A group of Princeton computer scientists has released a report critical of Diebold's latest AccuVote-TS electronic voting machine, continuing a steady drumbeat of criticism of the company and the machine that began as far back as 2004. The study comes only a day after blogger Avi Rubin penned a damning description of his most recent experience with the machine, prompting TechDirt to quip: "The only positive note in the piece is that many more voters complained about the use of e-voting machines."

While Rubin's critique focused largely on the procedural incompetence of Diebold, the Princeton researchers describe what they call "serious" technical shortcomings of the machines, noting that "an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates."

According to the Diebold web site, there are 130,000 Diebold machines in use around the country.

ArsTechnica provides a complete round-up of the Diebold affair, points out that "the state of California banned Diebold voting machines, and sued the company for machine-related fraud after flaws were found in the AccuVote-TSx machines used in a 2004 election." Ars says the continuing problems "may finally compel other states to do the same."

And we thought the end of hanging chads was near.