The procedures and equipment used in U.S. elections are determined largely by the individual states, and in some cases, individual counties within those states.

They get some federal funding, but there's very little federal oversight. Every election I've voted in (all in CA) used paper ballots. However, I've voted in 2 different counties, and they each used different ballots.

With that said, one would assume that if there was some conspiracy to use electronic voting machines to rig an election, it would be a little more subtle than changing the box that appears on the screen. Like most government blunders, incompetence is a more likely explanation than malice.


-- Edited by john31584 at 22:18, 2008-10-28

john31584 wrote:

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Also, figuring out exactly what goes on with these machines is sometimes difficult, since the source code for the software is often protected by trade secrets law.

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 the next hurdle is to force diebold to prove that its voting data are valid