I think the paper trail from the punch card ballots is nice. That said, I have a hard time believing that any form of voting is 100% fool-proof (or should I say tamper-proof). In the past Chicago ballots have had a tendency to somehow "accidently" get wet and not register correctly in the machine.

The question really becomes - is it better to have a system with many human steps (i.e. punch cards where humans transport ballots, feed ballots into a machine), or is it better to rely on a system with only one "human" (software writers) involved.

I myself have no answer to this question, but minimizing vote tampering should be a priority in any case.

Peter