iPad pawprints for voter registration

Santa Clara County is now accepting voter registration verified with a finger-scrawled signature, showing how an iPad or iPhone really can do anything paper can. Voters in the US have to register prior to the election, normally using a traditional clipboard and pen to sign their name. But Santa Clara County residents are now …

[Ed Blackshaw]

Electronic signatures are a joke

It might be better on the iThing, but every time I've been offered one of those scratchy things with a stylus by a delivery driver, it has recorded maybe half of my signature, at best.

[Pablo]

To be fair...

Pen signatures are kind of a joke too. How often do you think anyone really bothers to compare them? And in this case, I don't think election officials even have anything to compare them TO.

[Alastair Dodd 1]

a finger cannot do a stylus signature

it will create an idetifiable 'signature' thats without a doubt but a signature done with your figer should NEVER be matched up to one done with a pen or stylus - Surely the way your fingers move when writing is completely different from using your finger. I suspect this would add way too much leaway into any verification when one was compared to the other.

[Anonymous Coward]

Next month

Apple extends its terms and conditions to specify which political parties users are permitted to vote for.

[Anonymous Coward]

The same County...

... is also considering a substantial investment in a Nigerian banking scheme...

[Rob 5]

I thought the pawprints thing...

... was a reference to cats getting the vote.

I am bitterly disappointed and demand a refund.

[IR]

Okay

Practically every shop I use now does electronic signatures instead of paper ones for credit cards. You use a stylus, so it looks roughly like your actual signature, but you can use your finger if you want to. These machines are much smaller than even an iPhone though, so I'm not sure what the significance of the iPad is for this.