Suppose they do build a hack-proof voting terminal - how can you tell that's what you're voting on, and not a compromised machine with identical appearance? De-cap all the chips and put them under an electron-microscope?
I work in hardware verification and have worked in software verification in the past.
I still wouldn't trust voting machines that I had verified myself. How could I tell my program apart from software that "looked" right?
I can't fathom why anyone who is honest wants to bring electronics into this.
The thought was, that even though a system like this could not be understood by current people, future people would have a reason to learn the technology, as they learned about vehicles and the web, because it shapes every facet of their society, in real time. It would also give us a clear case for legislating software and hardware security standards. Not my area of expertise, but do you think that standards could be devised and mandated to make hardware verification feasible, at least for medium-tech applications?
So, that's how honest people desire technological progress in the voting system. Now, I can see that we need to keep these endeavors low-key, while we cross the gap of failure between "interesting" and "robust". It could take us generations to cross that gap. Let's just keep all this experimental stuff in the digital currency / digital contract field, for now, and tell the dreamers to be patient, rather than insisting that we abandon the whole idea.