For some reason, DOJ is suing New York to force them to install any one of the extremely hackable e-voting systems before the 2006 midterms under the "Help American Vote Act." Let's not ask why. Just focus on this paragraph buried deep in the article:

The lawsuit notes that the state has yet to publish the rules governing how the database should be compiled. Nor has it begun seeking contractors to create the list, or established the technical requirements for the list.

Seems to me that's an opening for the open source community to write software that we know counts our votes accurately, because we can look under the hood.

Read on for more on the state of play in New York:

Robert Brehm, a spokesman for the Board of Elections, said that the board believes it can have an interim voter database up and running by July or August, and have the final database ready in the beginning of 2007.

Civic groups, which have complained for years that New York was moving too slowly, are now concerned that the federal lawsuit will rush the state into adopting a flawed voting system. "The rotten H.A.V.A. implementation process on the state level shouldn't be mirrored by a rotten judicial enforcement process at the federal level trying to impose a solution on New York," said Neal Rosenstein, the government coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group.