Cool stuff. Nice to see red states taking on a new meaning. :)

ironic that NV is 100% electronic.

voting machines are basically just slot machines right? the only difference is you dont know if your vote won until days/hours later.

"ironic that NV is 100% electronic."

I wouldn't exactly call it ironic. Amusingly coincidental, perhaps. Besides, Nevada's system is among the best in the country - it's uniform statewide, and each touchscreen machine features a paper trail, verifiable by the voter before casting the ballot. It's a joy to use, frankly. And audits of past elections using the paper trail have shown it to be accurate.

The hackability index seems a bit dubious:

1. It doesn't take into account whether the states perform manual audits of voter-verified paper records after every election. That has a major impact on "hackability". In general, procedures and people play a significant role.

2. I know of no reason to consider, for instance, punch cards less "hackable" than opscan systems. Moreover opscan systems, if properly audited, are arguably less "hackable" than lever machines: there are known attacks on lever machines that cannot be detected or recovered from after the fact, whereas with proper auditing and procedures, optically scanned paper ballots can be quite secure against "hacking".

State like Oregon and Washington have hand recounts of Optical ballots. Seems like that should shade them differently than states that do not.

What happened to Wisconsin? There are a number of packer fans unaccounted for...

In real democratic countries we use paper voting and various scrutineers to ensure security. the only reason to use computer to vote is to make the voting hackeable.

Your country is the joke of the world :)

Hmmm. I don't see an Acorn index on any of this.

Is there any significance to letting more voters than are acceptable into the booths? How about dead voters.

you gonna let mickey mouse steal this election? no it's not the republicans.

Oh come on Mephitis. Do you honestly not understand the difference between Voter Registration Fraud and Voter Fraud? REALLY?

If someone submits a "Mickey Mouse" registration THAT DOESN'T MEAN MICKEY MOUSE IS GOING TO COME OUT OF THE CARTOONS AND CAST A BALLOT! It has no effect of any kind whatsoever on the actual election. None. At all. NONE. There are virtually no cases in the history of our Democracy of fake voter registrations leading to fake voting. Because how could it??? If you register a fake person, THEY DON'T EXIST. They CAN'T VOTE.

http://wvgazette.com/News/200810180251 <-- two counties in West VA have reported votes switching candidates.

Interesting how they use Electronic and optical there, huh?

Take a camera into the voting booth to take screenshots or better yet a video camera to record the whole voting process. It is sad that the so-called progress of the electronic age is proving to show how much we should be adhering to the safety measures of yesteryear... paper all the way!

I don't know what planet you're on, but where I live, Mickey Mouse is a fictional character who can't vote. As Symphy said, there is a major difference between voter REGISTRATION fraud and vote fraud. There's also "voter suppression," which the Republican party is already up to its elbows in.

Electronic voting systems should be open source. We cannot leave something this important up to the whim of a corporation. They can build and sell the device, but the code on which it operates needs to be clearly defined and auditable by EVERYONE. No more election day patches!

People who don't understand technology, should not be posting about it.
Go to google.video.com and check out "Hacking Democracy" - come back, then make some more intelligent posts.

I used to think our voting machines were bizarre rube-goldberg-esque antiques, but I'm seriously glad to see that New York is at the forefront of voting security with our old rackety mechanic voting machines. Help America Vote my ass.

Ohio should be a bit darker orange. It has almost half machines that are electronic. And I agree with EURO. We are a joke to the rest of the world. I'd like to move but I don't have enough money. Living pay check to pay check in the land of the free.

You don't really think our votes will count this election, do you?

nimrods there are videos how to hack these machines and what you need to worry about is not the registered voters but rather whos doing the counting...or not counting as was the case in florida in 2000 as far as the acorn buisness its funded on both sides and unless you can prove either candidate had personal knowledge of fraud AND took money (yes it only matters if both of those things happen) then its a non-issue let Barack be president Mccain does more good in the senate anyway...

this site is a ridiculous over-simplification. all electronic machines lumped into one category; no mention at all of the most important factor: competent people running the elections!

Gosh, over 40 various methods to vote in the USA. Wow, no wonder there's widespread voter fraud. How about using a single and simple system countrywide?

PS: What's the purpose of the so-called security code if you can't read it?

I live in the second most corrupt state in the union (we are gunning for YOU Louisiana!) and I was recently at a party in the most corrupt city in that state, where, I kid you not, people were bragging about how many times they vote in any one election. If anyone thinks voter fraud does not exist, you are seriously, seriously niave. And to somehow distinguish between voter registration fraud and voter fraud is absurd. If I register both as myself, and as the late Bob Jones in another preceinct - yes, I then vote twice. Once as me, once as the late Bob Jones.

