Sens. Push Law for Receipt of Votes Cast
Sens. Bob Graham of Florida and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York are pushing legislation that would ensure a printed receipt of votes cast on new touch-screen computer terminals, arguing it will restore voter confidence in the election process.
Don't you think these receipts will end up in the same place your grocery receipts go? The receipt from your trip to Bennigans? Your dry cleaning claim checks? Your lottery tickets?
I guess we will have to open up more area to log. That would be appropriately ironic.
If we get a receipt then can we get our money back when they break their promises?
Very funny stuff. But...
Network security being the way it is, I think a printed receipt is meaningful. Not so that you can take it home and lose it (or laminate it, if that's the kind of person you are). But given back to the polling place, stuck in a box and available if there are any technical discrepancies.
Computerized voting is a questionable idea as it is; computerized voting without any paper print-out is simply idiotic.
I agree with CW And A.C. It's a bad idea to go with computerized voting without any kind of record, outside of the computer system, showing who people voted for. Besides the fact that your everyday hacker might rig the vote or cause some kind of problem, what if one of the candidates rigged the vote? There would be no way of knowing, if all the records were kept on the computer.
Look at it this way, maybe this election we won't have weeks of news organizations explaining the difference between hanging chads, dimpled chads, swinging chad and other nonsense, 'cuz we all know how much fun that was.
No, we'll just have the left accusing Diebold of fixing the election (if Bush wins and it's in any way close). And there won't be any proof either way, 'cuz many/most of the computerized voting machines don't have paper trails. I'd much prefer hanging chads to that.