>I'm jumping in a little late on this thread, so maybe this idea has already been suggested. How hard would it be to make teller machines handle the voting process. Each voter gets a Card with a PIN number (as has already been suggested), the teller machines are already on some sort of network, and they can also give the voter a "receipt" of how they voted. I would think the cost of getting the software changes to allow these system to handle voting would be far less expensive then equipping all the polling places with new Voting Systems.

Certainly an idea, and one that was used in a small sample in Virginia this election - "voting kiosks," I think they were called. (Saw one on the local area news, and it wasn't Maryland (my state), so it must've been Virginia.) It wasn't very popular, according to the news story, but that may not mean much - you have to target the right voters and give it good publicity to get the idea started, as well as have a good screen design.

Still problematic about how to fund ideas like these - as several media people have pointed out, election equipment funding is at the very bottom of the spending list in most states, up until Nov 7, at least.