I worked as a local election judge in November 2004. I saw hundreds upon hundreds of people show up at the polls, and I can't remember how many times we cleared the memory of those microship-implanted cards. All told, I think we did a pretty good job at making sure that people at least provided an ID before we let them vote. Could that checkpoint have been invalidated? Sure, but you'd have to do the following:
1) Change the computer printout of our list of names to allow voting at our facility.
2) Pose as someone else, and either hope or ensure the identity theft victim didn't show up first.
When all was said and done, we took each computer voting terminal and got a printout of votes for Bush/Kerry/other. We also had identification sheets of who was registered to vote. This sheet included their listed party affiliation. As a CYA measure, we compared the voting results with the list of people who voted and their party prefreence. The ratios in both cases leaned slightly towards Bush. Could that have been invalidated? Sure, but you'd have to tamper with the list of registered voters as well as the voting machines.
Now I'm still young (23) and don't really know how things worked back in the one-armed bandit days or with simple paper ballots. I'll agree that our voting machines aren't perfect. They're still subject to people in high places with an agenda. I'm convinced there always will be that possibility as long as Americans have the right to vote. At least now I don't have to worry about corrupt local election judges fixing the results to fit their personal prejudices.