It would be nice if each individual vote actually meant something, but, as everyone knows, the people of the United States do not elect the President, that right is reserved for the electorial college, heaven forbid that an important vote like that be left to the general population, LOL!!!

There is also a trail of who's who developing. Steven Spoonamore has named names. Investigations are ongoing. Interesting that Diebold sold off the voting machine division. If Diebold ATM's were this unreliable, no on would use them. We need to vote on paper, that can be confirmed by the voter, and verified in a hand recount if necessary. There is nothing in a voting machine that needs to be proprietary. It's fairly simple software. Trusting the lifeblood of democracy to a private company is suicidal.

Democracy itself is a joke. By definition, half the electorate has an IQ less than 100. Have you ever met someone with an IQ less than 100? Do you seriously want them making decisions that affect your life? There's a reason the framers of the Constitution wanted the electoral college deciding who would be president and not the American people. There's also a reason why electors for most states were not decided by popular vote until the 1820's. And finally, they did not want the Congress to be completely determined by popular election, so initially Senators were chosen by the state legislatures and not by popular vote. There was a clear pattern of wanting a republic and not a democracy, isolating the government as much as possible from the whims of the "rabble" while still allowing for the citizenry to feel like they have some influence. I for one agree wholeheartedly with that approach and think we've gone much too far in the wrong direction.

There has never been a proven case of widespread technological voter fraud in the U.S. - TRY WATCHING "HACKING DEMOCRACY" - you'll see it is already sadly true.

Over 7,000 more votes were made in Milwaukee in 2004 than there were registered votors for that particular election.

In the districts where this occured a review of the registrations found THOUSANDS of identities that listed dead people, addresses that did not exist (parks, public buildings, a police station, numbers between actual addresses, addresses that were in the middle of local waterways and Lake Michigan.

Registrations were discovered for dozens of seniors in several care facilities who were in vegitative states at the time of the election.

It was the first major ACORN election in Milwaukee.

The best part of the story was that the lady Milwaukee hired to head their election commission for '04 had just gotten out of jail for FELONY ELECTION FRAUD (she was caught bribing homeless people with cigarettes to vote for Democrats).

It's been at least a decade since we had a fair election in Wisconsin.

I think all voting is b.s.It can and will be hacked into. I do not trust or beleave the gov anymore.I have a lot more to say on the matter. But i ratter keep that to myself.

Sorry folks but if DVICE thinks there isn't any case of machine hacking they should check out -
blackboxvoting.org

It's not only the machines but the RNC is doing everything they can to remove first time voters from the rolls. Over one million in New York state and over 100,000 in Colorado so far. The majority of these people are have registered as Democrats. Beginning to see the dirty work here folks? We have to take our voting away from the private corporations (the ones build and program the machines) and turn it back to the government and the people.

Determining hackability by machine type is such a gross oversimplification! I grew up in Louisiana where my parents voted on ancient lever machines--and we know no elections fraud *ever* occurred in Louisiana!
I suppose it depends on what you mean by hack, if you limit the term to mean hacking by computer, sure, you can't hack a lever machine; but if by hack you mean sabotage the results, lever machines are easily subverted, just like rolling back an odometer.
On the other hand, while optical scan machines can be hacked, they scan paper ballots, which means there is an auditable paper trail. That's the most important thing--if you have don't have a paper trail you cannot do a recount. If you have a paper trail you can always challenge and revisit.
Oh, and if you'll recall, the issue in Florida wasn't fraud or hacking, but poor ballot design that confused voters. I used to vote on punched cards back in Texas, and as long as the layout was good it wasn't too bad. But it is a system that makes it harder to see an entire race if there are lots of candidates (as there usually are in the presidential election), and it can be difficult to line up candidates with the holes to punch. In that case, even when you have a paper trail (the punched cards), it can be difficult to determine voter intent (hanging chad, anyone?). Good ballot design is the other important factor in having a reliable election.

I hate to say this but think about when clinton shut down the government for 6 months the country got along just fine with out it. Look who we have stumbling for the presidency a retard and a old timer. Lets try again in 4 years cant be any worse.

Thank you to all the fellow tech heads who realize that the machine is simply part of a process. As a polling place manager in Washoe County, Nevada (in addition to being its webmaster), I am intimately familiar with the entire process, and you will find it very secure. In Nevada, you know your vote is counted and you know it's accurate. No hanging chads- you would have to be amazingly obtuse to make an error on the ballot.

