The holes in security that he identified are real. Look, given untrustworthy poll workers? Of course.
Untrustworthy poll workers can do a whole lot more damage if the ballots are punch-cards than if they are paper ballots which voters mark with a pen. (See 2000, "dimpled chads".) Untrustworthy poll wokers can do a whole lot more damage if ballots are electronic, than if they are punch-cards. Essentially, the potential for poll worker fraud is magnified exponentially, the more sophisticated and "mass" technology that is used.
That is why I advocate paper ballots.
Nowhere did I say I wouldn't keep a better eye on poll workers if necessary. Of course I would. But "there could be dishonest poll workers!!" is not an argument against paper ballots per se. It is an argument against, first of all, trusting poll workers too much. It is also an argument against voting systems which leave no paper trail, and/or whcih render ballots too identical/interchangeable/computer-friendly, and/or on which all tallies are kept on computer and can be spoofed by the push of a button. In other words it is an argument against systems other than paper ballots.
Interesting point. Efficiency begets efficiecy for the hoenst and the dishonest alike.
still, I think a basic point in security should be made systematic: Cross-checking and backup. This is more fundamental than any technology, it's about making a verifiable record of what happened.
A paper ballot that is a separate stream from the electronic vote tally after it is created by the voter would be such a cross-check. And if it was generated with a cryptographic stamp that uniquely paired the paper ballot to the electronic vote *with a time stamp* (I mean, encode the voter, the selections and the time stamp all together to generate the crypo code and print it on the ballot when it is cast - creating a phony one would be impossible unless you actually went through the process of voting yourself, thus it would take serious serious hacking to even get close to tampering with it) - you would find it highly difficult to generate phony ballots on any large scale without it being detected. ie it would be tamperproof.
The only thing missing from the system is that independent verification mechanism.
In the end, I too think we need paper ballots - but paper ballots that are generated by these electronic voting machines when real voters vote and stored as a backup for independent verification and for fraud reduction purposes.