We posted this on another thread but here we go again.
Out here in our rural county, we use optical scanning machines. When you vote, you mark your paper ballot and, when your done, you feed the ballot into an optical scanner which swallows it up and reads your vote. When the polls close at 8:00 PM, the scanner forwards the vote totals to the county seat over telephone lines and we know the results by 8:15. The paper ballots are then physically carried to the county seat to be kept as reference in case a recount is required.