Republican victory, that is.

It seems that electronic voting machines in use in California (and no doubt other states) have one teensy-eensy little election integrity concern that heretofore had gone unreported: a little yellow button that allows multiple votes to be cast by anyone who knows of it (via Brad Blog):

“Just push the yellow button and you can vote as many times as you want,” Tom Courbat, an Election Integrity advocate from Riverside County, California informed The BRAD BLOG tonight. Not that we’re in any mood to report more such stories, but this seems to be a big one. A very big one.

It seems there’s a little yellow button on the back every touch-screen computer made by Sequoia Voting Systems, that allows any voter, or poll worker, or precinct inspector to set the system into “Manual Mode” allowing them to cast as many votes as they want.

Concerns about the flaw were first reported some thirty days ago to California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson’s office by Ron Watt, a Tehama County, CA precinct inspector who has been a poll worker in the county for the last fifteen years. And yet, as recently as a radio interview last Tuesday, McPherson — who has been crowing about having the country’s most stringent security process for voting systems — denied he was aware of any security issues with Sequoia systems.

“They didn’t care about it,” Watt told us tonight about his “late September or early October” discussion with McPherson’s voting systems chief Bruce McDannold. “He said he didn’t think it was an important issue. He said I don’t believe this is really a vulnerability.”

By the way, Bruce McPherson, Cali’s Secretary of State is a Republican. Just for the record. I can’t imagine why he’s not concerned about such an obvious security flaw, can you?

Sequoia’s voting machines are perhaps the most widely used in California, in some 19 different counties, including both Tehama and Riverside, which is known as the “Home of E-Voting” as it was the first county in the nation to deploy such systems. But identical Sequoia machines are also used in dozens of other states around the country including Florida, Illinois and elsewhere.

Thanks to the dilligence of Watt and Courbat, it is now confirmed that all such systems are completely vulnerable to virtually anybody who wishes to cast as many votes as they please.

“I can do it in 18 seconds,” says Watt. “I can train you to do it in 3 minutes. Just push the yellow button, wait 3 seconds and it chimes. Push the yellow button again, wait 3 seconds and it chimes again. Then it’s all on the screen prompts. You’re asked ‘Do you want to enter manual mode?’ and you push ‘Yes’…And then you’re on your way.”

Eighteen seconds to vote as much as you want? Why that’s — that’s as easy as stealing candy from a baby. Or an election from a Democrat.