Voting machine manufacturers
The secrecy of the ballot is a vital and well-protected part of American democracy. It is illegal to record your name alongside your vote. Your name is checked off when you enter a polling place and verified when you leave, but it is not associated with your ballot. The secretary of state knows whether you voted or not, but he has no way of knowing who or what you voted for. You can write Ross Perot in as many slots as you want without fear of embarrassment, which is just fine to those who have made a business out of managing the vote. Your value as an individual voter is minimal. The asset being tracked by electronic voting machines is not you, it’s your vote, which can be worth millions.
Paper ballots and mechanical voting machines are inherently transparent in their operation. One can observe the counting of paper ballots or disassemble a mechanical voting machine to determine how its clockwork innards function. The workings of a mechanical apparatus are protected by patent law, which cannot prevent a third party from disassembling and reverse engineering the function.
The works of an electronic voting machine, however, are made up of proprietary software protected by copyright law and exclusivity contracts between states and manufacturers. Contracts and copyright law can prevent third parties from examining or publishing the details of the software, which makes verifying its accuracy difficult for people unwilling to get in a face-off with a team of attack dogs from Diebold—a corporation with more than $3 billion in its pocket and a habit of siccing lawyers on people.
In a manner of speaking, once your vote is entered into the private system of a voting machine network, it belongs to the company responsible for the manufacture and maintenance of the machines. They are not required to let you verify your vote or even to report it accurately. Within the impenetrable black box of the vote tabulation software, anything could happen to it.