Guess what! Dishonest poll workers can falsify election returns!

It's really easy provided you have the keys to the machine, can write a virus to and can write to the Diebold memory cards. But, you've go to admit, there won't be any hanging, pregnant or otherwise misleading chads.

All in all, I still think this is superior to the cockamamie punchout ballots they were using in Florida.

Basically all this hype about stolen votes comes down to a bald accusation by the losers without any evidence other than their own feelings and exit polls to support it.

The truth is that any system can be gamed, if you put enough time and effort into it. Paper ballots aren't foolproof. Neither are voting machines. The new computerized voting terminals are no different. While the "demonstration" says a virus can be spread via these memory cards, I presume that anti-virus software can be distributed, perhaps even written by these experts at Princeton. If we ever discover that an election has been rigged on these machines, I predict that it will have been done by disgruntled Democrats who feel justified in doing so because they're convinced that they should have won the last one.

It would be a good idea to know your poll workers and object to party insiders being appointed to any job that requires trust. Good luck with that. In the meantime, we'll have to trust the people we hire to give us honest vote tallies. As long as we have two parties watching each other with suspicion, I think we're about as safe as we'll ever get. One thing I would not allow is these goofy recounts where one party, knowing how many votes they need to tip the scales can dig up homeless people and voters without histories, as the Democrats did in the Washington State governor's election in 2004. In the end it was really decided by -- surprise! -- the courts.