Cast a vote or flip a coin?

Exercise your most sacred right as a citizen, or just tap some screens and hope for the best -- how do you mean to spend Election Day? Not so fast, New Yorkers in precincts using Sequoia's ImageCast optical-scan vote tabulators. Kim Zetter's got a damning tale of gross tech incompetence as seen by those vetting New York State's recently acquired e-voting gear.

New York, as followers of the e-voting saga know, was the very last state to get their e-voting situation squared up with the requirements of HAVA (the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which mandated use of e-voting machines across the nation). The machines they eventually chose are sold by Sequoia -- you remember these guys, the sort-of-Venezuelans? -- and built by subcontractor Dominion (a Canadian outfit) and a New York-based sub-subcontractor called Jaco Electronics, which has been rushing since April to deliver 4,500 boxes for elections in September and November. And haste surely has made waste; inspectors report a 50 percent failure rate on machines delivered thus far.

Fifty percent. Fifty percent? If carmakers, computer manufacturers, or the guy who makes your morning coffee had a one-in-two chance of biffing the job, how fast would you kick that vehicle / PC / barista to the curb? Alas, not gonna happen here; there's legally no getting around HAVA's requirement that each precinct offer at least one of these machines to voters, and like most states NY is apt to have real problems finding the cash to do replacements even if they're needed. Zetter's writeup has a great wealth of detail, but honestly, if you're reading this from the Empire State, you may be more queasy than informed by the end of the piece. Which of course means you gotta do it anyway...