Watch 1950's promotional film for mechanical voting machines

[clear eye]

Behind the Freedom Curtain http://www.archive.org/details/Behindth1957 I recommend starting at the 5-minute mark, unless you just want to laugh at the announcer's Dragnet-style delivery, reference to towns being created by "men", and a voting tech lighting up a cigarette as he finishes checking the machine. The 1st 5 minutes are a boring, failed attempt at creating a build-up.

The short film is hilariously hokey in style, but still informative about the security of the system. For instance, it points out how once the back of the machine is opened with its key (and presumably if someone managed to sneak around the back and pick the lock), all voting is halted on the machine which would, of course, be immediately apparent. I know from seeing the machine set up before the election and closed at the end of the day, that resetting it to zero to start counting again is time-consuming and obvious enough to prevent someone from getting away w/ doing it in the polling place. Also, there is no legitimate reason for any poll worker to be in the back of the machine until the end of vote count. By contrast, E-voting machines have numerous hitches requiring workers to fiddle w/ them, potentially allowing malicious finagling or accidental erasure of records to go undetected.

It also emphasizes lever machines' strongest advantage--the highly tamper-resistant count is concurrent w/ the vote, preventing ballot chain of custody issues.