What is the point of your third numbered paragraph? Planty of election systems are able to track votes back to an individual polling place or voting machine.

The actual tabulation of voting is shouldn't be a problem if you neglect that voters do not always follow the instructions exactly. Optical tabulation devices anticipate that an oval will be completely filled in with sufficient density, but some voters (we know) will put an "X" or a check mark instead. Should that invalidate their voting choice.

It's less anonymous in at least one important way. I can come away from buying a lottery ticket with a full authenticatable record of what numbers I picked (the ticket). This is generally considered a bad thing in an election, because it's precisely the system you need to start selling your vote. This is often brought up as an argument against vote by mail or internet voting.

@origimbo that's a really good point. In fact, it may be a good start for an answer.

"there has never been a mistake made in awarding or not awarding lottery winnings" - depends on what you mean by "mistake". Every (?) state has pages like this: mnlottery.com/winners/unclaimed-prizes

Minor thing, but national elections are annual, not biannual

They are not the same. You can buy more than one lottery ticket. Almost anyone can buy lottery.The lottery institution does not win the price while the counting of vote is done by the people trying to win the price.

Counties manage elections in my state.

@DavidGrinberg They can happen even more frequently than that. I think I received a ballot three times in 2016.

@AzorAhai national elections in the us is just annual. Other things (primaries, local/state elections) may be more frequent

@DavidGrinberg What national elections are scheduled to happen next year? But the point stands that election authorities are managing votes more frequently than every other year.

@AzorAhai Congressional elections happen every year. Special elections also may happen

@DavidGrinberg No they don't. US Reps and Senators are up for election on even-numbered years. But what is the point in dismissing my note about local elections if you'll also concede special elections happen?

I have experienced a mistake in the lottery. Shortly after the Powerball ticket price increased from $1 to $2, I went to buy one and was given a Mega Millions ticket. The big difference with lottery mistakes is that there aren't any recounts. You either show up with the right ticket or you don't get any money.

The state of Florida has to actually count 8 million ballots, and dozens of items per ballot. The Florida state lottery only concerns itself with authenticating winning tickets, they don't have to tabulate each ticket that is purchased. Elections require enforcement on registration, lotteries don't. Elections prohibit multiple voting, lotteries don't. Elections need to certify a secure chain of custody for every ballot, lotteries don't. Voter registration has to enforce citizenship, residency, criminal history requirements, etc.; lotteries don't.

@John states don't have to tabulate each lottery ticket, but they do anyway. It's a trivial information processing task. 8 million is also a very simple information-processing task. Millions of transactions are processed in real time every hour. But that's done by private banks. The only reason I used lottery as an example is that it is also a large-scale information processing endeavor done by a state (rather than by a private organization). But processing 8 million results is a really, really rudimentary task.

You may actually get a better answer in InfoSec (security.SE). In a system where you may have bad-actors, tracking who has done what is crucial. In an election - you specifically cannot allow tracking of any individual - as such, you are missing a huge part of the information that would help secure the system. You won't get any political input, but InfoSec will be able to give insight into how the two systems differ on an abstract/data level - and how difficult it is to create a fully secure and anonymous election.

If you could vote at almost every gas station, there would surely be a higher turn out than we currently get. And this would solve issues with rural vs city voting where cities have much longer lines due to a mismatch of #'s of voting machines to #'s of voters.

re: states don't have to tabulate each ticket but they do anyway, this is the entire point. it's an ancillary activity for internal analysis, using a single system, with no external stakeholders, and no impact on the primary activity (who won the lottery) if it's compromised.