Question regarding voting procedure - Sequoia activation card

For some reason, I didn't even think about this until this morning, now it's bugging me -

Been voting on the touch screen machines for awhile now, so I'm familiar with the process -

sign in, they swipe the card, I put the card in the machine, vote, remove the card, and return it to the basket on the table where we signed in, presumably because they reuse the cards, pick up an 'I voted' sticker and leave.

Yesterday, after my son and I voted, I looked for the basket to return the card, and one of the guys sitting at the back table said "in the box by the door". So we dropped them into the red lockbox, picked up our 'I voted' stickers and left.

Didn't think anything more of it until this morning, when something just kind of went 'hunh?' and stuck.

I asked my husband where he'd left his activation card when he voted and he said the red box by the door. So it wasn't a fluke. He shrugged and said 'Maybe they knew they had enough for everyone, and didn't need to reuse them this time. Or maybe they changed the process.'

So, my question is, does anyone know if the procedure has been changed? Yeah, I'm a slacker, and haven't been keeping up, so it's possible. Figure if anyone would know, it'd be someone here.

Thanks in advance.

Actually when I voted I stayed as far away from the machines as I could and made a small scene as I voted with my paper ballot. I didn't want anyone to think I might be tampering with the touchscreens.

The purpose of these cards is to keep you from voting multiple times. When you use the card it is reset by the touchscreen machine and must be reprogrammed with a new electronic "token" before it is used again.

These cards are a commodity product. The only thing that makes them unique to the voting machines is their programming. It is not inconceivable that you could make your own card which would allow you to vote multiple times.

But if you are an election worker or contractor there are easier ways to commit election fraud using these touchscreen machines.

If we continue to use the same sorts of touchscreen voting systems I saw last night, I think it is inevitable that somewhere the electronic votes recorded by these machines and any "paper trail" these machines produce will be tampered with.

The greatest problem with the "paper trail" these machines produce is that a false paper trail can be easily counterfeited. All you need is one of the printers these voting machines use, and an appropriate computer program. With these tools you can recreate a "paper trail" identical to whatever fraudulent electronic vote your touchscreen machines produce. You can then swap this false paper trail in when nobody is looking. These little rolls of paper are much easier to handle than big bulky ballot boxes.

I don't suspect that fraud has been committed in most of the elections these voting machines have been used in, but the United States has a very rich history of election fraud and in many places these machines will be used to automate traditional local election cooking procedures.

Crooked election officials will love these machines because they won't have to worry anymore about ballot boxes dumped in the bay and other such inconveniences. Electronic crime can be invisible.