who lives in NC and sat on the 2005 Select Committee on E-Voting that drafted the current laws governing voting machines:
1) The screw ups I have seen so far do not alarm me. Touchscreen systems have to be calibrated, and if not properly calibrated can cause the "vote switching" error we have been hearing about. If you do a search on Google on the issue you will find people on both sides making the same claim: The machine is cheating for the other guy.
2) In NC, by law, TS systems have a printer attached that prints out your choices as you make them, including any changes. Voters are advised to check the paper tape against the screen and report any discrepancies.
3) Optical scan systems work just like SAT exams. You fill out a paper ballot, and it is then scanned and tallied.
4) By law, at the end of the election, the BoE must conduct a random audit of a statistically significant number of polling precincts comparing the paper count to the digital count. The paper ballots are hand counted during the audit and the results are compared to the digital tally. If there is a difference, the ballots are counted again and if the same discrepancy comes up, the polling place will be audited more thoroughly. Absent some evidence of actual tampering with the paper ballots, the paper count is the count of record if there is any differences between the paper and digital count, meaning we trust the human count, not the computer.
5) By law, the source code of the voting machines must be presented to the BoE prior to the election for certification. once certified it may not be changed without being resubmitted for re-certification.
6) By law, the CEO of the voting machine vendor must sign a sworn affidavit that the source code has not been changed after it was certified and that the certified code is what is running on the machines during actual voting. Should this turn out to be untrue, the CEO would be facing a felony charge.
Of all the ways we can handle ballots, OpScan (with strict auditing) offers the best balance of speed, reliability, accuracy and cost. I personally don't like TS machines, but two of the largest counties in the state had already bought them before the new law was passed, so we had to accommodate them.
I really do not lose any sleep over theories of election being stolen via voting machines. Why? Because it is not as easy as many people believe, and the penalties for getting caught are pretty severe. There are much easier and lower risk methods of influencing elections (like voter suppression) than tampering with a voting machine.
I have also worked with a lot of poll workers over the years and they take the job and the charge to be fair pretty serious.
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