Voter fraud only happens in Democrat strongholds where the people are stupid or criminal enough for it to occur. But in this election where we have a liberal running against a marxist it really won't make any difference who wins, they both suck!

Well I skipped most of all these posts because some of the first few were written by people who watch democratic news stations and thus only receive information that makes them(democrats) look good and everything they do wrong "never happened".

In a lot of states BY LAW they can register AND vote on the same day... In fact they go in to vote, register right there, and then walk over to a booth and vote. People CAN and DO make fake ID's, thus it is very easy to commit voter fraud. And these states that allow you to register and vote in the same day also have next to no penalty for committing voter fraud, thus making it even more enticing for people to commit voter fraud.

These systems are electronic, thus very easy to manipulate and hack into. The systems have been shown for quite awhile now and the programming for them has been out to let people create malware (any malicious program) for them. They should have been kept secret until election day to prevent part of the voter fraud... but that's the government for ya, always thinking THEY know what's best.

Don't forget the central tabulators that are hackable and made by these same companies that do not merit out trust.

To register and vote on the same day is descrimination against all us honest voters,who had to register and waith 45 days to vote. Definately not fair.

Why should should all of a sudden people be given preferential treatment just because of who is running for president?

Everyone is always want to be treated equally aos make it truly fair and treat all treat everyone the same make them wait like me.

If you aren't concerned about this then you've not caught Hacking Democracy being shown on HBO lately. It's a British-made documentary that caught my attention despite my aversion to anything that smacks of conspiracy theory paranoia. It's well made and fascinating...and scary. Quite a well researched foray into the 2000/2004 election voting issues with pretty damning information about the electronic machine companies (e.g. Diebold), the destruction of backup materials in states with questionable voting patterns and ties to political parties. Worth anyone's time to see what they have to present.

Compared to the ACORN debacle this nothing!!

Just another attempt by the messiah maniacs at NBC to raise another spectre of a right wing conspiracy!!

In Nevada, those not registered can vote a provisional paper ballot. That vote is not counted until the person's identity is verified.

As to hacking devices. All election processes are subject to fraud. The moment you place your vote in someone else's hands for delivery, the potential exists. Nothing to stop a corrupt official from dumping ballot boxes in the river and replacing them, either. With enough time and opportunity, you can hack a vote machine. In Nevada, at least, you simply aren't provided with either the time or the opportunity to do so.

SAD N'ANGRY: I'm not sure why you're making this into a partisan issue. If a machine can be hacked, anyone can do it. Someone trying to influence the election in favor of a Democrat, or someone trying to influence the election in favor of a Republican.

This isn't a partisan issue, this is making sure one of our most basic rights is protected.

These machines CAN be hacked into. Princeton University did a study on how easy it is to do on Diebold machines (now known as Premier Election Solutions) here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZws98jw67g

To Organizm
You have obviously not been paying any attention to the fact that every story receiving play time on the NBC affiliates has partisan influence.

I don't discount the potential for hacking but distribution of machines across many precincts etc limits the potential impact of any conspiracy except for "networked" equipment which are not actually used at this point.

What I am complaining about is that NBC gives priority to this type of story to raise concerns of less technical people while they don't even report the stories about hundreds of thousands of fraudulent voter registrations which are clearly attempting to influence voter turnout. ACORN has been doing this now for at least four national elections. Questions?

Elections should be settled by a good, old-fashioned, hand-to-hand, fight! It's the best way to know for sure who the best man (or woman!) is.

The privilege to rule the greatest land in the world should be worth fighting for!!!!

I would think a better sci-fi title would be "Turning Out the Dead". Oh wait, that was done with the old paper ballots for Kennedy and Johnson.

No voting system is perfect, it all comes down to how vigilient your Election Administrator is.

As a graduate student studying Information Assurance (InfoSec) we recently analyzed the vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems based on their cryptography and network architectures and I can assure you that voter fraud by hacking is very plausible.

Luckily, neither the Sci-Fi Channel, nor 99.99% of y'all have anything to do with the security of our presidential voting systems.

Some will be rigged, some always have been, whether by hacking, stuffing or just plain lying. Most will be honest, and so only in a very close election does it become an issue (see the last two presidential elections for details).

