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I would have been more impressed if he had instead of used stickers, had programmed the emoji to be displayed on the key itself using a programmable keyboard.

However, keyboards and keyboard converters are easily available which can do macros in the hardware.

Soarer's. Blue Cube. Tipro. Cherry G86 (and even some G80 and G81). Xkeys. All hardware-programmable (and that's just off the top of my head). Even if you can detect the use of "illegal macro software", what about the hardware options?

Which makes me ask, what the hell is an "illegal macro" anyhow? If something is so predictable that it can be scripted and bound to a single key, then it shouldn't really take multiple presses of a key to do it in the first place. This is not just limited to games, it extends to all software where I want to do a single, moderately tortuous task efficiently and often.

And yet, I'd still not mind it. One USB cameras, printers, flash drives, CD/DVD drives, monitors ...anything that can take off the space wasted on internal PCI and non-USB ports is fine by me. I don't like those. I'd not know jack-shit about writing a USB driver, but hey, I can Google for that...

The trouble is that at the moment the Linux desktop is moving too fast (with no effort put on old releases of libs or software) at the moment for major software vendors to put out anything but huge 3D apps that are basically their own desktop enviroment, sandboxed from the rest of the system.

Ballots and ballot books

Paper audit ballots, or in other words, a printed ballot that comes from the terminal and is in fact the actual "ballot" that you are turning in, is really the only way that e-ballots are going to work.

I like your idea on the surface and I agree that touch screen voting can simplify and offer greater flexibility compared to preprint ballots and preprinted ballot books. An idea I had was that the optical mark reader could also have a laser printer (driven by a separate SBC) built in that could print out different ballots and ballot books (say for different languages). The ballots could be postscript files and have a MD5 checksum to try to insure against tampering. The MD5 sum could also appear as some kind of watermark. To access the ballots a poll worker would just select a clearly marked key on something like PI Engineering's x-keys key strip (sans keyboard as in the picture).

The problem is that it incorporates another layer of technology which can break down or be tampered with. Keeping voting as simple as possible will help guard against fraud. It's harder to fake a preprinted ballot with a true paper watermark than hacking a touch screen system or altering a postscript file.

Fraud reduction

While a different evoting system other than what I proposed could possibly help decrease fraud I see it as a moot point. I suspect [with the system you described] more legal voters would be turned away than fraud would be stopped. Also IFAIK the SCOTUS ruled that an identification card can not be required to vote. By a possible logical extension it would not matter if that ID card is produced by the voter or accessible by a poll worker, it might not be legally allowed. With the more information a poll worker has to use to verify one's identification, the greater chance a mistake could be made. You mention photo verification: in Arizona a driver's license is good for an ungodly amount of time, I think until one reachs a certain age like 65. There are people with a license good for the next 30 years. If the picture the poll worker uses to verify the voter is from the driver's license (which is most likely) it could be of little use and possible be used to disqualify legitimate voters. The current system of checking a name and asking for an address for verification is hardly perfect but currently strikes a good balance between cost and vote integrity.

My point is IFAIK voter fraud is rare (less than 1% I'd guess) and has little effect on the final results. Now if you have stats showing something more like over 5% across the country I would rethink my position.

While the current voting system in the US is not perfect, it does work well. Any big changes in that system should be fully scrutinized and repeatedly tested. Big changes at a large monetary cost with minor rewards and the great peril of having untrusted election results is not a sound direction to head. While touch screen voting might come along someday IMO the technology is not ready today or for the foreseeable future.

Thank you again for your well crafted response. While I disagree with a few of your points it is appreciated.

Gods, that was stupid...

X-keys and Ultra Edit

X-keys from Pi Engineering http://www.xkeys.com does a hell of a lot more than this thing. The pro version costs $150 and has 58 programmable keys. There are 2 layers to the device with one key programmed as a "Shift" you can effectively program 107 different macros. Very useful to have one layer for your games and another with useful bits of code programmed like subroutine headers and stuff. I've been able to record hundreds of keystrokes and assign them to a single key. I'm not sure what the limit is. Also supports repeating key strokes and pauses. No super-sleek ergonmic design but it also works on any OS and you can label and program the keys really easily...