I suggest that faith and trust can be left out of the equation by means of verification. At the time of voting, each voter can be given a paper receipt as you suggest, with a unique id assigned randomly, as well as a list of that voter's votes. The voter can immediately verify the choices, and the id assures privacy. After the election, all votes and their unique id's should be posted on the Internet for download. Numerous independent vote counting programs could be written to verify the election results, and each voter could verify their choices and protest any variations from their printed receipt.
I suppose the weak point in this scheme is relying on the voter to check the printed receipt at the time of voting and again afterward if questions arise, but I don't think this is asking too much of the voter. The strength is that it doesn't matter what kind of black box is used to record or count the votes because verification is open to everyone.
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I suggest that faith and trust can be left out of the equation by means of verification. At the time of voting, each voter can be given a paper receipt as you suggest, with a unique id assigned randomly, as well as a list of that voter's votes. The voter can immediately verify the choices, and the id assures privacy. After the election, all votes and their unique id's should be posted on the Internet for download. Numerous independent vote counting programs could be written to verify the election results, and each voter could verify their choices and protest any variations from their printed receipt.
I suppose the weak point in this scheme is relying on the voter to check the printed receipt at the time of voting and again afterward if questions arise, but I don't think this is asking too much of the voter. The strength is that it doesn't matter what kind of black box is used to record or count the votes because verification is open to everyone.