Seems better. First, you see your vote committed to paper and can verify it matches what you intended. Then you authenticate it with a stamp. Difficult to tamper with, written record stored in the machine to provide independent audit trail.

>Last year we had the “fill in circle” type of paper form that would be scanned for correctness, then dropped into a 2nd slot (not unlike a shredder…) to be counted and stored. Seems to me that with the proliferation of home computers, many of us could print and fill out such a form at home. Then we could skip the voting booth and speed up the process….

There are concerns over that. One is ballot box stuffing. If I’m able to download the correct form, print it on whatever paper I like, fill it out at home, then mail it in, there are no safeguards to prevent me from sending in multiple votes. Okay, there are identity checks required for the voter, but there are still ways to stuff the box. Even if the polling locations are monitored to make sure you don’t slip in two forms when submitting, there’s no identity on the forms themselves, so once they go in the box they’re anonymous. That is good for anonymity, but bad for auditing. Ballot swapping can occur - trade out a box full of real ballots with your own batch of alternate ballots. Thus all the other regulations on maintaining security of ballot boxes and such. One control is that the only official ballot is obtainable from the precinct. Thus ballot swapping is more difficult - the cheater has to get access to real ballot forms.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ars

I’d consider fleeing the country if there were anywhere worth running to.