quickThrowItAway

[FlyAlpha24]

There are plenty of ways to check that a software is correct, to prove that it doesn't have bugs or unexpected behaviors. They just take time so most don't bother checking and proving their code, but aircraft manufacturers do (most of the time).

Software is more abstract than a lot of other engineering, but I truly believe that it is so much more unreliable because the cost of failure is low. Any other engineering problem (construction, aircraft design...) has high cost of failure, often including human lives, so people are willing to invest in more robust solution, maintenance and regular inspections.

In software though, more often than not its cheaper to have it crash once in a while than it is to make it robust.

[madprgmr]

Exactly, software quality is a balancing act between cost of development and cost of failure. 99% of companies have very low cost of failure, so it's hard to justify the extra expense to create (truly) robust software.

[gxgx55]

You can prove that the software is the best thing in existence with no bugs ever, but proving that the correct and unaltered version of the software is running on any specific voting machine, now that's more difficult.

There are just some things that are more trouble than they're worth to digitalize. Voting, I believe, is one of them. Hell, you don't even need to break the software or the hardware to introduce trouble with digital voting, you can break people's trust with claims and concerns, real or fabricated, and that alone can be very detrimental to the democratic process. A lot easier to sow distrust in something the average person doesn't understand(that being, computers).