One major issue in electronic voting is the notion that it might enable an adversary to compromise a much larger number of votes than they would in a paper ball

One major issue in electronic voting is the notion that it might enable an adversary to compromise a much larger number of votes than they would in a paper ballot system. If every state contracts a handful (some may even contract a single one) of suppliers to crude the voting software, a bad actor that could compromise only one of those systems would have an enormous impact on an election. Contrast that with paper ballots, where an adversary would have to compromise dozens or hundreds of precincts, in-person, in order to have the same effect. In terms of economics, having each precinct implement its own voting software (or contract uniquely) is not cost effective, nor would I trust small municipalities to be able to judge security. It’s just too risky all around. Maybe one day when our software systems are better understood, or there are different security mechanisms, electronic voting might work. But not today. Why is this different for software than for civil engineering? Fundamentally it’s not, except that people are willing to spend money on a new design for every bridge, and generally there is a collective awareness of threat models for bridges.