Nick,
We are not opposed to vote marking machines. These machines warn voters of under votes, prevent over votes, provide disabled voters with a way to vote in private, AND print the voter's votes on a paper ballot that the voter can verify before casting.
These devices provide voter verifiable ballots. Paper ballots provide a way to verify vote counting. In addition, paper ballot tracking systems, using serialized removable ballot stubs and poll books, provide a way to audit every ballot and every voter -- a way to "balance" each election.
Vote marking machines might look and feel like a DRE, but have additional hardware -- a scanner and page printer. By eliminating the digital ballot, the vote marking machine is trustworthy. If the machine makes an error, the only place that the error can affect results is any error printed on the paper ballot. Since the paper ballot is verifiable by the voter, the error is detectable.
Because of their reliance on a digital ballot, we think that DRE's cannot
meet fundamental verifiability and auditing requirements.
Al