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

you're missing the point

[professorhojo]

the point isn't that people will get the receipt and double-check it. although that will be a nice side-effect.

the point is that we'll have a complete paper record of who voted for who. the system will be accountable for its results instead of just numbers in an access database that could have been tampered with.

that's what "paper trail" means.

prof.hojo.
my site.

Re:um...useless?

[srleffler]

You missed the point. The reason to print the receipt after each person votes rather than printing off a report later is so the voter can see the receipt and verify that the machine has correctly recorded the vote. Even if not every voter bothers to check the receipt, enough will that a malfunctioning machine will be detected. The receipts than allow for a recount to be done later if there is some doubt about the machine's accuracy or if the machine crashes.