U.S. 2016: For whom will you vote?

[Tiberius]

That argument is incorrect for two reasons. Reason number 1 - even IF you fill in your ballot paper in pen, it is allowed to cross out all numbers and start again. Reason number two - if someone has the opportunity to erase ballots then they have the opportunity to change them as just described, or to simply destroy them instead which would be far simpler.

So, what you're saying is, someone could take a person's ballot, cross out all the numbers in pen, and change them to whatever they wanted? That's tampering with a ballot. So, pen based ballots aren't immune to tampering. The same goes with pencil based ballots as I indicated before. My point here isn't that pencil / pen based ballots are bad; I agree with you that they are better than electronic voting...BUT I do take issue with your statement that they can't be tampered with, because they so obviously can.

Also, destroying them isn't far simpler. Assuming there is a record of the number of people who voted, one of the checks one could and should do is to count the number of ballots and ensure that the numbers are at least close to one another (giving some wiggle room for human error in counting). Missing large numbers of ballots would be a huge sign of election fraud. What would work better is for ballots to be altered to vote for someone else.

No it isn't because people's votes have different values based on where they live. If everyone had an equal vote, you might have a point, but they do not. The president needs a majority of states to be elected, not voters, therefore a voter in a state with a low population has a more powerful vote than a voter in a more populated state. As this is compounded by the fact that there are finitely many people to campaign to - thus campaigning heavily to win fewer voters in states with lower populations will be much more successful than campaigning in bigger states. How is this in any way "democratic"?

Well, it's definitely slightly democratic because everyone is voting, regardless of the strength of their vote. Did I say it was wholly democratic? No. I would love to see the President elected by the popular vote and see the electoral college disbanded.

But let me put your own question back to you: how is letting an even smaller subset of people (party members, or even elected party officials) choose the President in any way "democratic"?

Simple answer: it's not.

Do you know how many Australians got to vote for their current Prime Minister? 98. The country has a voting population of over 13 million. That was the vote in Parliament. Even if you argue that the guy who won (Malcolm Turnbull) was chosen by Australians in the recent election, do you know how many Australians got a chance to vote for him directly? 88,641.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Pa...ember_2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_Wentworth