That is more or less correct. It is a way for state governments to enable "their side" to win easier. It will get worse as the demographic shift continues to strangle the GOP's support in swing states.

> IMO Occam's razor ends up here. Electronic voting systems do two things very well: obfuscate the system in a way that is relatively incomprehensible to a layman, and provide plausible deniability in the case of manipulation.

I think if you bring up Occam's Razor you also need:

1. Somebody gets to make money selling crap to the government

2. Somebody in government thinks it'll mean cost-savings

Occam's Razor is not a real logical principle. It would also lead to the conclusion that the reason not much of substance is ever done about computer security in general is because there is someone or some group who earnestly wants to see the rise of action-movie-style supervillains who can walk down the street and see society unwind into chaos around them as ATMs jackpot into the street, airplanes careen out of the sky, power stations blink and surge, all the doors to prison cells fling wide open, and modern cars lock the steering while maxing out the accelerator. Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence. And that's the case here. Electronic voting, if it were magically secure, would be cheaper and more accessible. And it would make some companies like Diebold a bunch of money. So of course it gets pursued.

Historically in the United States (at least for the last 50 years), the Republican political party has taken the most actions to restrict access to voting, unfairly redistrict to give them an advantage (gerrymandering), or simply screw with the voting system (to their advantage). Fringe local Democrats sometimes play with gerrymandering[0], but not nearly at the same rate. [1][2][3][4]

Given that the current party with federal power is the Republican party, I would argue there is no better time for them to pass as many vote-restriction laws as possible. Vote restrictions typically target the poor and minorities, who typically are Democrat party voters. The wikipedia article I linked is actually a remarkably good overview of the recent history of this issue in the USA.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/28/how-m...

[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/new-voting-restrictions-americ...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2017/03/09/519500312/state-republicans-p...

[3] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-the-...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...

It doesn't matter. Any of them.