(Just using your messages to address some key aspect of the electronic voting machine, and not necessarily your point of view.)
I'm talking about receiving a paper ballot which the voter can review to verify its accuracy before he puts it in the vote counter. I wouldn't call it a receipt because you don't get to keep it.
This is where I fail to see the logic in the debate. For decades, the lever-activated voting booths did not provide a hardcopy ballot for the voter to hold and feel when the vote was cast. The vote is marked on a large roll within the machine, and the vote cannot be verified without extracting the roll and using a template to see how the vote was marked. This is much similiar to the electronic voting systems. Both are open for error and tampering, though I would think that tampering electronic code would be harder to do since these systems are not networked together to an outside system, requiring you to alter the system right there in the facility. And, with Florida 2000 being a perfect example, even paper ballots where the person directly marks/punch can result in even greater error and/or disqualified vote. So the argument of a hand-held slip of paper is also insignificant.
Not to mention receipts actually make a recount possible. Computerized voting with no paper trail is so incredibly stupid it boggles my mind how anyone could think it's a good idea.
The first generation machines did not have a paper record (like a cash register receipt roll) to record all the votes from the machine. All the following versions do have this record which can be used to match agains the recorded votes in the case of a recount. Additionally, before, during, and after the polls are open, each system is checked to ensure it is recording the votes correctly. Systems recording wrong votes are removed from service for the rest of the day. It was not as easy to do this with the lever voting booths since the testing could only be done after the roll was extracted and a test roll fed into the machine.
