The purpose, though, is to get rid of the paper trail. No paper trail, no opportunity for contradiction, no abiguity.
At that point, the only thing that can go wrong is someone might slash your tires the night before you are to drive to the polls.
FEC Section 3.2.4.3.2, DRE System Vote Recording --
To ensure vote recording accuracy, all DRE systems shall:
a. Contain all mechanical, electromechanical, and electronic components; software; and controls required to detect and record the activation of candidate, contest, and write-in vote selections, made by the voter in the process of casting a ballot;
b. Incorporate multiple memories, both in the voting machine and in its programmable memory device, to detect any discrepancy in the content of individual memories;
c. Provide at least two processes that record the voter’s selections that:
1)Use neither common software nor common storage devices for these processes;
2)Designated one process and associated storage location as the main vote detection, interpretation, processing and reporting path;
3)Use a different process to store ballot images, for which the method of recording may include any appropriate encoding or data compression procedure consistent with the regeneration of an unequivocal record of the ballot as cast by the voter; and
4)Provide a capability to retrieve ballot images in a form readable by humans; and
d. Ensure that all processing and storage protects the integrity of the data and the anonymity of the voter.
3.2.4.3.3, Recording Accuracy
DRE systems shall meet the following requirements for recording accurately each vote and ballot cast:
a. Detect every selection made by the voter;
b. Correctly add permissible selections to the memory components of the device;
c. Verify the correctness of the detection of the voter selections and the addition of the selections to memory;
d. Achieve an error rate not to exceed the requirement indicated in Section 3.2.1;
e. Preserve the integrity of voting data and ballot images (for DRE machines) stored in memory for the official vote count and audit trail purposes against corruption by stray electromagnetic emissions, and internally generated spurious electrical signals; and
f. Maintain a log of corrected data.
3.2.4.3.4, Recording Reliability
Recording reliability refers to the ability of the DRE system to record votes accurately at its maximum rated processing volume for a specified period of time. The DRE system shall record votes reliably in accordance with the requirements of Section 3.4.3.