Voting Tech

Herrnson's book "Voting Technology" was interesting for many different reasons. Although the main plot of the book for the first 4 chapters is comparing different voting machines and methods which can get a bit confusing for remembering which is which it gives an insight into the way that America will be voting in the future. Many of the problems that seemed to be brought up was that the interface was not intuitive enough for people. I see this problem as dissolving over time as long as one kind of voting method is standardized. Additionally I don't see younger people having as much of a problem with changing their choice as older people because of the huge technology gap between recent generations. An example of this was when someone wanted to change their vote but couldn't because they didn't understand that they had to touch their choice again to deselect it. People even had problems understanding this after the instructions told them what to do. Compared with our generation which has toys like the Iphone and other touchscreen devices the voting machines might be a familiar system. To be honest a lot of what I read was scary because it seems like these voting machines are going to be used in some areas and they will lead to a lot of voting error. (not that voting error doesn't already occur through hanging chads, pregnant ones and butterfly ballots)
I also feel that a paper trail is necessary for electronic voting machines but I question as to how accurate they might be. What if a machine becomes defective and prints out something other than what the voter selected on the screen? The paper trail would be irrelevant. I would love if voting machines could be safe and not vulnerable to fraud as the book pointed out that many of them are but until that occurs i have trouble signing off on something that could lead to so much disenfranchisement of voters.