Electronic voting machines; they're what's wrong this week.

They leave no paper trail. They are in some cases stored for weeks at a time in the private homes of voting officials, in closets and on garage floors. The software written for them, which could theoretically allow election-fixing, is kept by the companies that make them. They lack some of the basic defences against viruses and tampering built into a video-game console like the X-Box 360. Why are they used at all? The reasoning seems to be that they are supposed to help senior citizens and non-english speakers, like the ones that caused the issues in Florida in 2000, vote more easily.

Of course, there's truly no reason they couldn't be modified to print out a ballot, naming the candidate you voted for, that you could put into the ballot box just like a traditional vote, but for some reason the companies that produce the machines, one of whom, Sequoia, has recently come under fire for being a subsidiary of a Venezuelan company, have not done so, nor have our evidently not-so-elected officials demanded it of these companies.

It is truly ludicrous that anyone could feel comfortable about an election without a paper-trail! There's no clear or easy way to audit these machines, that we use them at all is completely insane, and there are so many loose ends involved in the use of these machines that it is truly frightening to hear that a third of votes, more than enough to change the outcome of an election, are made on E-Voting machines.

The companies, along with whoever owns these companies, could tamper with the outcome, the candidates could temper with the outcome, anyone with a crowbar to break into the house of a voting official could steal one, even someone carrying a blackberry or PSP could seriously change the course of a major election.

In the Georgia governatorial race in '02 Republican Sonny Perdue beat tremendously popular Democrat Roy Barnes to become the first Republican governor of Georgia in 130 years. Diebold voting machines were used. The machines' codes were changed right before the election, and there have been many questions raised and un-answered, about what happened during the period when the machines were left un-protected as the codes were changed, and why they were changed.

This issue can safely be tacked onto a list of policies enacted by this government that are tremendously questionable (such as the USA PATRIOT Act, the formation of the Homeland Security Agency, our various "Free-Trade" agreements and now this Signing Statement issue) and the rammifications of which will most likely not be known for years.