Touch screen systems were encouraged by the "Help America Vote Act", which was supposed to make voting easier for disabled people while making it less reliable for everyone else.

The best technology was probably the big mark-sense forms, where you filled out a huge paper ballot on card stock, and then took it to the ballot box and put it in a slot on the side. The box pulled the ballot in with rollers, scanned it, and dropped it in the sealed translucent box underneath, where you could see it, blurred. So there was an immediate electronic tally, and paper ballots for re-counting.

Ballot printing was a big cost with that system, but the machines were cheap.