We favor paper filled out by voters, followed by optical scan, followed by a sufficient audit, just like 100%** of computer scientists.
* unless you want your vote actually counted and counted correctly
** very vary small margin of error, such as Michael Shamos.
Here is an example from Shamos’ state of the start of just an average day of paperless voting:
Bethlehem, PA:
In Bethlehem…When judge of elections Craig Hynes swung open the doors, 15 people rushed in, including some that had been their since 6:40 a.m….Hynes said. “This is going to be a long day.”
Moments later he realized how long it could be when one of his three voting machines malfunctioned. After four people had voted, he realized that it had only registered one voter. He had to reset machine.
“We lost three voters and there’s no getting them back,” explained Hynes, “and at this point we don’t even know who they were.”
At least one voter still has “hope” that their vote counted for some candidate, while we can hope that three will not “change”. Not the only problem <read more>
As they have said about Pennsylvania at Verified Voting:
Pennsylvania’s Presidential primary on April 22 will be essentially unrecountable, unverifiable, and unauditable – an irony, because state law requires manual audits of a statistical sample of ballots cast in elections.
Over 85% of Pennsylvania’s voters live in counties in which paperless electronic voting is the only method of voting at the polling place.
