea,
then the system is not a democracy but something defined by the method which
is used to restrict the pool of available ideas or representatives.

For most democracies in the world such a method was control of mass media, but
now they have either to become real democracies or find another method of
pretending to be a democracy.

~~~
lultimouomo
> For the system to be a democracy the representatives have to represent the
> desires of the people who have elected them.

Not necessarily. It is very well possible for people to vote for
representative they hold in high esteem even though they do not agree with
them on several matters. It is very possible for representative to go against
what is the current majority opinion, and even be reelected afterwards,
because in the meanwhile theirs choices have bee proven right. That's why in
representative democracies there are elections for a certain role only every
several years, to decrease the relevance of immediate issues on the vote, and
give more importance to other factors such as broader ideals and the
trustworthiness of the candidate.

You can very well prefer direct democracy, but it is not the only, or the one
true, kind of democracy.

~~~
chr1
For that to be democracy people would need to vote explicitly for that
"monarch for four years" scheme, but people vote for campaign promises which
are not being kept.

------
henrikschroder
Finally an article pointing out that online banking is always "fixable",
there's always a human that can look at a bunch of electronic transactions and
_decide_ if they're correct or not.

For voting, there's no such thing. Nobody _knows_ what the result is, whatever
comes out of the black box that is electronic voting _is_ the result, for
better or worse. You can't independently verify it, because that breaks the
voter secrecy, and you can't allow anyone to override the results and "fix" it
to whatever it "should" be, because that's outright voter fraud.

Papers and envelopes is the only way to go.

~~~
codeguro
You’ve clearly never heard of homomorphic encryption. There exists a way to
cryptographically secure a vote while also preserving privacy. It’s even
individually verifiable. And as a bonus, you can’t sell it even though you can
verify it. Do some research, there even exists a youtube video putting it in
simple terms. The answer is homomorphoc encryption.

~~~
henrikschroder
> There exists a way to cryptographically secure

Fantastic, can you explain that to my 95 year old grandmother?

> there even exists a youtube video

She doesn't know what YouTube is.

You're showing the third weakness of online voting, and that is that because
we have to trust whatever result the system produces, everyone in society also
has to be able to understand the system. I'm sure I could understand your
solution, but I'm a nerd, and you shouldn't have to be a nerd to understand
it. It's hard enough to convince people that experts are right about trivial
bullshit, why should anyone trust the experts about online voting?

The simplicity of voting through papers and envelopes and urns is its greatest
strength. Everyone can look at the process, everyone is even invited to
observe the process, and you can easily detect cheating or other
irregularities. Everyone can be a poll worker, and that's a fundamental pillar
of democracy, that we all build the voting machine _together_ , so that we
_together_ can trust the result, even though we may have completely opposite
political opinions.

~~~
mNovak
>> we all build the voting machine together, so that we together can trust the
result

Seems like this logic could apply to any other digital or cryptographic
solution as well? On that note, I doubt your grandma understands voting
machines, or even what happens behind the scenes after you mail a ballot.

As in many things, I suspect all that matters is a general consensus that it's
secure. For some that means experts agree it's safe, for others it means their
friends, children, sheriff whatever sign off on it.

~~~
anoncake
> On that note, I doubt your grandma understands voting machines,

That is an argument against voting machines.

~~~
mNovak
I can't tell if you and OP are seriously suggesting we write our votes on a
slip of paper and drop it in the slot.

"Public process" ultimately means a small handful of people can actually
observe the process, so we're right back to trusting our officials.

~~~
henrikschroder
> I can't tell if you and OP are seriously suggesting we write our votes on a
> slip of paper and drop it in the slot.

Absolutely, yes! That's basically how voting works in several countries.
Observers can see votes being cast, vote counters can see that number of votes
in the urn correspond to the number of voters who voted, you get a paper trail
because you always have all the physical votes, and the process scales
horizontally super easy.

> "Public process" ultimately means a small handful of people can actually
> observe the process

No, anyone can come look at the voting or vote counting, why would you
prohibit that? The whole point of having a simple and open voting process is
_because_ people should be able to observe the whole system.

