You are absolutely correct tycho.
This is already a reality in Brazil. The Brazilians developed an electronic voting machine that is usually regarded as innovative, fantastic, a great invention. Pure naivity. The reality is the opposite.
An Uncle of mine participated in this development, I'd post pictures and newspaper covers but I don't want death threats from newly-registered users in my PM box. It's election time and the party in power, which polls indicate is going to loose the Presidency, had a secretary say that their militants should patrol the internet and fight a "dirty" war against opponents.
It was supposed to be all fine and dandy, yes, but few politicians would miss their chance to destroy such a system and turn it into an obscure and fragile and certainly undemocratic machine. The stronger argument against it: Brazil attempted to export this machine for free to all South American and even African countries, almost none of them accepted because, without making a public statement out of it, they recognized the danger of such machines. I would have to research the specific nations, but I clearly remember two African dictatorships accepted them gladly.
Given the irrelevancy of Brazilian electoral procedures, I'm not going to make a mega-post here but will give you two links in case you're interested:
Introduction:
http://noleakybuckets.org/brasil-history.html
If you want more plus some technical stuff: Is Brazil ahead of it's time? By Brazilian Pedro Rezende.
http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/c...s_Fall2004.pdf
Nothing beats the old paper vote. The Brazilian political parties use paper voting in their own interal affairs, and the Brazilian Congress and Senate also uses paper ballots when the occasion is deemed too important. If I'm not mistaken, only Venezuela and Brazil have a pure electronic voting machine below the Rio Grande (Cuba might use imported Venezuelan machines, I'd have to research on that). The irony being that the Venezuelan machine has a printer for fraud-proof recounting and the Brazilian does not while Venezuelan elections are fraudulent and Brazilian, well, we'll have to wait and see if fraud appears.