Reaction to "Hacking Democracy"

Over the weekend I viewed HBO's new documentary Hacking Democracy, in which curious writer (and, they add, grandmother) Bev Harris wondered why her county moved to the use of electronic voting machines, especially after the 2000 presidental election voting debacle in Florida, in which Al Gore lost to George W. Bush after debatable electronic election results. The documentary is in result to her years-long survey/investigation into the problems inherent in voting machines.

At the core of the debate is the issue of public transparency in the voting process. Voting should be simple and explainable to the average U.S. citizen. Each of us has usable a social security number. Those without felony criminal records, and who are registered to vote, should have the ability to both vote and take with them a record of that vote, which can be tied to either their SSN or a created "pin number." In the state of Virginia, not only can day-of-election voters not vote with a paper ballot, they will not receive any record that shows who they voted for. When voters vote, they "sign in" at one table, receive a laminated voting card, and then move to the voting machine, in which they vote, but in which the machine has no idea who did the actual voting. This process seems rife for error.

This "anonymous" vote does not lead to tracing back of voters to votes. For some, this would be a reasonable process, but then there comes the issue with the machines themselves. We are not allowed the proprietary information on how the machines count votes. Not even the municipalities that purchase the machines know exactly how the machines tabulate votes. This, coupled with anonymous records, allows any company, or any programmer with access to the tabulating computer, the opportunity to manipulate an election. Consider the worldwide implications of this power, coupled with a minute amount of computer programming knowledge. Some think this is just conspiracy-theory thinking. But for those of us who care enough about democracy to partake in the process will find that cheating, in politics, is a common enough practice. At the heart of the matter is whether municipalities purchase these machines, knowing that the companies who sell them donate to particular political parties and have significant political agendas.

This is not a Democratic or Republicans-only issue. Both parties debate the use of these machines in certain counties (conveniently, where they've both lost elections before). For more information, I'd suggest reviewing BlackBoxVoting.org, a community created to investigate voting fraud on a major level, and the group focused on in the documentary.

References

BlackBoxVoting.org. (2006). The Official Black Box Voting Website. Accessed November 2 from BlackBoxVoting.org.

Simon Ardizzone and Russel Michaels, dirs (2006). Hacking Democracy. 90 min. Public Interest Pictures.