The Denver Post ran a story yesterday about the annual meeting of the International Association of Clerks, Recorders, Election Officials and Treasurers. Not what you might think would be a very interesting group, but the hot topic there is the lack of security of electronic voting machines.
"What we know is that the machines can't be trusted. It's an unlocked bank vault ..., a disaster waiting to happen," said David Dill, a Stanford University computer science professor who has prompted more than 110 fellow scientists to sign a petition calling for more accountability in voting technology.
The article also quotes some who don't think voting machine security is a problem.
"It's fear-mongering by a few people who want to go back to the 19th century-way of voting," Adams County Clerk and Recorder Carol Snyder said.
and
Doran added that there have been no reports of tampering or defrauding computerized election systems in Colorado.
"Nobody has brought any evidence to us so we're not considering it a problem," she said.
Like Glenn Reynolds, when chosing between the scientists and the bureaucrats I'll take the scientists. It's laughable that anyone would say there's no problem because no one's complained yet. The core problem is that fraudulent operation of these machines would be undetectable, so of course no one has any evidence!
Those of us who have a healthy skepticism of government and politics realize that if election fraud is possible, then election fraud will happen.
Talkleft is following the issue as well.