Re: The illusion of paper trails
This is why it is a good thing that not only do states run their own elections rather than the federal government, but that countries/cities are often given responsibility by the state to choose and purchase their own equipment. So yeah if you can swing the vote in 14 counties in Ohio, but they probably don't all use the same type of equipment.
But I agree equipment where the record isn't voter verified should not be allowed. If a place wants a touchscreen IMHO it should be required that it prints out a ballot which the voter then carries and inserts into an optical scanner machine (to catch ballot stuffing) They can look at the ballot to insure their votes were correctly recorded before doing so, and the count on the touchscreen machines can be compared to the count on the optical scanner and if they don't agree a manual recount of the paper ballots can be done (and they can verify codes printed on them to find which ones came from the touchscreens and which ones were 'stuffed' because they have an invalid code)
Personally I'd like to see every state require a manual recount of a random 2% (the exact percentage determined by statisticians) of precincts, and any discrepancies above a statistically significant amount would trigger a statewide manual recount. No chance for statewide fraud since it could never slip past the random recounts and ballot stuffing would be caught as well.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
