"What matters is the result: Can (the DRE machine) cast a vote? ... Usability is partly about looking at the target group that uses it and making sure it's dummy proof -- I hate to use that word -- but (DRE machines) need to be robust enough and designed in such a way that the target group won't have a lot of problems using it," she said.
Cohen disagreed, saying that voting machines are a solution to the debacle in 2000, when punch card ballot machines obscured the results of the vote in Florida.
"These systems are secure, they're accurate, they enfranchise the physically disabled and people for whom English is not a first language -- they're going to make wholesale improvements to the way things are done," he said.
The truth about DRE machines is probably somewhere in between the positions taken by people like Harris and Cohen, said Dan Seligson, editor of Electionline.org, the Web site of a non-partisan Washington, D.C., group that tracks election reform across the U.S.
"There are two sides of this issue: Elections officials say that (DRE machines) are one hundred percent safe and accurate, and on the other side, computer scientists say they're fraught with problems. The truth is in the middle. No system is 100 percent secure, nor are they rife with security breaches."
The real test of DRE machines will come on Nov. 2, when some 30 percent of U.S. voters will use them to cast a vote in the presidential election.
"How (DRE machines) perform will determine whether voters continue to express confidence in them, despite what they've been reading for the past year and a half," Seligson said.
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