Reply #13: good point.

[read the law first]

About the only thing is the speed at which the data transfer is accomplished and the number of hacks that would be involved.

They pop these memory cards into stand alone accumulator machines, download the data from the card and pop them out. It takes about ten seconds per card. Now, it could be that in the downloading process the accumulator responds by corrupting the data on the card while it is being downloaded but wouldn't you have to have two hacked programs that happen on each of the accumulator machines? One to change the data as it comes in and then to change it on the card? And you would have to get to each of the machines in the tabulation center.

But then you also have the tapes that the machines printed out using the uncorrupted data before they left the precinct. These are usually posted at the precinct. We have people copy these numbers down before the memory cards ever even make it to the GEMS server, so if something changed at the GEMS server, we would know about it right away.

But I think your point is a valid one.