------
egypturnash
_Voatz, for example, gives each voter an anonymized identification number that
allows them to look up their votes as they were recorded on the Voatz server.
This is probably essential for ensuring that votes are recorded correctly. But
it erodes the sanctity of the private ballot, since people in positions of
power could coerce voters into revealing how they voted._

I immediately think that this could be fixed by giving voters the opportunity
to generate multiple ID numbers that lead to “proof” that the voter a
different way. Maybe even different passwords that lead to only one voting
record, in the event of someone forcing you to log in and show that you voted
the way they told you. There are probably other attacks that can be performed
upon this vague handwavy scheme of course.

Can’t fix the incredibly stupid name of “Voatz” though, I cringe every time I
see them mentioned.

~~~
zeroonetwothree
There are schemes that allow proof a vote was counted without revealing the
vote.

It’s far better than the clusterfuck we have today where up to 5% of ballots
get “lost”.

~~~
nemetroid
> There are schemes that allow proof a vote was counted without revealing the
> vote.

What does "proof a vote was counted" mean here? If the proof doesn't verify
that the correct candidate received the vote, what exactly does it verify?

------
qntmfred
Estonia has been using electronic voting since the early 2000s, not without
concerning security analysis

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0e9yTD2M8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0e9yTD2M8)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iit5WdLYwns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iit5WdLYwns)

As mentioned in the arstechnica articles, attempts have been made in the US as
well. Voatz and OmniBallot in particular.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FHHXJ1AVm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FHHXJ1AVm4)

Maybe someday we can have safe, reliable and transparent elections using
smartphones and whatnot, but the attempts to computerize our elections over
the the last 2 decades have imo been more problematic than beneficial.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PvXRwXyNEs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PvXRwXyNEs)

Sometimes paper is the right technology for the job. Hand-marked paper ballots
and post-election risk limiting audits is the best option we have at the
moment.

~~~
m-p-3
I believe that Estonia also have a good electronic ID system (using a PKI
infrastructure IIRC), which probably helps with the overall implementation.

~~~
sam_lowry_
Which had its failures, e.g. Estonia had to reissue 750,000 IDs due to
manufacturer's fault.

------
anigbrowl
What if voting were not so high-stakes (giving all your political capital in a
given sphere to a single individual for 2-6 years)? We have the technology to
edit our legal corpus directly, a sort of _Wikilegia_ if you like. If
governance were less of a black box many elected offices would not be
necessary, and many popular disputes would be be obviated.

Of course, this would bring challenges of its own and be subject to other
sorts of abuse, as we can see from influence campaigns on social media and
indeed things like edit wars on Wikipedia. Nonetheless, a great deal of our
political decision-making could be distributed and would have far greater
legitimacy as a result.

~~~
adolph
I wonder if the low temporal resolution of current democracy contributes to
polarization since the relation of vote to government decision is by proxy
instead of being direct.

Maybe letting some person or legislature make decisions between elections is
as outmoded as the electoral college.

Also, I’m not certain if it makes sense to vote in terms of making a decision
for one thing or another, but vote in terms of how you think the majority of
others will vote. That way people don’t vote for what they think is in their
own interest but in what they think the community thinks is in the interest of
the whole.

------
tomp
I mean the answer is pretty obvious. We don't care about problems with online
banking; we force _banks_ to care - if something ( _anything_ ) goes wrong,
the bank is on the line for any losses, worst case scenario is, a bank
collapses.

With voting, whoever is the online voting provider (even if it's "the
government" i.e. the bureaucrats and the party/parties currently in power),
isn't really responsible... if _some_ things go wrong, nothing happens... if
_too many_ things go wrong, the whole system collapses.

------
lordnacho
I tend to think the arguments in favour of the old paper system are flawed.
They basically say that the paper system is easier to understand for everyone
and easier to prove, and maybe cost more to corrupt.

But that is an illusion that could very well be shattered in a few weeks, for
those who stick to American politics.

The advantage of the paper system is that people are familiar with it, and
they _think_ they know how it works. Much like you might _think_ you know how
accessing a website works, you actually don't know every detail in that stack.
Do you really know how the light in the fibres get read? How virtual memory
and TLB works? What about rendering the page in react? I can say I studied all
these things and I still don't entirely know how the whole thing works, I am
simply confident that certain abstractions are going to hold, so I don't worry
about the nitty gritty of how semiconductors and lasers work.

In paper voting land, it is the same. Everyone who has voted has seen the
interface: you get a piece of paper, you put it into a box, and in the evening
someone is chosen to disappoint the nation for the next few years. You imagine
that in between there are competent and honest people counting the votes,
reporting their subtally, and totalling the numbers they get, up a tree to
someone who ends up with the whole picture, which he then dutifully reports to
the nation.

But what is holding this together? Essentially, just faith. There may be
checks designed at various points to make sure nobody does a bad job of
counting, but with enough contention this will break. The system might do just
fine if one or two people forget a pile of votes, sure. But what if you have
people complaining that they can't vote in the first place? What if everyone
decides they need to contest the vote if their guy doesn't win? What if there
are complaints about the aggregation?

There could easily be a situation where everyone thinks the system is just
broken and will never work again with the current system.

What moving to electronic voting could give us is sacrificibility. You have a
shit election, you blame the system, you make a new one. Paper voting isn't
branded ("Accenture Voter System") and will remain stained by problems.

