If the voting machine isn't doing what it's supposed to, right in front of the voter, I've got no more sympathy for that Republican voter than I do for Democrats who can't seem to figure out how to poke a clean hole in a piece of cardboard.

Where I vote there are a half dozen people whose only job is to make sure that your voting works. There are write-in options, and one can change machines if one is having trouble.

The touch-screen voting system I used worked just fine, and any five-year-old could have handled it.

I do agree with many others that there should be a printed confirmation, printed out onsite, checked over by the voter, and then locked in normal secure ballot boxes for possible emergency recount use. There should NOT be a receipt that the voter can take with them, since this would open the system up to vote buying.

I don't understand why this would be a difficult modification to current systems--California claims this will take until 2005--although like any printing system it adds a mechanical reliability issue to the machine that would need to be dealt with. The way I see it, the easiest way to do that is to have enough spare machines at each polling site so that if one jams up or runs out of ink or toner, it's no problem.