30 September 2008  |  Links

Good Documentary

Dusty and I watched an awesome (and scary) documentary last night called “Hacking Democracy.” It’s about the problems with electronic voting machines. Apparently the companies that make them are very secretive, so NO ONE (not even senior election officials) is allowed to see how they work or look inside them. Add to that the fact that one company’s machines were hacked into in 10 seconds and it seems we have a problem.

The documentary follows Bev, a grandmother who, in her internet quest to find out more about electronic voting machines, stumbles upon the software code (including passwords and everything) of one of the biggest voting machine companies- Diebold. (Diebold admits that it was “regrettable” that their whole software code was available online for anyone to download.) As she delves deeper into the issue she finds some pretty disturbing stuff. Perhaps the most disturbing is the fact that someone could tamper with the memory cards for the machines (never even touching the machines themselves) and completely change the outcome of a vote with no electronic trace of ever having even been there. Pretty crazy stuff.

I wonder what kind of machines Colorado uses….

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