Point of Clarification:
You never had democracy. That the United States represents itself as a democracy is a farce continually perpetuated to simplify things for simple minds. We live in a representative republic based system. We have the ability to select from a subset of the elite, a small group of individuals who we hope will represent our wishes with their votes. They, of course, do not have to, but we are given the recourse of recalling them from office should we be dissatisfied come the next election. Its a pretty good system but not a "democracy" in the (pre)classic sense of the word.
A true Athenian democracy (of course even their example didnt include "all men") would be unworkable mechanically in a 250+ million party organization (even with modern technology) and, I hate to say this, much of the American public is not interested enough to collect the information necessary for them to directly represent themselves. We would be a nation of reactionary judgement prone to act haphazardly to the latest soundbite from those who hold the podium.
This is not to address the voting booth issue, which, as with any major current policy decision, seems to beg for explanation of the business connections and influence involved. An electronic voting system is a good idea and should be able to lower the margin of error. However, I strongly agree that there must exist an audit trail. We as a country lambasted Enron and Arthur Anderson for failing to have a sufficient audit trail to track their business dealings, yet we are ok with not having an audit trail for an election. What does the UN think about this being "free and fair."
It makes one feel the need to quote a conservative republican, Ronald Reagan: "trust but verify." Shouldnt this apply to our elections?