Meet the e-voting machine so easy to hack, it will take your breath away

[JohnnyRingo]

56. Again, you have a bit of a misconception

First, you assume that before the computers people voted by marking a big X on a ballot with a quill or something. I witnessed my first election at preschool age almost 60 years ago when I went into the booth with my mother. Voters were led to a machine covered with levers that we would tick over to record our vote. My mom didn't have to spend much time with that because she would simply flip the big lever for a straight ticket, pull the handle to record the vote and open the curtain. Mom taught me a lot when I was young, but she never told me to distrust that mechanical voting machine.

That machine would have been just as "hackable" as anything electronic today, but people didn't start fearing technology until it went to a computer. That's somewhat understandable because of machines like these ones in Virginia, but the voting machines here in Ohio are much different and have guards in place to prevent tampering as well as the ever important paper trail. There are more human checks now than when I was a kid. The article in the OP never explains why their machines have to be connected to the internet. Ohio's are not and there is no legitimate reason to do so.

What you seemed to miss is that if a voter wants, they can literally "let the f'ing computers read what they mark on the paper ballots instead" as you say. It's their choice. Such voters are given a paper ballot with small circles next to the candidates to fill in with a pencil. That ballot is locked in a box and taken back to the elections board where an optical computer scans it and records the vote. How that allays a fear of computer technology is beyond me.

If one doesn't trust voting on Ohio's current machines, they likely would be suspicious of any process if an election turns out against their favor, including hand counts by possibly corrupt officials. When a conspiracy theorist is presented with a puzzle piece that doesn't fit their theory, they just resort to a mallet to pound it in, and I'll just have to get used to hearing cynics say "the fix is in" when they vote for an underdog.