With exactly a week to go before the U.S. government presidential election, academics, politicians, and electors are voicing increased distrustfulness of the electronic voting machines that will be used to cast voting.

In former balloting in West Virginia, Texas, and Tennessee, electors utilizing e-voting machines made by Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software (ES&S) have reported the "flipping" of their vote from the presidential candidate they selected to the candidate's rival. In a few events, electors supposed their choice had been changed from Democrat Barack Obama to Republican John McCain while others reported just the opposite.

The reports propelled the Brennan Center for Justice and a group anticipated Verified Voting on Tuesday to write for voting officials in 16 states where the ES&S iVotronic machine is accustomed to be on the lookout for problems.

"There's a genuine opportunity that voters using iVotronic machines in your state will go through 'vote flopping' similar to that experienced by voters in West Virginia," the letter warned. It carried on recommending poll workers to recalibrate machines when in doubt, and when possible to confirm voters' candidate choices with a verified paper trail.

The vote alternating monitory comes on the heels of a 158-page report (PDF) computer scientists from Princeton University published two weeks ago warning of dangerous lacks in another commonly used e-voting machine. The Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H touch-screen voting machine, made by California-based Sequoia Voting Systems, is "easily hacked" in approximately seven minutes by substituting a single read-only memory chip or switching away a separate processor chip.

The determinations have motivated one candidate for the mayor of Bayonne, New Jersey, to enquire the state's secretary of state to supervise the town's municipal election.

The study was governed by a New Jersey jurist who's presiding over a lawsuit challenging the practice of e-voting machines in that state. Complainants in the case argue the machines don't meet election law requirements for accuracy. State officials counter that they cause.

ES&S has powerfully controverted (PDF) the report, telling the researchers, among additional things, improperly removed security system seals and hardware before carrying on their tests.

Even far from the country's heartland, there were still a lot of reports of botched e-voting. Republic of Finland's Ministry of Justice told Tuesday that about 2 percent of ballots cast in an election held Sunday could not be calculated because electors had not observed instructions. The machines, prepared by IT services group TietoEnator, required electors to press a button marked OK twice before removing a smart card from the machine terminal. Voters who failed to act so were unable to cast their ballots.

Tuija Brax, the country's justice minister, conveyed surprise at the snafu, telling Newsroom Finland the machines had been "tested, tested and tested again."