alt Hacker NewsControl. If you can centralize all voting results in a single place you can control distribution of them. If you are the only entity able to read the results then everyone else has to take your word for it.
Paper ballots with physical marks are easy to track and recount. Digital paper trails are ephemeral. Whom does this benefit? The people counting the ballots.
As the article notes, the Swiss do both. The normal system is a paper ballot based system. This was for secure e-voting for those unable to use paper ballots.
The separate question, of why people are obsessed with it - implicitly in the United States - is a separate question.
sonofhans - to reply to your follow up here, I mostly agree with you. But I would soften it to say it is a tool that can be used for good or bad ends, and I felt the Swiss were using it more towards good ends. But I agreed that the ability to misuse it is intrinsic.