Art I don’t think you have given this matter enough thought.

If the vote is close and the losing party wants a recount it will be a long and painful process but it will be completed. The results can be guaranteed to be different than the first count because paper is part of the process. If you read 500,000 paper ballots using scanners you will get a different total the second time because of uncertainties in the scanning process. First time through the scanner a check box will be recognized as checked the second time it will not and the third time it may appear checked again. This is a property of any paper based system. Doing a hand count is even more unreliable because we now have humans in the loop attempting to interpret that same box. I don’t think scanners are even as good as punch cards in that respect and remember the problems they caused.

Let’s say that on the first recount the totals swing the results to the other candidate and the new loser demands a second recount. As you can see the second recount will yield a different total again. Now what do you do? Best two out of three? Best 5 or 7? This way leads to madness as we saw in 2004.

A fully electronic system will yield exactly the same answer every time a recount is required and the recount will take no more than about 1 second and a single button push. It will be so reliable that there will be no point to push that button more than once.

The problem with rigged software is a real but manageable problem that we know how to tackle. Code is tested and verified all the time and is routinely certified to be correct. On the other hand paper ballots cannot be secured without a physical presence counting, storing, guarding, and watching the boxes all the time. I’m sure you’ve heard enough stories about boxes of ballots going missing on their way to a central collection points to have much less faith in that system than a fully electronic one.

What you say about the concept of balance is true but only because we, as a nation, have not been able to see the logic of on line voting where each person is assigned one and only one electronic ballot and can only send it with a password and ID. As I said this kind of system is reliable enough to move trillions of dollars all over the world every day so it will work for voting. I fill out my electronic ballot at home or on a polling place machine; I sign it with my password and send it in with secure software at both ends. I get a receipt of my ballot, again electronically, and I am happy that my ballot was counted.

I do all my banking on line, I trade stocks on line and over a year this can be many millions of dollars of transactions and I never touch a piece of paper. It works. It’s not like I don’t have an audit trail. I get a bank statement same as anyone else it just electronic not paper and it is available and up to date 7 X 24. An audit trail of an electronic voting system will work as well as that without a doubt. Voting software is not very complex at all.

Oh and by the way I have designed computers, operating systems, and computer languages since the things had tubes in them. I know how they work down to the gate level and I know software down to the bit level. Yes I am, among other things, a programmer.