newjerseynewsroom.com

True, paper by itself only means you retain the option of a manual recount. Voters should also have confidence, before they leave the polling place, that their votes were counted as they intend (most of us don't have that now). Pen voting looks like a good way to catch voter error... but does it catch intentional vote-rigging? What if somebody hacks the machine so it shows you the vote you intended to cast, but actually records a different vote, which would only be caught if the paper ballot were manually recounted?

To avoid this problem, the machine on which the ballot is created and the one on which it's verified and recorded should be separate, with no communication between them other than the paper ballot. You fill in a ballot at one machine, then carry the paper ballot across the room to another machine that reads the ballot; if you agree with what it says, you push the "Accept" button, and if not, you discard the ballot and start over. And there should be more than one of each in any given polling place, so each voter can go from any ballot-marking station to any verifying-and-recording station; the two machines can't collude to make you think your vote was cast correctly.