The Bottom Line on Paper vs. Electrons in Elections:
There is no such thing as a completely secure all-electronic ballot nor paper ballot so far. One can be hacked or the data simply lost, the other can be discarded or lost by either human dishonesty or human error.
However, of the two, the one it takes a human to mess up is more likely to survive intact because other humans are actively working to prevent intentional or unintentional discarding of votes, and humans who cheat can go to jail and know it.
There are no Democratic or Libertarian or Green computers watching the Republican computers, and no computer has any realization that it should try to keep from being penalized for failure or sense of self-preservation guiding it to act in a moral and ethical fashion. It is just a complicated machine that acts on rules configured by it's makers, and quite possibly will fail to act as intended on those rules. Interestingly, it's mostly Republican owned companies that at this time are configuring the rules since they are making the machines. It's actions in real time are not visible or able to be monitored against a master set of rules as would be the case with a human being directly watched by other humans. If it screws up, there's no record of how it screwed up because the information it contains is ephemeral rather than physical and permanent which paper is for the intents and purposes of voting. No one can tell if it is being remotely manipulated, that is invisible.
The bottom line is that there are so many more ways a computer can screw up than a human can on the unintentional side that paper ballots far surpass it on unintentional mistake security. As for intentional mis-use, since the process inside the machine is essentially invisible and the trail of events ephemeral and mostly untraceable. Also, intentional mis-use of either paper or electrons requires the creativity and cunning of a human being or multiple human beings acting in conspiracy to happen. Electronic methods of cheating far surpass paper in their ease of being accomplished, or paper far surpasses electronic methods of cheating in their difficulty of being accomplished.
Give me paper every time.
Dan Stafford
A personal quest to promote the use of wind energy and hydrogen technology in the Great Lakes area of the United States. The Great Lakes area is in a unique position to become an energy exporting region through these and other renewable energy technologies. *Update 2014: Just do it everywhere - Dan*
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