Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) or verified paper record (VPR) is a method of providing feedback to voters who use an
electronic voting
Electronic voting is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or handle casting and counting ballots including voting time.
Depending on the particular implementation, e-voting may use standalone '' electronic voting machines'' (also ...
system. A VVPAT allows voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly, to detect possible
election fraud
Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud, or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share o ...
or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the stored electronic results. It contains the name and party affiliation of candidates for whom the vote has been cast. While VVPAT has gained in use in the United States compared with ballotless voting systems without it, hand-marked ballots are used by a greater proportion of jurisdictions.
As a paper-based medium, the VVPAT offers some fundamental advantages over an
electronic-only recording medium
Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are cons ...
when storing votes. A paper VVPAT is readable by the human eye and voters can directly interpret their vote. Computer memory requires a device and software which is potentially