from xaxnar's comment on digby's blog

Why would you vote on a computer that can be rigged without detection? You wouldn’t. At least, you wouldn’t want to. But since 2000, argues Steven Freeman, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud and the Official Count, that is exactly what the people in 49 states have been doing—voting on machines that, with a simple software hack, can be seized and manipulated by anyone with brief access. These states have invested in computerized voting systems, operating on the proprietary software of private corporations. New York has until 2008 to decide if it will make the same investment.

and

“The history of exit polls, up until 2000, the big debate was that these things are too accurate. They let the press know who won the election before the polls closed,” he says, pointing as an example to the 1980 presidential race between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in which Carter conceded the race to Reagan based purely on the exit-poll results coming out of the western states.

Exit polls are also used in other countries for election-result-verification purposes, he points out. “But, all of a sudden, in 2004, they don’t work anymore.”

In 2004, where votes were counted by machine there was a 7-percent disparity between how the people said they voted in the exit polls and the official results.

“If people in fact voted as they said they did” in exit polling, he says, “George Bush did not win nationwide by three million votes, but rather lost by six million.”

In Ohio alone, there was a 12-percentage-point disparity. In states where votes were counted by hand, however, there was no disparity at all.

“Zero,” he says."

kinda reminds me of an old post

votes are [..] given, by voters, in a way that should be easily verifiable and auditable that doesn’t include proprietary source code running on uncertified machines with hazy chain-of-control data migration from the local polling place to where they are ultimately counted

and congress is doing what to verify the accuracy of the 2008 vote ??