~~~
abdullahkhalids
You are misrepresenting the checks in the paper system. There are
representatives of all major parties and the state at the voting station. The
representatives have competing interests, so you can trust that they won't
collude. Plus the state rep has a legal responsibility to ensure there is no
cheating.

You put the piece of paper in a locked box - a lock that was checked by all
these reps. So, no wrong votes in the box. At the end of the day, all party
reps watch as the state rep counts the votes. So the counting is also right.
Then the counts are written on a final document, which is then signed by the
state reps and party reps. At the main station, more party reps can check that
all papers were collected and correctly added for the final tally.

Anyone who wants to mess with the voting has to corrupt all of these reps for
a voting station, in order to probably move the votes by like <1%. Then repeat
for many different voting stations to actually change the winner. As long as
you trust the local party rep (hopefully you have interacted them) who is
standing at the voting booth, you can believe at the emotional level that your
voting booth got the right result.

------
abeppu
This article highlights the trade-off between the secrecy of ballots, and the
ability of the individual voter to confirm their vote was correctly recorded.

But the other discrepancy relative to banking is that for elections, we want
to also verify that no extra votes were snuck in. By comparison, while I
require my bank to get my balance and transaction correct, I have no
expectation that I'll be able to verify that balances for all other accounts
were summed correctly.

~~~
blfr
While we don't do it individually, we have regulators who (are supposed to)
control the money creation by banks. Just like we have semi-independent
election boards that (again, are supposed to) verify the balances.

~~~
anoncake
Which isn't possible in case of an election. If you knew the proper result,
you wouldn't need the election.

------
solinent
At Waterloo in Canada we're taught in our computer security class that paper
can be more secure than a computer, especially in a voting system, and in fact
that's the reason we don't switch like our southern neighbours. I'd say that
every medium we use throughout time typically can never be replaced. We'll
keep paper forever--just use it only when it benefits us over computers.

------
NiceWayToDoIT
First problem is ensuring that person is correctly authenticated and has right
to vote. It is same as entering trough door and giving your ID.

From that point the vote needs to be secret, so it cannot be traced back to
the voter.

Solution may be simple as:

Voting software must be opensource on Github so it means that must be
verifiable. Open and publicly accessible monitoring of installation,
appropriate build (version, hash...) And same goes for hardware. Must run on
server that cannot be spoofed or additionally monitored or traced.

If above is done, it is just simple case of decoupling recorded information.

And in regards of checking public ledger can have some kind of random code
"R3DfCee" which will be there to make sure equal number between those who
voted and issued codes. Each voter can go to public web site and look for his
code ...

