Breaking news from Germanys constututional court (equivalent to SCOTUS) this morning: The judges ruled that the current brand of election computers which have been used on a small scale in several recent elections do not adequately ensure the transparency of the election and can therefore not be utilized any more. All elections have to be done with paper ballots for the foreseeable future.
This is a major victory for opponents of election computers in Germany and Europe (Italy and the Netherlands have also outlawed election computers in the recent past).
The computers in question did not produce a paper trail of any sort and were manufactured by Dutch company Nedap.
A highlight of the proceedings in front of the constitutional court was a video produced by Chaos Computer Club (CCC), a leading computer security advocacy group, which showed how easily the election computers used in germany could be hacked by simply changing out an EPROM chip that contains the software for tabulating votes. The hackers of CCC needed less than two minutes to open the machine exchange the EPROM and reseal the machine.
Litigants were two voters who had been forced to use the election computers in the federal elections in 2005. The result of the election was upheld by the court since no evidence of manipulation was presented.
Links to english language articles to follow...