As for cost, he doubted that it would not be prohibitively expensive, "but the pay-off is it makes the system more secure," he said. "That will give people more confidence that their vote was counted."

David Dill, founder of Verified Voting and a computer science professor at Stanford University, said that the more random and independent the audit, the better it will be for election security. Ideally, the state would randomly select approximately 1 percent of the machines used statewide — although most states only select machines from random precincts — and allow the people to observe the audit.

One thing the state officials should not do is simply conduct an audit to prove that an audit is not necessary, Dill said.

"It's a very good thing to try different audit measures out, but it has to be done with a good-faith effort. If you want to prove that audits are too expensive or unnecessary, then that's probably the result you can find," he said. On the other hand, if you audit for potential problems "and find discrepancies, even if that takes more time and money, then it is money well spent."

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