voting "machines" eliminate voting

voting "machines" eliminate voting

"While those steps are auditable.. they are rarely audited..."

Writing from Australia, which uses paper-and-pencil ballots administered by a central government agency, this is wrong. Political parties have their representatives auditing every step of the election process at every election. Some merely interested individuals also do the same. I mean every step, from sitting all day in a polling place watching ballots being cast, to accompanying the ballot boxes to the tally room, to watching every vote being counted, to making sure those exact counts appear on the board in the national tally room. Your typical vote will have three mutually-untrusting people ensuring that your vote has been fairly and accurately treated from the moment you are given the ballot paper to the declaration of the election results.

As for speed, at the recent election we knew the result by 10pm east coast time (that is, the west coast polling booths had been closed for an hour). I'd say the paper-based system adds a delay of thirty minutes to an hour. Not a huge amount considering the many-weeks delay non-paper-and-pencil systems caused in determining the US Presidency in the Bush v Gore election.

It's the same here in Canada: major party representative are present in every step of the
vote.

I never understood why it could not be done this way in the US. It's not like it's rocket
science.

I think it has to do with the differences in states levels of control in Canada and the US..
plus the differences between parliamentary governments and the US 'style'. Each US state can
set its own election rules on who deals with the election materials. The Federal government
can really only give outlines and say that if you 'fail' to meet those standards you lose
federal funding. The states are really protective of this, as it is one of the last
'sovereign' powers they have in comparison to the Federal government. 

However, I will admit that I am on a thin branch here.. and could be quite wrong.