I corresponded today with a PhD student at Princeton working with a team of computer scientists to examine the efficacy of the new electronic voting machines. From the category of “Couldn’t Possibly be Made Up”, J. Alex Halderman writes:

The AccuVote TS machines -- all of them -- really can be opened by a key that is widely used for hotel mini-bars.

Here’s the research study that Alex and his team worked on regaring the Diebold machines. In addition to the paper there is a written response by the team to Diebold claims of incompetence and faulty analysis. The team also recorded a video that’s now on YouTube of how easy it is to hack the Diebold machines.

So, here’s an update on the state of our democracy for those of you scoring at home:

The possibility that hacking voting machines as become a given in many places, as ArsTechnica has noted.

States like Arizona, Ohio and Georgia are trying their darndest to institute new voter identification laws to squelch voter fraud that doesn’t exist. In the last ten years there have been only four (!) instances of voter fraud documented in Arizona. For more info, see Election Online's helpful state-by-state breakdown of voter identification requirements.

The primary elections in Montgomery County, MD this past September were surprisingly close, perhaps resulting from new electronic machines that were not opened on time because the election official with the key didn’t report to work.

And here’s another great one from yesterday’s Washington Post:

U.S. Senate candidate James Webb's last name has been cut off on part of the electronic ballot used by voters in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville because of a computer glitch that also affects other candidates with long names, city officials said yesterday.

We are focused on the mechanics of voting like never before, and the results so far don’t bode well for Election Day. But, we’ll hold our noses, cross our fingers, and hopefully vote in large numbers that create decisive victories for one side or another.

<!-- technorati tags start -->

Tags: Diebold, election

<!-- technorati tags end -->