Electronic voting machines which do not produce (or rely for input on) hard copies of individual votes are unacceptable. They cannot be audited or error-checked, they define recounts out of existence, and they are susceptible to hardware failure, software error or failure, outright programming fraud, and/or "cyber-attacks", no results of which could be corrected even should error, fraud, or tampering be detected. No sane person would entrust $10 in savings to a bank whose systems could not be error-checked or audited; the right to cast a reliable ballot is the most important political right we have, and must be afforded safeguards accordingly.  No government priority can possibly trump this one, if the country is to remain free.

No voting machine should be certified unless it either produces a hard copy for the voter to use for verification and for use in possible recounts, or relies on a hard copy produced by the voter for data input.  Any such machine that is already certified should be decertified immediately, especially if such machines were created to be run on now-obsolete operating systems.

The time to act is now.