More rants on voting machines
Every ATM, every gas pump card reader, and every cash register has one. Every "cashless" slot machine in Nevada (that is, a machine that accepts anything besides coins and tokens) has one. Every credit card point-of-sale device has one.
They're cheap (about $200 at "Point of Sale Depot"), they're widely available, and they're easy to use and understand. So why is the voting machine industry so vigorously opposed to including a printer on their voting machines?
All it would take is a slip of paper with the candidates' names on it, which is dropped into a lockbox in front of the poll workers. That's it. Simple, cheap, effective.
Actually, I was skimming some of the Nevada gaming regulations over lunch, and these are the guys I want writing the electronic voting standards. Gambling is probably the only legal business with as rich a history of cheating and corruption as political elections, and the regulations leave nothing to chance (no pun intended).
California, interestingly enough, has a law requiring a mandatory manual recount of 1% for every state election. How do you think the electronic voting machines are recounted?
That's right: the electronic tally is used to generate a printout, when is then verified against the electronic tally. Umm... what's the point?