In my Inbox today was a plea from the Electronic Free Foundation (EFF)—a most worthy organization, by the way—for people to sign onto a petition asking for independent testing of e-voting machines. They want at least 10,000 signers.

On November 2, voting machines in many states - both "red" and "blue" - had problems that led thousands of citizens to call a national voter protection hotline. EFF and the Verified Voting Foundation (VVF) were at the other end of the line, and we are very worried about what we heard. In several states, voters who chose one presidential candidate were presented with confirmation screens that listed another candidate's name. In others, machines crashed and were rebooted repeatedly, but nobody knows whether votes were lost. And the list goes on.

There is no way to ensure that these problems are fixed until these machines are independently tested. But we need your help to do it. Election officials are already trying to sweep these problems under the rug. EFF has written eight detailed letters to the counties where these problems were most pronounced, and now it's time to turn up the public pressure. Add your voice to our petition, and when 10,000 people have signed it, we will deliver a copy to each of our target counties.

The petition is at http://www.eff.org/e-vote/petition.