Dan Gillmor has posted a very good, concise analysis of the perils of electric voting in the wake of an Orange County vote where the loss of thousands of ballots was discounted because the race was won by a wide enough margin that the lost votes don't matter — even though no one knows how many votes were lost.
Look. I'm a fan of installing modern equipment to make elections better. If the machines work right they'll be better than what we had. But these are computers, and computers are flawed devices. Software behaves in unpredictable ways, and rogue programmers or hackers can create havoc.
Meanwhile, as we've seen, the hardworking poll workers can make mistakes. They're human.
What we need is a backup and verification system that combines the best of computers and people but doesn't absolutely rely on programmers and people to get everything right every time. Such as system exists: It's called paper.
A paper printout could be used to recount in close elections, instead of trusting the "garbage in, garbage out" system that invites us not to trust it. It could be used for random checks, as a precaution.
