Here's an interesting article from "I, Cringely" analyzing the impending failure of electronic voting systems. The most common technical objection to electronic voting is their closed, proprietary business model in which the machines' design details are not open open to public scrutiny. Cringely adds that electronic voting is doomed simply based on the failure statistics of major IT development projects. They are simply trying to do too much too fast. The old model for solving important problems was to throw nearly unlimited money at one or more private companies. They would come back after a while with the solution. That may have worked fine for the development of spy satellites and stealth bombers, but for major software development it just doesn't seem to be enough. Particularly when issues of security are involved. Cringely writes:

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column: ...in 2000, only 28 percent of software projects could be classed as complete successes (meaning they were executed on time and on budget), while 23 percent failed outright (meaning that they were abandoned).... According to the Standish Group, more than $275 billion will be spent on software development this year, covering about 250,000 projects. That means that if the recent success and failure percentages apply, $63 billion in development costs will go down the toilet in 2003 alone. What does this have to do with voting machines? It says that this whole idea of changing by 2004 the way every American votes was probably doomed from the beginning. Whether political motivations were involved or not, the odds were always against this thing coming in on schedule or on budget. ...In the case of this voting fiasco, there was a wonderful confluence of events. There was a vague product requirement coming from an agency that doesn't really understand technology (the U.S. Congress), foisting a system on other government agencies that may not have asked for it. There was a relatively small time frame for development and a lot of money. Finally, the government did not allow for even the notion of failure. By 2004, darn it, we'd all have touch screen voting. Oh, and there are only three vendors, all of whom have precisely the same motivation (to make as much money as possible) and understanding (that Congress would buy its way out of technical trouble if it had to). This gave the vendors every reason to put their third string people on the project because doing so would mean more profit, not less.