Paper Trails

This is just a short take on what some see as a very complex problem: how to get a paper receipt for an e-Vote.

Diebold and the other manufacturers of electronic voting machines tell us it's way too complicated to produce a computer that can tally and record all votes cast on that particular machine; keep track of a voter's choices, print out a receipt (paper trail) for the voter; and at the end of the evening print out the sum total of votes for every candidate.

Maybe they should check with National Cash Register Corporation (NCR) or any of the other manufacturers of point-of-sale devices. NCR has been recording transactions for over 100 years. Every day in this country, millions consumers trust the folks that build cash registers to accurately record their billions of dollars worth of purchases, tally their expenditures, charge them to their credit or debit cards, report how much change is due back if the transaction is handled by cash, generate a subtotal, calculate how much tax should be added, generate a total, print out a receipt with every item and its unit price for the customer, and at the end of a shift or the end of the business day, generate a complete accounting of the transactions for that register. Millions of consumers, billions of transactions, 365 days a year. (And that's just in the USA.)

Get charged the wrong amount? Get the wrong change? Get the wrong sandwich at the drive-thru? Show them your receipt.

Too bad you can't do that with your electronic ballot.

Diebold and the rest of the voting machine industry can do much better. Or maybe we should let NCR do it. I think they know how.