This is a solution in search of a problem
I think we really need a more reliable means to audit the voting system, especially since more folks will be demanding mail in ballots.
Mail-in voting is not some new thing. The US has been doing it for decades. 24 states do 100% mail-in voting, or had no-excuse mail-in voting prior to 2020.
I live in Oregon which has been 100% vote-by-mail since 2000. Oregon has been watching the fretting about mail-in voting like some anti-Cassandra trying to tell people everything will be fine, but they don't believe us. While many hypothetical ways mail-in ballots can be made fraudulent have been put forward, a lot of them are the same old tired stuff. None have borne out after the extensive scrutiny. The one upside of all the frivolous and evidence-free 2020 lawsuits is to demonstrate that yes, mail-in voting is secure.
One must be very careful and conservative before changing how people vote because any new system will introduce new methods of fraud, disenfranchisement, and voter suppression. While deliberate fraud is almost non-existent, disenfranchisement and voter suppression are very real.
It doesn't solve the problem
How do you know when they say "yes, you voted for A" that they didn't switch it to B, but tell you A?
The whole premise of this question is that we don't trust the voting system, and the vote can be secured if the citizens can individually check their vote. But they're not checking their vote. They're asking the same people they say they don't trust to count their vote correctly to tell them whether they counted their vote correctly.
Consider that any system would be using a copy of the ballot record; there's no way the real record would be exposed online, that's a security nightmare. How do you know this copy is a true record of how you voted?
Elections can be verified without knowing the identity of the voter
The current methods allow us no means to verify that our vote has been properly tallied in the final result.
In Oregon, I am informed that my vote was received, but not how my vote was recorded. This is by design.
There is no need for me, a private citizen, to know how my individual vote was tallied to audit the election. The paper votes can be audited and recounted en masse without needing individual identities. What protects the US election system is its decentralized and visible nature. To alter enough votes to change an election requires a wide number of people from multiple parties and organizations (volunteer ballot counters, partisan and independent observers, county and state officials) to all be in a conspiracy together.
Each ballot has its own unique ID to prevent double voting. All the audit needs to know is yes, this an official ballot and it was counted only once.
Ballot secrecy is very important
A system which allows each voter to audit his vote in the final result via a unique ID has been suggested. The arguments against seem centered around the secrecy issue and coercion.
Ballot secrecy is extremely important to free and fair elections. As mentioned above, disenfranchisement and voter suppression are very real. Voter ID laws to prevent imagined fraud often result in real voter suppression.
For ballot secrecy to work, once the voter is identified their vote is separated from their identity. In Oregon vote-by-mail this is done by signing the envelope, not the ballot. After the signature is matched the envelope and ballot are separated. The ballot has its own unique identifier to guard against double voting. This all worked as designed in Georgia.
Your proposed unique ID could be implemented by allowing voters to keep their ballot's ID and look up the vote based on that ID. This opens up many ways in which ballot secrecy can be violated. It can be lost, stolen, or coerced without their even knowing.
Right now, the secure chain of a mail-in ballot happens after I've filled out the ballot, put it in its security envelope, and signed and sealed it. If I don't want to put it in the mail, I can drop it off at any number of official, secure drop boxes. Prior to that point, I can happily leave my ballot sitting out. There's no secret information in a ballot until I fill it out.
If I can see how I voted based on the ballot ID, the secure chain begins when the ballot is placed in an envelope with my name on it. This increases the "attack surface"; the number of places where my ID could be stolen. Before I even open it, what if someone peeks inside and reseals it? Now they must be delivered in security envelopes. Once delivered and opened I must keep it secure. What if an unscrupulous housemate, partner, or visitor peeks at my ID and later checks on my vote?
Hundreds of millions of voters must understand these risks and mitigate them. Even if it was 100% safe, for some just the idea that someone might find out how they voted will cause them not to vote; usually people who are more vulnerable. Since individual voter verification is not necessary to audit the election, don't even take the risk.
Such a system risks exposing how everyone voted
Ballot secrecy is secured because someone has to both know what your ballot ID is, and how that ballot ID voted. If those two pieces are kept separate and difficult to access they're easier to secure.
I don't know if a database of ballot IDs to individual votes exists; it's not necessary to tally the votes. Creating one makes security and privacy problem. If stolen, and if it's online it will be stolen, the attackers can expose one half of how everyone voted. If someone gains access to the poll books mapping people's names to their ballot ID, they have the whole record.
Ballot secrecy works because there are firewalls preventing any one person from gaining access to all the pieces, and this crumbles one of them.
If making stealing the ID a crime is good enough, why not all voter fraud?
I don't doubt these could happen, but either would be a serious crime. How would that be different from someone demanding the login for my bank account?
Or how would that be different from stealing someone's ballot?
All voter fraud is a crime. If you feel making stealing someone's unique ID a crime is good enough, then that should be good enough for any perceived insecurity in mail-in ballots.
Online voting systems are a security nightmare
Obligatory XKCD.
The idea opens up holes when implemented with paper ballots. When combined with online voting, the whole thing is a nightmare. Trust me, I'm a software engineer.
Paper is pretty simple and paper systems are transparent. Commercial software is a black box. Even if we required voting software to be Open Source, Australia does, software is ludicrously complex. Even without intentional fraud, a single mistaken line among thousands by a single developer could throw elections and nobody would ever notice. Voting software must be re-tested and re-certified after every change.
That's just software. One of the nice things about paper ballots is they require locality to be attacked. You have to physically be at the same place as the pieces of paper. This alone makes it very difficult to implement significant fraud without involving many, many, many people, each of which is an opportunity to get caught.
Putting voting online invites the entire world to attack your voting system invisibly and anonymously.
To use an analogy: If someone wants to break into your house they can. Keyed locks can be picked pretty easily, or forced, or break a window, drive a car through the wall... yet we still use keyed locks and they work if law enforcement is functioning. All the ways I mentioned are physical. They all require a person to go to your individual house and put themselves in danger of being caught. They're limited to how many houses they can visit. Each visit increases their exposure.
Online security is different. Anyone can try to break in to any house, at any time, from anywhere, anonymously, as often as they like, with little risk to themselves. They could be in another legal jurisdiction. They can test millions of doors at the same time, repeatedly. They can be as noisy as they like. If a fault is found, all houses with that vulnerability are immediately at risk.
Paper ballots are like keyed locks. They work because they are physical objects. Their attack surface is limited. Attacking exposes the attacker. The attack can be seen with a glance: hey, there's someone at my front door. There's only so many an attacker can reach. Altering paper ballots leaves a literal "paper trail".
Online security and online voting cannot get away with what paper ballots and keyed locks can. They need to be far, far, far more secure. Their attack surface is the entire planet. The attacker is not exposed. The attacks can be invisible unless you know what you're looking for. Attackers can run millions of attacks in parallel 24/7. There is no paper trail, the attacker can destroy electronic logs.
And that's why we don't vote online.