Sherry Chandler

Hacking Democracy

Two readers have written now to point me toward this HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy, as a must-watch:

Electronic voting machines count about 87% of the votes cast in America today. But are they reliable? Are they safe from tampering? From a current congressional hearing to persistent media reports that suggest misuse of data and even outright fraud, concerns over the integrity of electronic voting are growing by the day. And if the voting process is not secure, neither is America’s democracy. The timely, cautionary documentary HACKING DEMOCRACY exposes gaping holes in the security of America’s electronic voting system.

In the 2000 presidential election, an electronic voting machine recorded minus 16,022 votes for Al Gore in Volusia County, Fla. While fraud was never proven, the faulty tally alerted computer scientists, politicians and everyday citizens to the very real possibility of computer hacking during elections.

If you’ve a long-time reader here, you know that I have been concerned about the reliability of our voting processes for some time. And the fun has already started with early voting in Florida, as in this report from the Miami Herald, dated October 28:

After a week of early voting, a handful of glitches with electronic voting machines have drawn the ire of voters, reassurances from elections supervisors — and a caution against the careless casting of ballots.

Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen — the final voting step.

Election officials say they aren’t aware of any serious voting issues. But in Broward County, for example, they don’t know how widespread the machine problems are because there’s no process for poll workers to quickly report minor issues and no central database of machine problems.

In Miami-Dade, incidents are logged and reported daily and recorded in a central database. Problem machines are shut down.

”In the past, Miami-Dade County would send someone to correct the machine on site,” said Lester Sola, county supervisor of elections. Now, he said, “We close the machine down and put a seal on it.”

Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.

That’s exactly the kind of problem that sends conspiracy theorists into high gear — especially in South Florida, where a history of problems at the polls have made voters particularly skittish.

A poll worker then helped Rudolf, but it took three tries to get it right, Reed said.

And then there’s this bit of testimony that I found at Have Coffee Will Write (I’m not sure where this testimony is taking place but I assume in Ohio somewhere The video shows Computer programmer Clinton Curtis as he testified at the December 13th, 2004 Congressional hearing in Columbus, Ohio ):

I don’t have access to HBO so I’d be grateful for any comments you all might want to post here about the documentary or about your own voting experience.

VOTE tomorrow! Watch out for your vote tomorrow.

And think about whether you might want to Video the Vote.

Related posts:

Please vote

Unsafe at any speed…

Protecting the Vote

On the ritual of voting

I cast my vote about 9 this morning.

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