Seems like a great thing to try right in time of rising political tensions and accusations of election fraud. Nevermind some Russian hackers caught in the networks of a voting machine vendor in America around 2016. (Supposedly didn't gain access to actual voting machines though. This time.)
people do not trust them because they do not understand them.
Rendering them useless.
David Chaum introduced (invented?) "blind signatures" in 1983.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_signature
OK, how is that supposed to work in practice? You write your ballot to a file and have it signed anonymously by some authority to ensure what actually? You hand it to, well, whom? Who counts it and how, why would you assume it will get counted at all?
People understand encryption just fine, they just don't TRUST MicroSoft!
Less than 1% of 1% understand anything about crypto and less than 1% of those I would expect to get anything like that even remotely correct. I'm a software developer
![Wink ;)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xwink.gif.pagespeed.ic.cldandycH0.png)
If techies
You know, YouTube headquarters has recently been shot up for political bias. Maybe Microsoft will fare better. Maybe.
and representatives of all participant political parties say they trust the system why would I not? If all parties say they can check the results and they trust the system why would I not?
Yes, that's what we currently have with paper. Question is, will you get those parties to trust you and your computers?
As far as the software goes... Since it's open source people are free to pick it apart and find flaws and fix or at least suggest fixes. You don't have to trust Microsoft explicitly.
You have to trust somebody that the code Microsoft published is actually the same code which runs on some opaque machine somewhere. That the machine hasn't been backdoored, hacked, subverted, etc.