Technology, namely the Internet, has had a tremendous impact on the 2008 presidential election.

Ron Paul supporters used the web to make him a phenom among young voters of a particular political persuasion. Barack Obama has perfected the art of political fundraising over the Internet. He could raise $100 million in June alone by bringing up to 3 million new individual donors under his electronic tent.

Obama is also reported to have set up “a crack team of cybernauts” to form a “rapid response internet ‘war room‘ to track and respond aggressively to online rumours that Barack Obama is unpatriotic and a Muslim,” reports the Times of London.

And anyone who watched the debates and the drawn out concession pageant staged by Hillary Clinton will forever think of her as a dot.com brand, given how often she repeated her web site url.

Not to be left out of the web craze, John McCain joked yesterday that vetting vice presidential candidates was as simple as Googling them. Or was he joking?

And let’s not even mention John King’s Magic Map.

The big looming question is, can technology come to the rescue in November and make sure all votes are counted? Or will the hanging chad(s) of 2000 or some other fresh dimple haunt the process this fall?

The National Science Foundation is putting some dollars into improving electronic voting systems, at least for the long term. The $7.5 million project, called A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections (ACCURATE), began in 2005 and involves a team of computer scientists and other academic researchers from around the country. The goal: improve the security and reliability of computerized voting systems.

Among the group’s initial findings: It’s not just about improved electronic security. A more holistic approach is needed to understand how computers, touch screens and other technologies are interrelated in elections, according to an NSF statement issued today. Now various researchers in the project are studying issues from system-level concerns to the role of cryptology in voting security to designing voter verification systems and relating election policies to new technologies.

One new thing the created is AttackDog, a computer program that looks at more than 9,000 potential ways a voting system can be hacked or tampered with. The idea is that you need computers to analyze computers. “It’s using computers to get a grip on problems that are too complex for the mind to understand unaided,” said David Dill of Stanford University.

From the NSF: Ion Sancho, Supervisor of Elections in Leon County, Fla., describes the program as “very useful,” and says that it has already lead to at least a dozen changes in the way his office approaches election security. “I learned a great deal.”

The ACCURATE team is now working on building a voting system prototype whose security can be easily verified. It would then be made available to election machine manufacturers and elections officials. No word yet on whether it’ll help determine our next president.

• Quiz: Bizarre Presidential Elections