Election watchers have said that paperless DRE system pose a special threat to the integrity of the elections because they offer no easy way for a post election audit of the results. More than half of all states are scheduled to use DRE's to varying extents next Tuesday. Seventeen of them use paperless DREs in at least some areas.

Concerns about DRE systems aren't restricted to one party. During the 2008 presidential election, at least 16 voters in six counties in West Virginia reported having their votes for Obama being switched to votes for Sen. John McCain, according to a report by Verified Voting earlier this year. In June 2011, during the Democratic primaries in New Jerseys Cumberland County, a paperless DRE system attributed votes to the wrong candidates and ended up declaring the actual losers as winners of the election, according to Verified Voting.

Although Republicans are raising questions now, both sides have weighed in on the issue of e-voting this year. Democrats recently questioned the propriety of .

Hart Intercivic is a voting machine manufacturer whose systems are set to be used widely in several states next week.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at , or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .