Even computer chips themselves could harbor a time bomb in their built-in microcode. Other voting methods aren't flawless. Lever machines can be pried open, and paper-ballot boxes can be stuffed. But tampering with them on a nationwide scale would be a formidable task. Programmers like to talk about making systems scalable, or easy to extend.
Scalability can help a Web store serving thousands of customers eventually cater to millions.
But a computer bug in the wrong place could undermine a national election. But no matter how good the encryption, you still need to worry about how the information could be altered or misread before and after it is encoded. She's also a trained classical guitarist and has long been active in local politics. She has served as a Democratic committeewoman in Pennsylvania, and more recently in central New Jersey where she now resides. In 1989 her interests in technology and activism merged when Bucks County, Pa., considered buying electronic voting devices.