Comments

Having an electronic voting machine print out a paper receipt for the voter to check before it's deposited into a "ballot box" is indeed a good idea. Indeed, that's the basis of what's called a "Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail," or "VVPAT." Computer Scientist Rebecca Mercuri has been promoting this concept for many years: see http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html for information. Most people who have studied the various alternatives for voting end up favoring the simplicity of optically-scanned paper ballots over any type of electronic voting machines. With paper ballots, you have the advantage of a built-in paper audit trail. In addition, many people can mark their ballots simultaneously at the polling place--a paper-ballot system is much less likely to produce long waits on election day than one that depends on a fixed number of expensive touch-screen machines. Electronic machines can be used by some handicapped voters who can't mark paper ballots without assistance. But even here, the machine can print out a paper ballot to be scanned along with the ordinary hand-marked ballots.