Maybe something along those lines?

~~~
wwweston
> Voting software must be opensource on Github so it means that must be
> verifiable.

This assumes the problem is merely making an accurate count, rather than
making _consensus_.

"Verfifiable" doesn't just mean "an _expert_ in the field can determine the
system registers the votes/totals cast by individual voters." Because that
means you still have the political problem of how non-expert citizens know
they can trust someone's verification or expertise.

Verifiable in a democracy means that a layperson of average intelligence can
observe and understand the process and participate in verification.

Or to put it in Python terms, "explicit is better than implicit."

We're not just making a count, we're making group confidence that a given vote
count was correct.

~~~
NiceWayToDoIT
Not exactly what I meant.

If installation number is open and visible, any person without any knowledge
can confirm that during vote, latest installation number was such and such and
hash of build was of such and such. Before election day number can be publicly
broadcast so everyone knows what needs to be checked.

Opensource and visible means same as for linux, code is visible to those that
have knowledge and can quickly identify attempts of backdoor attempts like for
instance this one: [https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2013/10/09/the-linux-
backdoor-...](https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2013/10/09/the-linux-backdoor-
attempt-of-2003/)

Code wise that will allow that people in power will not try to manipulate or
rig elections. If you have XX thousands of IT professionals that can check
code it is surely better than "trusted" dedicated private contractor.

~~~
patmorgan23
> Not exactly what I meant.

> If installation number is open and visible, any person without any knowledge
> can confirm that during vote, latest installation number was such and such
> and hash of build was of such and such. Before election day number can be
> publicly broadcast so everyone knows what needs to be checked.

> Opensource and visible means same as for linux, code is visible to those
> that have knowledge and can quickly identify attempts of backdoor attempts
> like for instance this one: [https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2013/10/09/the-
> linux-backdoor-](https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2013/10/09/the-linux-
> backdoor-)...

> Code wise that will allow that people in power will not try to manipulate or
> rig elections. If you have XX thousands of IT professionals that can check
> code it is surely better than "trusted" dedicated private contractor.

"any person woth the knowledge" that's the issue you want a system where the
most number of people with the least amount of specialized knowledge nessicary
can verify their vote. Everyone can look at a pice of paper and see their vote
before they cast it. Not everyone has the expertise to verify software was
installed correctly and all the important cryptographic boxes where ticked.

------
rektide
As if we have online banks. A couple counties have some national systems for
APIs to bank with. But it's a wild west story everywhere else & this "online
banking" we have is all a masquerade on an old barely working distinctly un-
on-line batch processing shite system we've endured & been stuck with.

~~~
rektide
We should totally be open to online voting in some countries where politicians
give a shit, run the programs with transparency & open source, & operate at
smaller levels of scale than this sizable dis-federating mess (To the Union
forever).

------
jellicle
All the things that anyone thinks can go wrong with online voting are already
features of the voting system today. Your votes are tabulated by online
computers, who send votes electronically to other computers, all of them with
bottom-of-the-barrel security, and the totals are reported as gospel (or
manipulated, who knows). Bad actors can force people to vote as they wish.
Everything is closed source and secret.

That's how elections are conducted today.

A proper online voting system could have maximal verification. Bruce Schneier
could be handcuffed to the mainframe to verify it. Offer a $1 million bounty
for every bug found. Make a system that has multiple independent watchdogs
watching each other, and if the code on any is changed they all freak out.
Every line of code could be scrutinized.

------
MrXOR
Online Voting is a very hard problem. In "political" online voting, you
(voters) are adversary, everyone is adversary, everything is adversary. Your
enemies are all APT groups around the world. You can't trust others, you can't
trust yourself, you are alone.

------
im3w1l
So one problem I was thinking about: If someone stands behind your shoulder
while you vote (because they want to violently coerce you, or because they are
buying your vote), then it must be possible to make the system ignore that
vote. Maybe by overriding it later, or by making it seem like you are voting
even though your are not

In either case with such a ignore-vote function in place, how can you be sure
that the mailman, or the official who gave you your authentication codes, that
they aren't pulling this trick on you? By it's nature it must be undetectable
that it is performed?

~~~
optimiz3
Is this a realistic threat? Mail-in and absentee ballots could also have
theoretical coercion issues but in reality many states exclusively use mail-in
voting without issue.

