[Carry_Okie]

But it gives you a paper receipt - look at it! If it is different from your vote, challange!

You won't know what your vote really was, because what the screen says and what the paper says may be the same, but that isn't necessarily what the machine will report to the tabulating computer upline. The way these systems work, it's easy for an administrator to get into it from a remote location and change your vote after you've left the polls.

Paper ballots.

[gemoftheocean]

absolutely right. ANYONE who has ever made a computer program can tell you how simple it would be to spit out a paper record that "looks good", but in fact after it issues that paper record can easily change every 10th vote or so. [They wouldn't make it "too" obvious....] Chikd's play. And of course, since all the damn programmers are now in India, it shouldn't be too hard to wave a little Al-Qa'eda money in front of a few of them.

[gitmo]

You don't keep your receipt. You verify it and drop it in the ballot box, which is stored separately and used as an audit trail against the electronic tallies.

Another question though: do these electronic machines retain information about which candidate individual voters voted for? That would be dangerous if they did.