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I have never thought anything good of these things but find it galling to have to agree with my UF prof friend about anything. These things are dangerous to voting and are bad even if they are never compromised because it is impossible to convince everyone that they are safe and pure. There is no hardcopy evidence and tampering evidence is so ephemeral compared with tampering evidence when using punch cards or making marks on paper. No matter how earnest the assurances one can never be free of suspicions that these things can be hacked. When they were first described I thought of them as gifts to the big city political machines.

This puts me in mind of the gasoline price chicanery that happened around here a few years ago. Most of the pumps now are electronically controlled from a terminal in the store and a program circulated that allowed the prices to be altered progressively. The first 5 gallons was priced properly due to all the folks with 5 gallon outboard motor gas tanks who would be instantly aware when they put 6.5 gallons in their cans. Above 5 gallons the program can be set to deliver progressively smaller gallons. The beauty of it was that when the state guy drove up the clerk merely had to punch F12 or DEL and the pumps were instantly reset to be legal. I got so I bought no more than 5 gallons at a time or went to one of the few stations that still had mechanical readouts. That stuff went on for most of a year until the large number of people involved became its undoing as too many clerks and managers had too many beers and bragged. The perps were all stuck with $3000 fines which seems like it would be worth it. I am sure that the stations that participated made more than 3 grand on it.