> That whole event was triggered by the "hanging chad" nonsense found in the poorly designed paper ballots that led to ambiguity.

You say nonsense but wikipedia says:

"a statewide recount would have shown that Gore received the most votes, according to the Florida Ballot Project."

So it seems that election result was changed successfully by machines.

That would not have happened with regular vote counting.

> In a paper only ballot by definition will take longer and leaves the door open for every election to be challenged.

Paper and counting with observers is much harder to compromise and more efficient then some machines. (see EU parliament elections)

Alas, you still argue machines are better when there's precedent of them changing an election result.

I don't have anything more to add here, thanks for the discussion, was interesting digging through wikipedia on this.