More on black box voting and the state of Maryland's determination to go ahead with the Diebold machines despite the study released last week:

The push was championed by then-Secretary of State John T. Willis, who dismissed the Hopkins report as "technological hysteria."

"To say I can duplicate a Smart Card, sure, you can postulate all kinds of things, but there are so many checks and balances," he said. "I have 100 years of election data. If someone would try to monkey around precinct by precinct with the vote results, I'd know."

But not everyone is so sure. In 2001, four out of the five members of the technical group that was asked to recommend to the state which electronic voting system to buy instead recommended against buying any at all. The state ignored the advice.

"They didn't take us very seriously then," said Tom Iler, director of Information Technology for Baltimore County who served on the group. "I suppose it's not very surprising that they're not taking this study very seriously now."

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