These guys aren’t exactly Rabid Lambs:

y Thomas Ferraro 2 hours, 27 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The nation’s three most commonly purchased electronic voting machines are all vulnerable to fraud, a study released on Tuesday found.

The study also concluded, however, that steps could be taken to reduce the chances of hackers breaking into these systems and undermining the integrity of state and national elections.

They could be. But who’s making that happen? Anyone? Beuller?

“These machines are vulnerable to attack. That’s the bad news,” said Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School.

“The good news is that we know how to reduce the risks and the solutions are within reach,” Waldman said.

Which is why I’m so glad that Congress has authorized your task force to immediately begin implementing the fixes.

The Brennan Center Task Force on Voting System Security, an initiative of the Brennan Center, conducted the study, which it called the most comprehensive study of electronic voting machines to date.

Brad who? Black Box what? More than half a decade of blogging on…what’s that again?

Larry Norden, chairman of the task force of government and private scientists, voting machine experts and security officials said about 80 percent of voters will vote on one of these electronic systems in November mid-term elections.

But really, we shouldn’t worry. 80% isn’t a signficant number at all, and they’ll all be fixed in time for the elections, I’m sure.

Norden said he hopes the study will prompt states and Congress to begin mandating that security measures recommended by the task force be part of the protocol for every county in the United States.

“I’ve got hiiiigh hopes, that’s right it’s hiiigh hopes…”

Rep. Rush Holt (news, bio, voting record), a New Jersey Democrat who has introduced legislation to upgrade security for electronic voting machines, arranged to attend a news conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday where the report was to be released.

Holt’s bill has 192 cosponsors, most of them fellow Democrats, an aide said. He introduced the bill last year and it remained unclear whether Congress would enact it into law.

Because it’s “unclear” that the Republican party has utterly refused to sign on in the over four years Holt’s been agitating for a simple paper trail.

The measure would require all voting machines to produce a paper record voters could inspect to check the accuracy of their votes and election officials could use to verify votes in the event of a computer malfunction or other irregularity.

“Anything of value should be auditable,” said Holt.

“Votes are valuable, and each voter should have the knowledge and the confidence that his or her vote was recorded and counted as intended.”

Forgive the snark, but this kind of language always makes me a little crazy. “Look, we’re serious academics. You should listen to us! Bipartisanship, democracy, America is good!”

The simple fact is that we lack, as a nation, the political will to take steps on this problem before the elections. As Brad has been busy demonstrating, even when totally busted, our election officials would rather clap their hands over their ears and sing “la la la, I can’t hear you!” than take concrete steps to address the problem. If I’m being very cynical today, it’s because I can’t help but wonder where all these Sober, Serious minded Legalists were…oh, say four fucking years ago, when there was plenty of evidence about security flaws and plenty of people saying that we should do something about it. But we’re just the unwashed masses, so of course we had to wait until the Important People complete a comprehensive study and made the matter legitimate.

Whatever. I’m in one of those moods today, and I’m tired of playing Cassandra. You’ll get the “democracy” you deserve, America. Exactly the kind that reflects your willingness to fight for it.