Whoever said Republicans were incompetent? They’ve made elections really, really easy to steal:

Meanwhile, votes in about half of the 45 most competitive Congressional races, including contests in Florida, Georgia and Indiana, will be cast on electronic machines that provide no independent means of verification.

“In a close race, a machine error in one precinct could leave the results in doubt and the losing candidates won’t be able to get a recount,” said Warren Stewart, policy director for VoteTrustUSA, an advocacy group that has criticized electronic voting.

And there will be machine problems, if only because there aren’t enough technicians to run the machines:

In Maryland, Mississippi and Pennsylvania, a shortage of technicians has vendors for new machines soliciting applications for technical support workers on job Web sites like Monster.com. Ms. Oakley, who is also facing a shortage, raided the computer science department at the University of California, Davis, hiring 60 graduate students as troubleshooters.

Now, we know, thanks to the Princeton studies that the machines are vulnerable to ringer techs. And, with a shortage of technicians, it looks like the conditions are ideal for ringer techs to slip in.

So, all it takes is one ringer tech in a close district, and voila!

No standards. No control. No paper trail. No nothing. They don’t even need to crude weapon of Bush v. Gore anymore. Who says Republicans can’t learn and adapt?

NOTE Funny that the Times stenographer, never talks to the people who actually understand the technology. Only to people with opinions about the technology. Sigh.

NOTE And gosh, they could have talked to Brad, who’s really a reporter, not just a stenographer. As he points out, the editors—those darn liberal editors—softened the headline on this story from “Voting Chaos” to “Voting Woes”. Sigh, indeed.