will make my suggestion once again and maybe someone somewhere will take it and make a fortune with voting machines off of my offered to yall free suggestion:
If a simple cash register can print a transaction receipt - actually two, because one is retained in the machine - then a high dollar voting machine can be made to do the same thing. Make every voting machine spit out a voting receipt of the actual votes it tallied for each person voting. Each person could take their receipt and check it, carry it home with them for their personal records, or take it to the election judge right then and there and demand the machine be fixed with actual PROOF of the incorrect vote right there in their hands.
The internal receipt spool could be used a a paper trail for any recount.
OK, you wannabe millionaires - make those machines!!!
Also, if I have a vote receipt, would that not be identifiable to me? So I give up my privacy to vote in secret?
Excellent questions!
1) Yes, I guess a vote could be changed after the vote is cast, but if the internal tape and receipt are printed as an original/copy at the same time, as they are in a cash register, and if the receipt that you hold in your hand is accurate, then there is a good to better chance that the corresponding tape would be the same inside the machine, and provide a paper trail of votes to count and recount ad nauseum.
2) I guess every place does it differently, but where I vote there were 10+ voting machines. Check-in for voting was a table in the center of the room. As a voting machine would be vacated, the next person in line went to that machine. People were constantly voting and leaving. No one kept track of which machine a voter actually voted on. Your receipt might be time stamped, and the automated check-in signature could be time stamped, but that would be the closest they could get to associating an individual person with their vote. Even then, all they would really know is that you voted some time after you signed in. I believe this would still produce a secret or private ballot.