Comment by Rebecca Mercuri

I am adamantly opposed to the use of fully electronic systems for use in anonymous balloting and vote tabulation applications. The reasons for my opposition are manyfold, and are expressed in my writings as well as those of other well-respected computer security experts. To briefly summarize my opinion (based on a decade of research) on this matter I state the following: Fully electronic systems do not provide any way that the voter can truly verify that the ballot cast corresponds to that being recorded, transmitted, or tabulated. Any programmer can write code that displays one thing on a screen, records something else, and prints yet another result. There is no known way to ensure that this is not happening inside of a voting system. Unverified source (2001)