That's not how it works outside the US. In Germany you fill out the bubbles and throw it in a ballot box. The cobtent of the box is later counted by multiple actual people. Results are very accurate and almost instantly available after voting closes. Thousands of voting locations, properly staffed, make sure of thay. Those preliminary results are later recounted and verified.
> I don't see how that affects the comments you're replying to in any meaningful way. They only mentioned a particular election to establish a timeline.
Because many countries won’t have had a meaningful difference in election systems in that window?
Commit... asked Swen... when they last voted. Now that question is only meaningful if the region Seen... lives in even uses e-voting, so Commit... seems to either assume that Swen... lives in the same country or that virtually all countries use e-voting.
Either option is US-centric - the first is pretty obvious, the second is more along "we do it like that, so all the others probably do it like that as well" (I'm US-centric as well, assuming the mentioned 2016 election was the US presidential election).
It's not like this is inherently bad or anything like that, it's just a remainder that sometimes the inhomogeneous composition of the HN commenters should be considered. And as you pointed out, that's also the case inside the US.
Also, others used the opportunity to state how their country/state uses (no) computers for voting. So there seems to be some meaning to it.
Maybe it's centric to CommitSyn's experience, but I don't think it's US-centric.
> the second is more along "we do it like that, so all the others probably do it like that as well"
2016 is quite recent for a first encounter anyway, so I don't see it as "we do it like that", just an anecdote that it's spreading. No "others probably do it like that".
