Ah, elections! It used to be a simple matter of filling out a ballot or pushing buttons on ancient, mechanical machines. Princeton's findings on Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines will make you long for those simpler times.

Insecurities and Inaccuracies of the Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H DRE Voting Machine - Center for Information Technology Policy, Princton University

It takes about 7 minutes, using simple tools, to replace the computer program in the AVC Advantage with a fraudulent program that cheats. We demonstrate this on the video.

Even when it's not hacked to deliberately steal votes, the AVC Advantage has a few user-interface flaws. Therefore, sometimes the AVC Advantage does not properly record the intent of the voter. All known voting technologies have imperfect user interfaces, although some are worse than others. The public should beware of the argument that some people make, that "we should not replace the AVC Advantage with voting method X, because X is imperfect." The AVC Advantage's susceptibility to installation of a fraudulent vote-counting program is far more than an imperfection: it is a fatal flaw.
[via Engadget.com]