Much has been made about electronic voting machines and their reliability. Election officials and the makers of these machines claim they are completely reliable, yet security and computer experts insist that problems exist.

The security and computer experts are right. Think about Windows and how Microsoft releases several patches and security fixes every month. This means Windows which has been out and in development for years still has security problems. Why would anyone believe that a voting machine which has been in development for a lot less time does not have security problems?

I work in the computer industry and I can guarantee that security holes or bugs exist in Windows, in the computer that runs your car, in this website, in your DVR, at your credit card company, and in voting machines. With complex software there are always bugs and security issues.

So if e-voting machines have problems how should we count our votes? Well, there is no 100% accurate way to count votes. People will make mistakes hand counting, scanning machines may misread or have a bug, mechanical counters may break, and e-voting machines may have bugs. The most accurate of these four is the mechanical machine; however, this is hard for the voter to use because once they press a lever they cannot change the vote. Hand counting would be the next best, but is very slow and requires a lot of people. Scanning machines and e-voting both have the same security and bug issues.

The right solution in my opinion is to use the e-voting machines with a paper trail that is also audited. This does not mean every paper ballot should be hand counted, but 10% of the votes cast on the machine should be hand counted and a statistical analysis done to ensure that the voting machine most likely reported correctly. If this shows potential issues, then a full hand count for the voting machine should occur.

The problem is most states do not require a paper trail, so if the voting machine reports incorrectly, too bad the results are still treated as gold because there is no proof or possible indication of a problem. Encourage your legislators to require a paper trail for all voting so the machines can be audited and the general public have confidence in the results.