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Watch for e-voting fiascos on Tuesday

E-voting is fraught with problems. This Tuesday should be an interesting test, although if there are problems with teh count, we have no way to verify the problems, since there is no paper trail. Look for more vague denials and obfuscation from Diebold and other manufacturers after Tuesday.

Millions of voters in 10 states will cast ballots on Tuesday in the single biggest test so far of new touchscreen voting machines that have been billed as one of the best answers to the Florida election debacle of 2000. But many computer security experts worry that the machines could allow democracy to be hacked.

Here in Georgia, along with Maryland and California, an estimated six million people will be using machines from Diebold Election Systems, which has been the focus of the biggest controversy.

Independent studies have found flaws in Diebold's system that researchers say might allow hackers or corrupt insiders to reprogram the touchscreens or computers that tally the votes, without leaving a trace.

Without a paper record of every vote or some other way to verify voters' choices after the fact, these experts warn, elections may lose the public's trust.

"People complain about hanging chads," said Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and a co-author of the first study that found security flaws in the Diebold machines. "But if an electronic machine has malicious code in it, it's possible that all of the chads are hanging

What can you do? Vote absentee. In Florida, it's legal even if you're not actually absent on election day, and it is the only way to ensure that your vote is counted accurately.