Let me start off by saying I don't think there has been any widespread fraud with evoting, let alone some sort of GOP conspiracy that makes Diebold part of their national strategy.

But, I think there are some significant concerns with current machines -- whichever side might want to do the tampering.

In the recent San Diego election, for example, poll workers were given the machines days ahead of time, and kept them in their personal possession. In some cases, they were left unattended in the volunteers' cars. The machines were not rechecked or audited on election day. Given that those Diebold machines can be reprogrammed -- as in uploading a new version of the software -- by simply inserting a USB flash drive into a slot, that's pretty insecure. The SD County elections supervisor told a reporter who asked about that situation that leaving them unattended in private autos was secure enough. When asked about what would prevent poll workers themselves from tampering, the supervisor thumped his chest about how he doubted anyone who would volunteer to be a poll worker could have such low moral standards. They'd be committing a crime, after all!

There is of course supposed to be "security tape" over the update port, but there were multiple documented cases in SD of that tape not being present -- the USB port was open and waiting while people were alone in the booth with the machine.

Are you sure about "all of them" having records soon? I know some states are headed that way, but plenty are not.

It wouldnt take much to write better software and spend a few bucks on more physically secure machines. Working in a government environment and seeing what utter and complete SHIT we get sold by IT vendors, I have no problem beleiving the low quality is due to incompetence and a "so what" attitude on the part of govt procument offices rather than intentional, but I'd still feel better if a voting machine were even 1/10th as secure as an ATM.