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Diebold disputes the accuracy, integrity and plausibility of the Princeton study, pointing out that Felten's team used an old machine with two-year-old software not in use today. Plus, the team had four months to figure it all out.

"The report all but ignores physical security and election procedures," says Mark Radke, marketing director of Diebold Election Systems. "Every local jurisdiction secures its voting machines - every voting machine, not just electronic machines. Electronic machines are secured with security tape and numbered security seals that would reveal any sign of tampering."

Therein lies the rub, says Michael Shamos, a computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has been testing election equipment since 1980.

"Diebold doesn't fully get it about security," he says. "Their position every time somebody raises the prospect of insider manipulation of elections is, 'Are you telling me you think that these election officials would commit a felony?' And the answer is, 'Yes, that's what we're saying. They might commit a felony, and what is your system doing to prevent them?'"

Even so, Shamos doesn't completely buy the Princeton study. "What Felten found wasn't a bug in the software," he says. "It was a deliberate feature that comes from the need to be able to update the machines quickly."

Felten, he says, makes it seem like anyone with a memory card could go into a Diebold machine, root around and swing an election. Shamos points out that since the machines aren't networked, a virus would have to be tailored to the ballot and inserted into each machine one wanted to manipulate. That's a lot more work - and a lot more opportunities to screw up - than it looks like on video.

A national rollout of almost any product is bound to have glitches. But when elections depend upon the product in a country whose politics are scarred by distrust, there is little tolerance for error.

The problem critics had with the early touch-screen systems was the lack of a tangible way - such as the kind of receipt consumers get at ATM machines - to verify results. (Oddly, few made this complaint about lever machines.)