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If you gave up secret voting, you could likely make a 'secure enough' voting system, since anyone could check their own vote in the system.

There's no need to give up on secret voting to get this. Thanks to advances in cryptography we can have secret *and* verifiable ballots. An example implementation can be found at Helios voting. Also, check out a description of a paper based system: Scratch and Vote [PDF]

Any electronic voting that doesn't suck is no better than pen and paper.

I used to think this as well, but then I saw a talk by a Ben Adida, a cryptographic voting researcher. It turns out there are electronic and hybrid voting systems that allow every step of the process to be independently audited. Individual voters can log into a website and ensure that their vote was recorded correctly (and yes, this is done in such a way that nobody can prove to another party which way they voted). Anyone can get a list of the people who actually voted, so they can check that nobody voted twice and that every voter was valid. Each of the candidates can independently and programatically verify that the tallying was done correctly (again, without exposing any one specific ballot). This is far superior to traditional paper ballots, and there's no technical reason we can't have it today.

Here's a paper that gives some more information. I believe Dr. Adida mentioned that this particular system has a few problems that would prevent it from being used in practice, but it still gives a pretty good example of how a cryptographic voting system could work.

With a paper trail it becomes extremely easy to sell votes or be coerced into voting. The voter has the receipt to prove to a third party they fulfilled their previously agreed upon obligation.

Take a look at Ben Adida's work on this http://benlog.com/ http://ben.adida.net/ and http://ben.adida.net/presentations/

With a paper trail it becomes extremely easy to sell votes or be coerced into voting. The voter has the receipt to prove to a third party they fulfilled their previously agreed upon obligation.

Take a look at Ben Adida's work on this http://benlog.com/ http://ben.adida.net/ and http://ben.adida.net/presentations/

I'm not sure why you think Punchcard doesn't allow you to do that, but I suggest you read the following thesis:

http://ben.adida.net/research/phd-thesis.pdf

Afterwards, you may have some relevant opinions. Until then, please pretend that the cryptographers designing this thing consulted with a five-year-old before publishing their results.

*rolls eyes* RTFA, idiot. You can't buy votes with this scheme.

There are guarantees. Mathematical ones. Every concern you have stated has been mulled over for over a decade now by very bright cryptographers.

Are you really arrogant enough to think that your blatantly obvious concerns aren't blatantly obvious to the designers of this scheme?

Try reading this if you are truly interested in what's possible:

http://ben.adida.net/research/phd-thesis.pdf

Afterwards, you may have some relevant opinions. Until then, please pretend that the cryptographers designing this thing consulted with a five-year-old before publishing their results.