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As it should. No better way to encourage voters than to give them e-voting machines that have been proven faulty.

Anyway, let's hope a well placed lawsuit or two can set them back on the right track.

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Finally, some federal guidelines for e-voting have been released. Of course, they're voluntary so we'll see if they actually do any good.

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I don't know what authority or notoriety this group has, but if you want to have a say in what their recommendations for e-voting guidelines are, now's your chance.

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I had no idea Diebold sold to the French. But seriously:

Philippe de Villiers, a nationalist Catholic candidate in the election, called it a "cheating machine" as he voted in his home town of Herbiers in western France.

Note that it doesn't actually say who makes the voting machines. Maybe it really was Diebold.

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In a smart move, the Phillipine government is asking hackers far and wide to break their system. In a move that's sure to provide a lot of free publicity and free security testing at worst, the Phillipines prove they can do the job much better then our guys.

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You may recall that Maryland was considering passing some laws requiring paper voting. According to the TrueVoteMD newsletter:

In the closing hours of the 2007 legislative session, a four-year effort to require paper ballots for Maryland's voting system passed the House and the Senate unanimously. ... The final bill ensures that any new voting system certified for use must include a voter verified paper ballot. The bill requires an optically scan-able paper ballot marked by hand or with the help of a ballot-marking device.

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So they're finally going to try and do something about the e-voting disaster.

HR 811 features several requirements that will warm the hearts of geek activists. It bans the use of computerized voting machines that lack a voter-verified paper trail. It mandates that the paper records be the authoritative source in any recounts, and requires prominent notices reminding voters to double-check the paper record before leaving the polling place. It mandates automatic audits of at least three percent of all votes cast to detect discrepancies between the paper and electronic records. It bans voting machines that contain wireless networking hardware and prohibits connecting voting machines to the Internet. Finally, it requires that the source code for e-voting machines be made publicly available.

There's not one thing in there that's wrong! If they actually implemented all those provisions, e-voting might actually work!

The proposal wasn't without its detractors, however. Several state election officials testified about the practical challenges of implementing the new requirements. Chris Nelson, South Dakota's secretary of state, warned that many of the requirements in the legislation would conflict with the states' own election procedures.

Cry me a river. "Oh it's too HARD to implement security! We need to have less restrictions so we can do this cheaper!"

The law allows flexibility in how some of the auditing is done as long as it's NIST approved and the states always have the option of keeping the optical current methods if they decide that the regulations for e-voting are too strict or too expensive to implement at this time.

Of course, this almost sounds too good to be true. I'll have to read the law later, but I'm betting it has some terrible hidden catch like it legalizes eating little puppies or provides millions of pork dollars for human RFID implantations.

Update: It looks like the guys over at Slashdot feel the same way I do.

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The Register reports that Diebold has hurt its relationship with customers and election officials with their pathetic voting machine fiasco.

Negative publicity about the voting machines - such as the HBO documentary Hacking Democracy - has cast a shadow over the 150-year old company, analysts say. Until its move into e-voting, the firm was better known for its safes and automated teller machines.

Which, of course, anyone would now question the ATMs as well. The article goes on to speculate that Diebold may try to sell off the division… if anyone would buy it.

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According to the newsletter from TrueVoteMD, a consumer rights group in maryland that opposes the auditless e-voting, there are two bills in the state senate that will require paper trails and adequate records of votes for Maryland.