California to Require Paper Voter Receipt

DDumitru writes "Wired reports that California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley will require all electronic voting systems be equipped with a voter-verifiable paper receipt. This receipt will not be retained by the voter, but deposited at the polls and may be used to audit electronic election results. All new voting system installed after July 1, 2005 must include the new printers. Existing systems, including the systems already installed in four counties must be retrofitted by July 2006. It looks like the public outcry about Diebold and other voting equipment manufacturers has been heard, at least in a very major market for these machines in the US. It should be very difficult for other states to not follow suit."

Comments

I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

if diebold CEO is still promising (and meaning it) to deliver W..
Oh, wait.
The printer was delayed until AFTER the next major election.

um...useless?

[amichalo]

I see two possible scenarios which make this an unrealistic solution:

(1) The receipt includes a voter ID and the results of their vote. This totally violates the anonymity of the voting process but does allow for counting.

(2) If the receipts include no voter ID but just some form of transaction ID, then why print them off at all? Just run some report at any point during the voting process to see the tally? Why not? If the voting system is compromised, then there is no way to ensure the paper votes with the transaction id, generated from the compromised system can be trusted either.

As I see it, this solution does not add value without removing rights.