If you ever needed more evidence, here is a video from 2000 about voting machines and counting from a computer programmer that testified in front of a Florida Congressional hearing. A Computer Programmer testifies that Tom Feeney (Speaker of the House of Florida at the time) tried to pay him to rig election vote counts.
YouTube Link to the video here, since I can not embed it in this blog.
The following was stated in another column and it bears to be repeated.
I will state this again. I am about as qualified as one could be to make the following statement.
Electronic voting systems are extremely easy to hack, cheat, rig, corrupt, or any other word you choose to use to state they cannot be trusted.
With degrees in both electronics engineering and computer engineering I understand how every electron flows inside these machines, between these machines, the devices entered into these machines, all of the seven layers of communications which connect them together and to the centers which tally the vote by whichever method they choose. I state with extreme confidence that there is absolutely no way to make electronic voting safe from the cheaters. Anyone that tries to tell you otherwise is either stupid or a liar, Americans must engage their legislature at the local level and insist that the electronic voting machines be backed up by serialized paper ballots with all the voting choices by the voter listed and an encrypted hash code (encryption based partly on the serial number) that identifies all the votes placed. The voter can check accuracy before depositing in a lock box. The voter must also receive a paper copy of his or her vote which contains the serial number of the ballot and the unique, private, untraceable hash code that can later be used by the voter to certify their vote was counted accurately in the system. By going later to a central database the voter can anonymously supply the serial number and hash code to check to ensure their vote was accurately counted. Paper trails are necessary to track any issues. The hashes will prove the voter is not making up any claims. Anything less than this system will be completely useless and unreliable. For general consumption, this is a somewhat simplified description of the overall method I propose. Of course, there would be a lot more complexity underlying this system.
A simple paper trail has been proven to be rather useless as we saw in the case where thousands of paper ballots had been tossed in a dumpster. We need a system where where all votes are accounted for and accurately tallied.
Current electronic voting is a sham as has been proven in numerous tests and testified to in hearings. You can find most of these in YouTube videos like these.