Although my precinct used electronic voting machines, so I have little faith, if any, in the accuracy of any recount.

My precinct used something I've never seen before. They gave you a paper "black in the circles" ballot, and when you handed it in, they fed it into a scanner that read and stored the ballots. (The thing looked a little like an armor-plated medium-sized laser printer.) That way they got an instant count and a paper backup.

If the machine found something weird about the ballot, it spit it right back out, the ballot was destroyed, and the voter was given a chance to do it again. I saw it in action when the little old lady ahead of me accidentally marked two choices on one item. Bless her heart, she ended up doing it 3 times before the machine would accept it. But by gum, when she finally got it right, she knew her vote was counted!

The other great feature of these machines is that if you don't enter a choice on one or more items, they'll prompt you as to whether you really intend to submit your ballot like that. If the voter says yes, the operator hits a button and the machine accepts the ballot. If no, it spits it back out again and the voter has a chance to recheck their vote.

It looks like a terrific system!

I heard on the radio that 60% of Alameda County voted absentee. Whew. Now that's rejection of touchscreen machines. (Heck, I voted absentee and I didn't even apply to do so! There were so few non-absentee in my district that they didn't have a polling place.)

Of course, I'll take being asked to hand-write each candidate in reverse-Sanskrit over the Diabolical Diebold... let's hope THAT one dies a quick death...