Here's a failed story I posted to slashdot:
Dan Dillane of Stanford, along with famous CS luminaries Leiserson, Rivest, Schneier, and many others, have signed a petition urging caution on implementing new computerized voting machine technologies. They are currently seeking YOUR help in maximizing the number of "technologists" (CS, EE) on this petition.
These new machines are currently being phased in across the country, all of them commercial black box machines with no verifiable paper trail. Many of these machines were used in the last election, resulting in reports from election workers and even voting machine engineers themselves of inconsistencies and security flaws. Sen. Charles Hagel of Nebraska, winner of one of his state's biggest upsets, was recently revealed as being a former CEO of a voting machine company.
A good resource for more information is BlackBoxVoting.com. Of course open source would be the best model for development for these machines, but these things at least need to be fully disclosed and issue a paper receipt! Sign the petition now!