The Florida panel designated to investigate the mystery of 18,000 undervotes in the 13th Congressional District found no malfunctions in the DRE voting machines used in the 2006 midterm election. However, the state refused to hand over the machine's software and hardware for testing and inspection by the losing Democratic candidate who has filed a petition in the US House to reject the election results and a civil law suit. A voter protection group called the state audit a "whitewash" conducted by people with a stake in the outcome.
The state investigation also did not convince Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that the bizarre results were accurate. She asked GAO, the Government Accountability Office, to conduct a "top down" investigation of those machines and others. She also wants printers that produce paper records to be tested. There have been reports of printer failures that have spoiled as much as 10% of paper records. (Cuyohoga County, Ohio). One reason DREs may be causing large undervotes is simply that the machines intimidate voters not comfortable with using computers. When New Mexico switched to paper ballots in the 2006 election undervotes in predominately Hispanic and Native precincts plummeted.
No where in the Constitution does it say you have to be rocket scientist in order to vote. These machines are turning out to be the 21st century's version of a literacy test. Its time we just stop this game of electronic hide and seek with our votes and return to well designed paper ballots until the electronic voting machine industry can conclusively prove that its machines operate transparently, accurately, and reliably at a 95% level of confidence. If they cannot meet that standard, they have no business selling the machines to under trained state and county election officials.