Let's hear it for paper ballots. Down with voting machines.

I have been saying this for years.  Here we have a computer scientist saying the same.  Voting machines are merely ordinary desktop computers running a "Look-at-me-I'm-a-ballot" program.  They are vulnerable to all the hacks and malware that Windows computers are vulnerable to.  Plus, since voting machines are all stored together at city hall in between elections,  a determined agent can get his hands on them and always crack them.  A patched ballot program that discards say 10% of the votes for one party can tip any election.  They don't leave a paper record, all the votes are recorded in their internal memory and can be erased.  There is no way to do a recount.
   Whereas the good old paper ballot is secure against hackers coming over the internet, or carried on thumb drives.  They can be saved and recounted.  If the poll workers whine about the effort to hand count them all, they can buy ballot reading machines that work like the test grading machines used in schools.  I remember the teachers using test grading machines back when I did elementary school, and that was a long time ago.