IMO, the benefits of having electronic voting with an auditable paper trail and backup outweighs the downsides, if implemented properly. The process described

IMO, the benefits of having electronic voting with an auditable paper trail and backup outweighs the downsides, if implemented properly. The process described in the article seems a little different than the ones we used in Texas (Dallas County). We have our registration verified and check in, and then are given a paper ballot. You put that into the voting machine, cast your ballot which is recorded electronically on the machine, then printed on the paper ballot and returned to you. You're told to inspect it for accuracy, then deposit it in a _separate_ tabulating machine, which scans it and displays what it recorded when reading your vote, tabulates your vote electronically, and stores the paper backup in a locked deposit box inside the machine. From my understanding, if anything goes wonky during this process and you notice it, you can have the ballot invalidated and receive another to cast. At the end of the day, the counts are printed and stored along with the memory cards on every machine, and those and the secure ballot boxes are all stored with tamper evident seals. So you have the electronic count on the voting machine from the memory card, the printed count from the voting machine generated at the end of the day, the electronic count on the tabulating machine from its memory card, the printed count from the tabulating machine generated each day, as well as the paper ballots as a backup, which from my understanding are re-tabulated en-masse on larger and faster machines after the election to get a second count as part of the certification process. All data points have to match. None of the machines are connected to the internet, so you'd have to gain physical access to them or the memory cards, and anything done would have to match the counts on all the other associated machines and receipts, plus the paper ballot backups. The Secretary of State also generates a list of voters who cast ballots each day by county and voting location based on when you first check in to vote, so that's another publicly auditable list that would have to match that is not related to the voting machines themselves. Paper ballots are definitely more simple and probably just as secure, if not more, if handled properly. However, having multiple points of redundancy is invaluable to help quickly identify issues and ensure everything matches over multiple steps of the process.