Paper Audits of eVoting

In America eVoting terminals print a receipt which is verified by the voter and placed in a ballot box to make the vote audit able. An alternative system would be to generate a unique Vote Tag which would be unique for that particular vote and voter. This Vote Tag would be published as a list and stored separately in the voters internet account. The voter can then check the published list to ensure that their Vote Tag was counted correctly, without releasing their identity. Such a system removes the need for an expensive and clumsy paper audit trail and facilitates the use of the internet instead of special eVoting terminals.

eVoting Terminals in the USA

In the USA the average cost of an eVoting terminal is $3000. A back up paper audit trail system is now mandatory, increasing costs further, and this article suggests that modifications to Australian software, based on Linux, would be a cheaper option than secret, proprietary, coding.

It seems to me that the expense of hardware should not be an issue as buying 40 000 of them would still cost less than running The House of Lords for one year. However, my main argument is that the terminals aren't especially necessary if votes can be cast over the web or by mobile phone. After all, I never use special terminals for eBanking!