... the voter will be able to read the thing and know if the ink is too dark/ too light, and can have that ballot destroyed and do it again.

Running out of toner/ink is easy to fix too - any office worker can replace a toner cartridge, and having at least two local officials watching the guy change the cartridge and all three initial/sign a log as to 'time/date/which-box-got-replenished/why it was changed' will more than satisfy the oversight requirements. It's not as if you're going to rig a toner cartridge to only print out "Joe Candidate", esp. when the voter sees the reciept before it goes into the lockbox.

OTOH, something with a memory cartridge in it that goes down or otherwise requires monkeying with the OS or software would be 1000000x more susceptible to corruption that even a watching official wouldn't be able to detect.

A paper-only system with a simple embedded OS/touchscreen setup printing it could just presents options and prints answers - recording nothing. If it goes down, someone brings out a replacement box, and it won't matter what it can be programmed to do because the data storage (if any) won't be counted anyway - only the paper reciept would count, and everyone can see that before it goes into the ballot box. If a bar code is used, the officials can check on the spot against a master "ballot check" copy (handled and disseminated securely by state election officials) to make sure the bars match the names before letting folks vote on it; leave those copies on public display so that voters can compare their ballots as well, and you can eliminate almost all of the fraud that could occur.

/P

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