[The following was written by Bryan Preston and originally appeared here. It is reprinted with permission of the author]

Super Tuesday Insecurity
By Bryan Preston

Maryland is one of the Super Tuesday states, so I voted this morning in the GOP primary.

Maryland has adopted the Diebold electronic touch-screen voting machine across the state. This was my first experience with the machines, and I don't like them. They just don't seem secure.

When you walk into the polling place, the poll workers ask you who you are, verify your address, the usual drill. At no time do they ask for proof of identification, because that's against state law. It would be no great chore to register multiple times in multiple jurisdictions, and it would be no great chore to have others register and then show up at the polls and vote for them. Elderly shut-ins are particularly vulnerable to this kind of scheme. It would, in other words, be no great chore to cheat the system, but I digress. Maryland is what it is, and there isn't much I can do to change it.

When they find you on the list and check your party registration, they sort through a box of cards, pull out yours and hand it to you so you can verify that the information on it is correct. Mine was fine to the letter, so I signed it as instructed. Then the poll worker gave me a plastic card the size of a credit card and told me to walk over to a machine and vote.

The place was pretty much empty, so I had the run of the machines. I picked one and fiddled with it until I figured out that you're supposed to take that plastic card and put it all the way into the slot on the machine until it clicks in. Since they made the card the same size as an ATM card, and since the slot on the Diebold looks a little like the slot on an ATM-capable gas pump, it looks for all the world like you're supposed to swipe the card instead of inserting it fully.

Whatever.

So I figure it out, get the card in there and start voting. That part is very, very easy. You touch the box next to the name of the person you want to vote for, and when you're done with a page you hit "Next" and go to the next page to select more names. When you're completely done, you hit "Cast Ballot" and the machine looks like it's thinking, then you hear a click and the plastic card is popped and ready for you to remove it. That's it. You've voted, or at least you believe you've voted.

The problem is, you get no paper record of how you voted. No receipt comes out, so you can't walk away with anything in your hands that shows how or even whether you actually voted. And I couldn't see any security mechanism that would stop poll workers from casting votes for absentees when no one is around--well, other than the fact that some are supposed to be Republicans and some are supposed to be Democrats and therefore they're supposed to serve as a check on each other. But what if there is a strong third-party challenge? It's not unthinkable that the two major parties could collude and block the third party using these electronic machines and their lack of verifiable output. It's very disturbing. What if the machine misregistered my votes? I have no way of detecting error, and therefore no recourse.

Look, I don't trust elected officials of either party to play completely fair. Power is an intoxicating potion, and the temptation to hold on to it at all costs is too much for some to resist. These Diebold machines may well be the most secure invention in the world, but they don't seem like it. They seem all too easy to manipulate, and they seem like the perfect vehicle to hijack elections and further erode democracy.

MORE: I'm probably creating some sort of feedback loop by linking back to a post that links directly to this one, but new stories about insecure electronic voting machines seem to pouring into InstaPundit. This one echoes my own distrust of these things:

I'm an undergraduate in a large Georgia university, which also happens to be the place I vote at election time. Although I have been a casual follower of the voting security debate, I now find myself in a unique position. A sitting position. More precisely, sitting 10 feet away from a stack of 10 unguarded electronic voting machines. Despite having been here for for 120 minutes (and taking a conspicuous number of photos), I have yet to see any security presence, or anyone associated with these machines at all.

Read the whole thing. It's a hair-raiser.

MORE: I pass on these two quotes without much comment:

In several software and hardware tests, critics have shown it's easy to jam microchip-embedded smart cards into machines, or alter and delete some votes — in some cases simply by ripping out wires. They've cracked passwords to gain access to computer servers and showed that some systems relying on Microsoft Windows lacked up-to-date security patches that should have been downloaded from the Internet.

All insecurity roads lead back to Bill Gates, I guess.

Computer experts told Maryland lawmakers in January that the hardware contained "vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious individuals." Among their surprises: all of Maryland's machines had two identical locks, which could be opened by any one of 32,000 keys or be easily picked.

Makes you feel safe and secure about your vote, doesn't it?

MORE: Mike from California writes:

I'm in California, and we seem to be having a few problems as well.

Not all counties use the machines - it's a big expense (as you know,
California's a little short of cash these days).

There's a relatively simple safeguard: require any company supplying
electronic voting machines to be ISO 9000 sertified.

In a nutshell, this organization certifies companies and documents that
they follow accepted standards, in all steps of their processes.

I've looked at the Diebold website, and they don't mention it. If they
were certified, you can bet that would be right up front.

It's a long and difficult process - not something you can get for a
suitcase full of money.

It may be that there are no ISO 9000 certified election system
companies. If that's the case, governments should take the position
that as soon as there are, then we'll start looking.

Mike relates that his company is ISO certified and couldn't bid for gov't contracts otherwise (to understand what ISO certification means, click here). I used to work for a major gov't contractor that was similarly certified. He brings up a good point--did state and local governments make sure that serious attention was being paid to sufficient standards when these machines were being manufactured? If so, fine, I'm a little more at ease about this, though I'd like to see some proof. But if not, why not?

[Bryan Preston maintains the Junkyard Blog weblog]