~~~
jarjoura
The early US election history is littered with stories of coercion. It’s a
very real threat.

~~~
optimiz3
What does that happen to do with right now? Is your position that mail-in
voting coercion is happening on a scale large enough to be a real threat or
matter? What evidence to you have for this?

------
74ls00
The main thing I’ve never understood is why online voting is even desirable.
Even if it were as secure what’s wrong with going to a polling station? If
it’s inaccessible to many busy people then let’s make it a public holiday.
What problem are we trying to solve?

------
jspaetzel
These issues exist for mail in voting as well. The main difference is how well
the average Joe understands computers vs mail. There could be a secure opt-in
system for online voting. Heck they could mail out the ballot and let you
submit it online.

------
pmoriarty
The day voting becomes electronic is the day you can say goodbye to democracy.

------
motohagiography
Electronic voting is a recipe for civil unrest because there is no way to
demonstrate its legitimacy to the people who participate in it and are subject
to the results. !remindme 2020-11-04

------
1f60c
Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/2030/](https://xkcd.com/2030/)

~~~
NiceWayToDoIT
I love it. I came to this thread here expecting I will find many different
ideas, instead I found: no, impossible, are you crazy, never, it will not fly,
heads will explode :D ...

I would really like if I found even attempt of ideas, or even break down of
problem to many points ... something along those lines ...

------
RyJones
I'll repost this[0] from 2012, talking about work from ~1998.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4771264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4771264)

~~~
pwinnski
The article list two reasons why online voting is not like online banking.

Your links address one, but not the other, and yet you label it a solved
problem.

I can't see how online voting can provide the secret ballot we have today.
"Privacy" is _not_ the same as "anonymity."

------
pixelmonkey
Schneier on Security covering voting machines in 2004, a few years after the
Year 2000 "hanging chad" debacle in Florida that kicked off the current
"modernization" wave. The tl;dr is that online and electronic voting optimizes
the wrong metrics during an election.

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/11/the_problem_w...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/11/the_problem_wit.html)

------
jarjoura
There are no do-overs in an election. If a system is compromised, either
legitimately or through political gas lighting, there won’t be a paper trail
to fall back on.

There’s also some theories that voting at home on something like your phone is
far more subjected to coercion. This is why some states refuse to go 100%
mail-in this year, even at the expense of public health. Sure, someone can
always threaten you to vote a certain way, but polling places are designed to
prevent that as much as possible.

Then there’s just us, the population. We live in an age that people doubt
vaccines, or think the earth is flat, or that COVID 19 is a fake crisis
manufactured by the Democrats to win the election. If 100% of votes are done
digitally, some group will undoubtedly not believe the outcome of the
election.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There are no do-overs in an election

Sure there are, quite literally Ordering a new election from scratch is a not-
unheard-of remedy for election irregularities for which there is no other way
to correct the irregularity.

~~~
jarjoura
Do you have an example of a presidential election that was redone?

In 2000 Bush vs Gore, the Supreme Court canceled the recount. That’s the
closest I’ve seen to the courts stepping in to fix a mess.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Do you have an example of a presidential election that was redone?

The (completely optional) popular elections for US Presidential electors don't
generally have laws that would support a judicially-ordered revote as a remedy
because they have a built-in after the fact _legislative_ remedy, since the
legislature ultimately decides the mechanism by which electors are assigned
(and can simply do so itself), and can revise it's decision even after a
public balloting has occurred (in principle, such an retrospective change
removes the states electoral votes from the safe harbor provision that applies
to procedures fully adopted in advance, but then the safe harbor rule itself
is unenforceable and effectively a symbolic statement of intent.)

But that's a fairly special case, and a result of the peculiar design of US
Presidential elections, not something general to elections.

This doesn't prevent a do-over, it just means that it wouldn't come from
judiciary. It also means that the decision would be _highly_ partisan.

While not about do overs (but potentially about legislative intervention in
other ways), that's why the anti-mail-ballot propaganda (and Trump's double
voting advocacy) is heavily targeting Republican-legislative-majority states
that are polling close or leaning Biden.

