According to a new survey from Vlingo, a company that develops speech-recognition technology for mobile phones, 26 percent of its nationwide sample of 4,816 mobile phone users said they sent texts while driving. This despite laws against Driving While Texting in some seven states and some nasty DWT-related accidents. The states with the highest percentage of DWT drivers: Tennessee (42 percent), New Jersey (35 percent), Alabama (34), Idaho (33) and Oklahoma (31.7).

Ironically, 83 percent of the people surveyed said they feel texting while driving should be illegal.

“In just one year, the public conversation about the issue of DWT has escalated, particularly in the wake of some high-profile accidents,” Dave Grannan, chief executive of Vlingo, said in a statement. “Texting is such an integral component of our daily lives, and the cautionary tales about DWT danger have not stemmed the tide. We predicted last year that this problem would get worse, and it has since more people are texting. The good news is that many state legislatures are starting to take up this issue, and today more advanced technologies exist that can increase safety on the roads.”

My God, if one in four drivers admit to driving while texting, how many more were too ashamed to?

A man who reportedly believed Republicans were conspiring to steal today’s election entered an Allentown polling site, signed in and proceeded to smash the screen of one of the electronic voting machines with a metal cat paperweight, poll volunteers said.

‘He smashed it with the cat’s ears,’ said volunteer Jim Govostis.”

–Morning Call, Nov. 7, 2006

Fantastic. Here we are, just two weeks before the 2008 presidential election and the integrity and accuracy of some of the electronic voting machines that will determine its outcome are in question.

Again.

According to new research from the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy, the Sequoia AVC Advantage machines used throughout New Jersey and Louisiana, and in a few counties in Colorado, Virginia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as well, can be hacked in eight minutes to manipulate vote tallies.

From the Princeton report:

The AVC Advantage contains a computer. If someone installs a different computer program for that computer to run, it can deliberately add up the votes wrong. It’s easy to make a computer program that steals votes from one party’s candidates, and gives them to another, while taking care to make the total number of votes come out right. It’s easy to make this program take care to cheat only on election day when hundreds of ballots are cast, and not cheat when the machine is being tested for accuracy. This kind of fraudulent computer program can modify every electronic ‘audit trail’ in the computer. Without voter-verified paper ballots, it’s extremely hard to know whether a voting machine (such as the AVC Advantage) is running the right program.”

Damning allegations and ones which Sequoia categorically denied after unsuccessfully attempting to suppress them. According to Sequoia, its voting machines are vulnerable only in a classroom setting. In real-life election scenarios, they’re just fine. “…Simple, established, and previously used accuracy and security protections–removed from the Advantages studied in the report published by the plaintiffs–make the items in their report next to impossible,” Sequoia said in rebuttal to Princeton researchers’ claims. “In fact, many of the scenarios painted by plaintiffs depend on the existence of crooked, malicious, and corrupt pollworkers, while the success of some scenarios depends on both corrupt pollworkers and inattentive voters.”

How reassuring.

Well, at least they’re not switching votes between candidates like some of those touchscreen systems in West Virginia, right?

PREVIOUSLY:

• Got a “Verifiable Paper Trail” for Those Phantom Voters?
• Premier Continues Proud Tradition of Diebold E-Voting Screw-Ups
• Make the E-voting System’s Password “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8″? That’s so Obvious It’s Genius!
• Diebold: A New Beginning (to the First Step in E-Voting Terror)
• AccuVote? Bit of an Oxymoron, Don’t You Think?
• What Did You Expect? They All Run Windows…

[Image Credit: Diebold Variations]