California Bans Paperless Voting -- For 2006

bizpile writes "Gov. Schwarzenegger signed a law requiring that all electronic voting machines produce paper records of every ballot cast. Under the bill, signed Monday, voters will not be able to touch or keep the records. Instead, election officials will put them in locked boxes if a recount is needed. Legislators in nearly two dozen states have introduced similar bills and New Hampshire, Illinois and Oregon already have laws requiring paper backups. However, those states have few, if any, touch-screen voting terminals. The law goes into effect in 2006. Now if they could just figure what to do this election."

Comments

Two issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Under the bill, signed Monday, voters will not be able to touch or keep the records.

They'll be able to see them though, right? Right? Otherwise, what stops an incorrect electronic vote being backed up by an incorrect paper vote?

Instead, election officials will put them in locked boxes if a recount is needed.

So who decides when a recount is needed? If a voting machine screws up 10% of the time and the winning margin is 5%, how will that be picked up against the assumed scenario of a voting machine working correctly and the winning margin being 5% to a different candidate? If an outcome is so obviously false (e.g. twice as many votes as voters), then the paper trail isn't necessary, and if the paper trail is followed for every election, there is no benefit over normal paper voting.

Of course, everyone advocating for pen + paper voting in the first place (of which I am usually one) will point out, "yes, we've been saying this for years", it just seems that it's so completely and utterly without merit that I must be missing something obvious.