I've been involved with Information Technology for 10 years, a considerable portion of that with computer and network security. I love gadgets and I think technology has great potential to enhance the activities of our daily lives - IF it is applied with a good measure of common sense. I have seen first-hand, on many occasions as an IT consultant to business, how technology, misapplied, is frequently wasteful, often counter-productive, and sometimes downright dangerous.
Here's an example. A chainsaw is a marvelous piece of technology. It makes short work of felling trees and cutting them up for firewood. However, if I need to remove a sapling or two, especially if they're far away on the property, I'm going to use a handsaw because checking the gas, oil and chain tension on the chainsaw and carrying the thing up the hill would just be too much time and trouble to invest in what I need to accomplish. Not to mention the risk to life and limb that goes with using a chainsaw even carefully and under the best of condiditons. In other words, the chainsaw, wonderful as it is, does nothing practical to enhance (for me, at least) the activity of removing a couple of saplings.
So - I have two points to make in regard to computer voting machines.
First, they do nothing for me as a voting citizen to enhance the activity of casting my ballot. A pencil and a printed ballot, hand-counted and recounted by a bunch of my fellow citizens, works just as well, if not better, for me.
Always keep in mind that it's the individual voters - not the candidates, not the parties, not the election officials, and certainly not the companies who make voting machines - who matter most in elections.
Second, as an experienced computer security guy, I firmly believe that there is absolutely no way, given the current state of computer technology, to make a computer voting system that is even close to being as voter-friendly, accurate, failure-proof and tamper proof as a simple paper ballot, hand-counted system AND that is simultaneously sufficiently transparent and open that voters can be assured that no one is screwing around with the results.
Moreover, anyone who seeks to convince you otherwise either does not understand computer technology or the practical limits to the benefits it confers, or they are hopelessly naive, or they have an agenda that takes precedence over making sure that our most important activity as citizens of a democracy is accomplished in the most open, honest and accurate manner possible.
Furthermore, I just as firmly believe that a computer voting system that includes a paper receipt or paper audit trail is also insufficient in this regard in that it would be extremely easy (either by accident or on purpose):
1) for a paper receipt to NOT match the actual vote recorded, and
2) for a paper audit trail to match the machine-recorded result without accurately reflecting the actual ballots cast.
Computer voting machines and computer ballot-recording/counting machines (optical scanner systems) are a dangerous and wasteful misapplication of technology. We cannot afford them for much greater reasons than simple financial constraints. If we have to spend more to have a paper ballot, hand-counted system to ensure honest and accurate voting and vote-counting, so be it.
I submit that we should all start petitions to submit to our state and federal legislators requesting that they ban all methods of voting other than paper ballots, hand-counted (with very specific exceptions for those voters for whom using a paper ballot is literally impossible - not merely inconvenient).
Update [2005-7-29 17:8:35 by sxwarren]: I generally like the idea of using mail-in ballots as a way of avoiding using computer terminals and risking having your vote *not counted*, but it still doesn't avoid the issue of having votes *overcounted*.