Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Electronic Voting Machines seem OK in Santa Clara County

There has been a lot of hoopla over the problems with electronic voting machines. How there is no way to verify votes in case of a problem, how the code is not open to inspection etc. But the one I used this morning to vote in Santa Clara county was an electronic voting machine, and it did seem to fulfill the requirements of verification.

After I voted, it printed out a receipt that I viewed throw a plastic window, giving me an opportunity to verify that the votes printed out were true to what I touched on the screen. Only after I said 'yes' did it attach some official vote bar code and deposit the paper vote into some box. I imagine if I had said 'no' it would have given me a chance to go back and see why the votes were different, and if necessary ask an election official about it.

This doesn't mean there aren't voting machines out there that fail to provide a paper trail, but at least this particular one seemed OK.

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