In a paper published on the Web today, a group of Princeton computer scientists said they created demonstration vote-stealing software that can be installed within a minute on a common electronic voting machine. The software can fraudulently change vote counts without being detected.
[WS:] This is not exactly news. This has been hotly debated in MD, which implemented Diebold machines with rather disastrous results
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/elections/bal-te.md.voting14sep14,0,531450. story?coll=bal-home-headlines
I think, however, that the vilification technology is a red herring.
First, electoral fraud has been around for a while even with paper votes - multiple votes, dead people voting, disqualifying certain votes, buying votes, etc. In fact, these types of fraud are easier to implement by paper ballots, which do not allow for instant checks of voter's identity etc.
Second, what really matters in fraud prevention is not technology, but human supervision. As, the Baltimore Sun piece quoted above clearly indicates, it is human incompetence not technology that was behind the failure. It seems to follow a familiar pattern.
Third, in the US the most scandalous thing is not what is illegal, but what is legal. The illegal electoral fraud is small potatoes comparing to perfectly legal methods of vote manipulation - from media appeals that money can buy (which is still in the grey zone), to gerrymandering which serves no other purpose but subversion of democracy i.e. disfranchisement of certain groups and enhancing the power of others beyond the one person one vote principle.
I think that the brouhaha about voting technology simply diverts public attention from the more serious structural faults of the US electoral system.
BTW, the last primary was the first time I did not bother to vote since becoming a US citizen. I figured that it does not really matter. Not because that there are no differences between candidates, but because the system is structurally rigged, and even if it were not, the general tenor of the US population is solidly on the right. Therefore, the differences among candidates, even if real, do not really matter - it is really rearranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic.
Wojtek