In Minnesota, where he lives, Schneier cast his ballot successfully on just such a device Tuesday.

While DREs are still problematical, there may be no quick replacement for them. "Just as we shouldn't have rushed to put new [e-voting] systems in place, we should not be rushing to take them out of commission," said Levitt. "It's way too early to be making blanket statements about the merits of e-voting as a whole."

In any case, a couple of critics urged the public to continue its vigilance. The scrutiny of e-voting systems this year by the media, which detailed the potential problems with e-voting, may have headed off any attempted hackings that could have flipped the results of a major race, said Bruce Funk, the former elections director for Emery County, Utah, and an outspoken critic of touch-screen systems.

He urged more audits of election results and said that every citizen should be given a paper ballot if they want one. "It's 2008 that worries me the most, and a clean [election] run [this year] now only lessens the public concern over the real security problem that still exists," he said.