CNet has a report up on the changing face of voting machinery in the US. I'd say this is another expedition into "management by magazine" land, searching for the elusive silver bullet fix. Consider:

As a result, almost 82 million registered voters will have seen voting systems changes over the past six years. The number of counties using hand-counted paper ballots this November will be only about half as many as in 2000.

Hand counting may not be sophisticated, but - with decent monitoring, I'd guess that it's pretty darn reliable. Instead, we have a plethora of whiz bang touch screens with no paper ballots at all in many places now. The response to the 2000 election looks a lot like the 1995-1996 introduction of Java to me - endless bouts of "all the cool shops are doing this" silliness, with no thought as to what might be the best business solution.

I suppose I should be encouraged - the software industry is no dumber than anything else :)