I'm not trying to be snarky: could someone explain to me why this is HN-worthy (or at least worth 609 points)? In an election with thousands of voting machines, the probability is high enough that at least a few of them will be defective in some way; it should be expected as far as I can tell.
Unsubstantiated rumors of vote tampering via technological means on election night is the ultimate link-bait? Seems pretty clear why it is worth so many points :)
If only the specifications of the hardware and source for the software for the machine in question were available for us to analyze....
