Just watched a fantastic documentary on HBO, “Hacking Democracy.” It’s about how the electronic voting machines that have been used for the last several years are not secure, how vote totals can easily be manipulated, and how companies like Diebold — with multi-million dollar contracts — are not doing their job in making sure that our votes, the most essential part of democracy, are tabulated correctly.
“Hacking Democracy” will make you think twice about that touch-screen or optical scanner you think is registering your vote — particularly after you see the Hursti Hack, in which a Finnish computer expert manages to change votes right under the watchful eye of one Florida elections supervisor, by changing the code on one of the Diebold memory cards used in the machine.
The documentary is based on the work of Bev Harris, who started the grassroots organization BlackBoxVoting.org after finding discrepancies in both local and national elections — and complaints from both Republican and Democratic candidates and supporters. With so many of these machines about to be used again, Bev was on my show this afternoon to talk about whether these security holes have been plugged, or we’re in for another round of problems.
Listen to our conversation here.