Anonymous ID: 8cce54 Nov. 6, 2020, 12:45 a.m. No.11495407   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun

The question

 

Which countries use a voter verified paper audit trail along with e-voting?

 

What are the different types of technologies used and what has been the experience so far? Are there any problems?

 

 

Summary of responses

 

The following countries are given as examples where a voter verified paper audit trail has been used or trialled in conjunction with e-voting: Venezuela, USA (North Carolina), Russia, Italy (autonomous province of Trento), Argentina, Israel and the Philippines.

 

Two specific technologies are mentioned. First, paper ballots with RFID chips embedded in them. The vote is cast via a computer and the voterโ€™s choice then printed out, as well as being stored on the ballotโ€™s chip. Votes can then be counted quickly by machines which read the chips. The second technology is Precinct Count Optical Scanners (PCOS), whereby the voter marks a machine-readable ballot paper and feeds it into the PCOS, which counts the vote electronically. The ballot then serves as a paper audit trail.

 

Considerations include ensuring that the voter does not receive the paper record of their vote, physical issues related to printing, and having paper receipts be single entities.

 

Experiences of using the paper trail as a manual audit, or recount, to corroborate any electronic counting have been mixed: in the example of the RFID system, data on the printed ballot supersedes the electronic chip; random audits of the PCOS paper ballots proved logistically challenging in the Philippines; and in North Carolina discrepancies between the electronic and paper counts have been due to human errors of the paper count.

 

 

Examples of related ACE Articles and Resources

Encyclopaedia:

โ€ข Auditing of e-voting systems

 

โ€ข Focus on e-voting

 

โ€ข Electronic voting systems

 

Names of contributors

  1. Robert Krimmer

  2. Charles Winfree

  3. Ingo Boltz

  4. Peter Wolf