Again luckily, this presidential election will not be close except in a very few states. The Democratic ticket will win by well over 100, perhaps as many as 200 electoral votes. Then you can go back to focusing your considerable brainpower on the latest episodes of "Ghost Hunters" and "ECW"

This whole thing is silly. The voting machines are hooked to no external network. They are watched closely at the polls. There is no electronic access available to them. Physical access is limited. For this to be realistic, poll-workers and registrars etc. would have to be in on the fraud. If those people are in on it, it doesn't matter what type of voting machine or ballot. This is senseless fear mongering. ANYTHING can be tampered with if the custodians are in on the tampering. Do any of you honestly think that you are going to get enough access to a machine to mess with it? Do you think there is going to be a usb port and a full user os for the hacking? Why am I wasting my time when you have INFOSEC and ORGANIZM to guide you!!

For our area there are no paper trails to audit. My vote only went into the computer system. Last night on TV we watched a program showing how easily they were hacked, and I believe it was Harvard who verified that it was possible. The show had a hacker modify a memory card, nothing was done to the machine, only the card the voter puts in, and it took 8 no and 2 yes votes and reported one no and 9 yes. The girls voting cried. Real tears. No one was in on the fraud exc the one guy swapping the card before it was inserted.

Hacking Democracy on HBO was the name of the show documenting exactly how easily it could be done and who checked their findings and found them to be accurate. Showed 10/28 if you want to find and watch it.

Only 63% of voting machines accounted for in Wisconsin. Whats the rest?

Some of the information for my state (North Carolina) is incorrect. Many of the machine models listed are not in use in ANY county in NC. For example, Accuvotes and Sequoia machines are not being used at all. That's 100% certain...the article is therfore misleading.

This is really cool, it makes you wonder that's for sure. Maybe next year, they'll let you cast your note from your Xbox 360 lol!

Hey, If you don't like this system go live with euro the slacker!

if you dont like it we can change it just takes time and effort..dont complain this is modern democracy...

The Best way to MINIMIZE fraud it to get more people to legitimately and sincerely vote. This way, a LOT more fraud would be required to influence the results in any meaningful way. I was handed a card that I took to the machine, which printed out a paper trail afterward for verification. I then handed the card back to the voting official. It was a well lit room with many people all over the place, hacking it would have been nearly impossible. Complaining that our system isn't perfect is such a waste of time and energy, and will discourage people from making their voices heard. By all means let's improve the system if we can, but don't forget that in some countries you "vote" at the end of a gun barrel or have no right to vote at all...

ID LIKE TO SEE A PIC OF THE MACH

Really this is all hooey. PRESIDENTS ASE NOT ELECTED BY POPULAR VOTE. Sorry to burst your bubbles, but voting machines, ultimately, are irrelevant. Our vote does not effect who is elected. EV, not PV, is what chooses our president. It's a shame, but true.

Seriously, how much smoke can you blow. We are not a true democracy, we don't elect our own president. It's all about the senators and the Electoral College.

Didn't anyone notice that Obama won by a landslide in the electoral vote, but the popular vote (us) was almost 50/50?

Polltech, you are WAY off-base to say concerns about electronic voting are silly. I suggest you do some homework on the "man-in-the-middle" architecture, which was reportedly employed by Kenneth Blackwell's Ohio office in 2004, where machine control was routed to some obscure office in another state (and for NO good reason). Also, check out what Stephen Spoonamore has to say, and go download the full, UN-redacted version of the SAIC report on Diebold machines, THEN see what you think about voting in this country. Yes, we need verification and accountability, too, but right now, things are NOT under control. Do you think it's a problem for the Chair of one candidate's election campaign to control the entire election in a given state?! Hello! Think we also ought to try to allocate voting machines that actually work to areas where they're needed, so people won't get discouraged and go on to work after waiting MANY HOURS in line? Uh, YEAH! We need some FUNDAMENTAL changes, folks. Finally (except, unfortunately, NOT), claiming software is proprietary, when used for such a critical public purpose is - say it together, people - WRONG! Please, PLEASE, folks, it is our RESPONSIBILITY in a representative democracy to pay SOME kind of attention, and to TRY to discern the TRUTH, ISN'T IT? We've got to find SOME way of working around the conservative corporate media, because THEY'RE NOT DOING THE JOB WE NEED THEM TO DO, to keep democracy on track.

It's worth mentioning that paper-based voting only works well in mature stable democracies. I'd have no confidence in paper-based voting if I was living in a quasi-dictatorship, whereas the U.S., Ireland and other democratic countries have a good record for finding and dealing with flaws in electronic voting as they happen. Discovering flaws before they happen would require more sophistication in systems design, such as the use of formal mathematical models.