[NoneOfTheAbove]

Have you ever opened the back of an old-style voting machine? I have. It doesn't take "removing ten screws..." to reset the numbers and little more to advance the counter by a few hundred votes. All it takes to manipulate a punch card is a judge to rule on what a hanging chad is; or even easier, to modify the gain in the photocell of a punch card reader to ignore some of the votes in a certain precinct.

I write software for scanner systems. Modifying the software to ignore some votes, or to slip them into another column is trivial, and oh by the way, the software for them is on ROM chips in sockets or even better, on removable memory.

Modern voting machines are no less secure than any system that we've had in the past--it's all HYPE to instill doubt in our electoral system.

If I believed in conspiracies, I'd believe that the hype is to make it easier to install a "benevolent" socialist dictator, or to further the idea that only the "ruling class" were qualified and honest enough to vote. But that's not me. I believe that all the hype is because global warming is allowing more x-rays to penetrate the atmosphere and is frying the brains of Princeton Professors.

[lifelong_republican]

Actually, the electronic systems are less reliable and less secure than paper ballots, as determined by computer scientists who were expecting to confirm the converse. This is reported in a "National Geographic" article on the subject:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/11/1101_041101_election_voting.html