<x-flowed>On 7/5/06, Larry Levine <larrylevine@earthlink.net> wrote:

Maybe it's because the electronic voting industry really doesn't want to do
paper backup, but has no one out there ever heard of a quick pick lottery
machine that gives the purchaser a printed receipt. Or how about a
totalizator at a horse race track. The technology is there; it's just the
will to make the application that's missing.

It's clear that all of the four major voting systems manufacturers
(DESI, Sequoia, ES&S, Hart) have pretty poorly designed retrofitted
DRE+VVPAT products.  Their VVPAT attachment is so similar among them
that they share many of the same significant design flaws; however,
each has its own additional problems.  We do see some innovation at
the edges with some smaller and not-well-established companies
providing VVPAT-enabled systems that don't have many of the flaws of
the major systems, but it's tough for these vendors to make it.  For
an example of recent innovation, newly on the scene is Precise Voting
which offers a cut-sheet VVPAT and actual audio verification of the
paper record (which is only currently available in one other system on
the market): http://www.precisevoting.com/

I've got a draft of a paper on exactly this subject that elaborates on
this... let me know if you'd like to see it. best, Joe