Too Much Computing?

There's something that's been bothering me for a while. Computerized voting. Why? Because nobody knows what's inside a computer. Literally. Microchips are tiny, and they consist of billions of miniscule structures photographically etched onto a glass slab the size of a coin which, further, is encased in ceramic or polymer resin.

So, unless you have shaved open every chip in the voting machine and then analyzed it under an exotic microscope layer by layer, you don't know what was inside the machine you used to vote. You don't know what was in it before you voted, nor, more importantly, what it recorded while you voted.

The trouble is that there are many avenues for the introduction of flaws at various points in the production and supply chain for the machines and their software. Add to this the fact that we vote by secret ballot in the US, and there's really not much way to verify the validity of anything that comes out of an electronic voting machine, because all it contains is a pattern of magnetic charges that are only meaningful within itself, and to its manufacturer. It can claim anything it was programmed or wired to say, whether by mistake, or by malicious contrivance. On the other hand, with a paper ballot, there are minute details which, though they might not tie a ballot to a specific individual, they do distinguish the ballots from each other. Handwriting, in particular, for example. So, I don't see what's wrong with using old-fashioned pen and paper. Actually, I think voting is a rare instance where pen and paper are vastly superior to any mechanical or electronic method.