Voting Machine Security, or lack thereof

I have heard of some of the computer voting machines designs and it seems to me that they have no concept of security. They say that at the end of the day they can print out the information for a check of the data, but that is far too late.

The design of a secure computer voting system is quite easy and simple, so why won't they do it? Is it that they don't want it to be secure?

In order for the system to be secure you need to prevent any modification of the data OR to allow for checking to see if that data has been changed. You could write the voting data as the people vote to a CDROM since that is write once, but there are issues of buffering the data and it could be changed before data is written. It would prevent the data from being changed, once it is written.

To me the best way to deal with the problem is to record the data and also print out a receipt for the voter and a ballot for a secondary check which would be placed in a ballot box. There would be a serial number on each, for an additional check. The paper ballots could then be checked against the computer version, so unless someone is able to vote multiple times (which is possible), it would be hard to change the results since there would be two copies.

It is quite insane that it is illegal to be asked for ID in California when voting. This means if you know registered voters then you can vote for them. Why would the politicians pass such a law? What is wrong with demanding ID in order to vote? I guess if you want more people to vote for you then it would be more difficult if you could not have a given person vote multiple times.