It seems a little premature to declare a specific machine "hacked" since the testers had complete access to everything and will not report until tomorrow on how difficult it is to compromise a given make and model. The Hart machines have suffered far fewer incidents in real elections than the other brands, and I'm guessing they get the best grade of the machines that were tested.

It would be nice to have machines that earn an A+, but all these systems are built on top of a Windows OS, so they are constrained at about B- from the outset. Open-source, secure-OS systems do exist, but neither Greg Mackay nor any other election official in Tennessee had that option.

HAVA is a disgraceful piece of legislation. It could have mandated true voter security and verifiable, paper-traced results, but it just threw a lot of money around. That Democrats allowed such a dull bill to pass after having the Presidency stolen from them just proves how hapless they are. Katherine Harris' crimes would have been easier under HAVA.

I am concerned about what I read in the New York Times about this. I agree with Rikki, let's wait and hear the whole story.

The point I noticed is that the "hackers" had unlimited access to the voting machines.

Leave the keys in the ignition, leave the garage door open, close your eyes.
Guess what: Someone could steal your car.
Better not buy a car.

Bowen

"The mind is like a parachute, it only works when it's open."

Lots of people saw the Diebold source code. It was posted on blackboxvoting.org after Diebold left it sitting out on an open, unsecured public FTP server. It uses Microsoft Access as the database, which anyone with rudimentary Microsoft Office skills and access to the back end tabulating machine could alter ("hack") and leave no trace.

Avi Rubin at Johns Hopkins and a team of computer software and security experts studied the source code and found dozens of flaws. They concluded that "this voting system is unsuitable for use in a general election." Their report is here.

I'm not so much concerned about criminal insider fraud and hacking (although that is rightly a huge concern) as I am about system* failures that result in lost votes, such as almost occurred at the Downtown West early voting location in the last election, with no paper record that can be manually counted/recounted. (*"Systems" include the design, hardware, software, people, and procedures.)

I am concerned about what I read in the New York Times about this. I agree with Rikki, let's wait and hear the whole story.

Part of the whole story is found in a HBO documentary titled Hacking Democracy. (link...)

Before the next election, I hope this site along with others will use their polling options as a kind of exit poll. Since a paper trail seems possible for everything but a vote, last election I used my camera phone to take a picture of my voting machine screen for verification. If enough people followed this idea, when or if the proverbial caca does hit the fan, at least you could “prove” your vote.

Remember, since Lil George has stolen office, we have had two elections where the exit polling didn’t match the results.

I declared my protest against these machines from the very beginning. Not because of the "operating system", because no paper trail was provided. Most any electronic device can be hacked, if someone really feels the need.

We need need paper ballots with optical scanning voting machines or some similar voting method with a good paper trail. We need to get the mechanisms correct and then we only have left the "traditional" methods for voter disenfranchisement.