There is a lot of confusion surrounding election security, and how voting machines should work. Every tech pundit podcaster I listen to says that electronic voting machines must have a paper trail, so there is a backup if the software behind the voting system fails. That sounds reasonable.

The thing is, they all have it backward. The original vote should be on paper. The paper trail should be the actual votes cast, not the results recorded by voting machines. After all, if the software running the voting machines is improperly coded or compromised by malware, why would we trust the paper trail that same software creates?

I’m sure there are election experts that know far better than I do how to do it right. I just wish someone would call into question the assumption that a computerized machine is necessary to cast votes in the first place.