Editing Electronic voting (section)

===Electronic ballots===
Electronic voting systems may use ''electronic ballot'' to store votes in [[computer memory]]. Systems which use them exclusively are called DRE voting systems. When electronic ballots are used there is no risk of exhausting the supply of ballots.  Additionally, these electronic ballots remove the need for printing of paper ballots, a significant cost.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://electronicsewa.com/ |title=Home |access-date=2 June 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151120222242/http://electronicsewa.com/ |archive-date=20 November 2015 }}</ref> When administering elections in which ballots are offered in multiple languages (in some areas of the United States, public elections are required by the [[Voting Rights Act|National Voting Rights Act of 1965]]), electronic ballots can be programmed to provide ballots in multiple languages for a single machine.  The advantage with respect to ballots in different languages appears to be unique to electronic voting. For example, [[King County, Washington]]'s demographics require them under U.S. federal election law to provide ballot access in Chinese (Mandarin?). With any type of paper ballot, the county has to decide how many Chinese-language ballots to print, how many to make available at each polling place, etc.  Any strategy that can assure that Chinese-language ballots will be available at all polling places is certain, at the very least, to result in a significant number of wasted ballots.{{Citation needed|date=August 2009}} (The situation with lever machines would be even worse than with paper: the only apparent way to reliably meet the need would be to set up a Chinese-language lever machine at each polling place, few of which would be used at all.)

Critics argue{{who|date=July 2016}} the need for extra ballots in any language can be mitigated by providing a process to print ballots at voting locations.  They argue further, the cost of software validation, compiler trust validation, installation validation, delivery validation and validation of other steps related to electronic voting is complex and expensive, thus electronic ballots are not guaranteed to be less costly than printed ballots.{{citation needed|date=July 2016}}