[AFreeBird]

A hard drive, though, gives the same number back every time and there is little room to wiggle or lie.

LOL.. Well, that all depends on the tools you have at your disposal and how the system is set up. As mentioned in the article:

To security practitioners, the use of a fixed, unchangeable encryption key and the blind acceptance of every software update offered on removable storage are rookie mistakes...

The bad guys don’t care whether you use encryption; they care whether they can read and modify your data. They don’t care whether your door has a lock on it; they care whether they can get it open. The checkbox approach to security works in press releases, but it doesn’t work in the field.

It sounds like there are some issues with the system. And issues can and will lead to problems, and problems can and will lead to major headaches.

I wonder what bit level their encryption keys are; 16 bit? ;-/

[DBrow]

Sounds like it is easier to swap a carton of paper ballots than it is to have a geek pick a lock, swap a card, override the encryption by knowing what sector to change and what to change it to (keeping the CRC, tally, and parity check the same for each machine) and leave the system with no sign of tampering. This would have to be done to a number of machines and coordinated at a high level.

The article deliberately makes it seem easy to do in theory.

As for problems, sure, as long as the wrong party wins there will be howls of protest and people marching in the street burning things and lawyers plotting per diem rates. Good thing Mexico avoided that by using paper ballots! Or ask the runner-up in the Washington governor's race about paper ballots, or perhaps look at the Milwaukee primary results.