South Knox Bubba covers the Diebold touch screen voting machine situation in California and concludes:
Look, I’m a professional software developer with over 25 years experience. I work with the same technology used in these voting machines. I have seen some of the source code and database design. I have reviewed the Johns Hopkins study of the systems. There are problems. If an aeronautics engineer or experienced pilot told you there were problems with a particular aircraft’s design and that they wouldn’t fly on it, would you? It’s the same thing. And you don’t have to be an expert to know that a paper receipt and audit trail are just plain common sense.
Anyway, if you vote in a precinct that uses these machines I once again strongly encourage you to request a paper ballot.
Read the whole post and check out SKB’s earlier writings on the topic — he has them linked.
I did an IT security seminar two weeks ago with an engineer that tested the security of electronic voting machines. The good news is it only took them 5 minutes to change the election results.