"I voted touchscreen"

That's what the stickers that they're giving out at polling places say now. Frankly, as a software engineer, I'm a little skeptical about the whole touchscreen voting idea. I've never seen a software application that didn't have bugs and/or security issues; these translate to vulnerabilities for potential attackers.

Additionally, if we're going to have computers counting votes at all, the computers should run open source software, on an open source platform. I heard a rumor that a touchscreen voting machine in San Diego malfunctioned and booted to Windows (!!!) instead of loading the voting software.

I think we should keep the touchscreen voting interface, but the machine should print out a punchcard-like "receipt" for the voter to examine and verify. The receipts should then be locked up and otherwise treated like the old paper ballots, so they could potentially be used to do manual recounts.