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Hacking Democracy

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I stumbled upon this documentary when it was first aired on HBO, I was spellbound by the amount of evidence this film produces which PROVES, that our election process is so corrupt that those in power can choose whomever pleases THEIR INTERESTS. Add to this mountain of proof the testimony of Clinton Curtis in Ohio 2004. In his testimony the panel asks him "are there programs that can be secretly used to fix elections?" answer, "Yes", "How do you know this to be the case?", answer "Because in October of 2000 I wrote a prototype for Congressman Tom Finney at the company I worked for in Florida that did just that." "And when you say did just that, it could rig an election?" answer, "It would flip the vote 51-49". This story needs to be the headline of every paper in the United States, if our elections are not free of corruption then how can we expect ANY LEVEL of Government to be working in the best interests of the American people. Investigate 911.

This movie is a must see for every American. You need to see how secetive the companies are that make the electronic voting machines and how easily they are hacked. This is the most informative movie you will ever see about the machines we entrust with our democracy. And most telling is when they hack a machine in minutes and change the outcome of a mock election. You must see this!

Was George W. Bush ever legitimately elected president? The answer, according to many, is no. Whether they are correct, the fact that there is so much distrust in elections is a serious problem, even if the elections were completely legitimate. That legitimacy and the perception of illegitimacy are at the heart of "Hacking Democracy" and represent the consuming passion of Bev Harris, the center of the film and author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century. Harris, as the film shows, is obsessed with voting rights, especially when it comes to computer voting.

This issue should be non-partisan. Americans should be concerned about the accuracy of the vote regardless of their party affiliation. Unfortunately, the film, perhaps for reasons of recent history, seems to portray Democrats as the victims of Republicans' machinations. In particular, the film suggests strongly that President George W. Bush's two elections were the result of voter[...], not of actual votes, first in Florida and then in New Mexico and Ohio. I suspect that today's highly polarized zeitgeist might lead those who lean right to dismiss the film while those who lean left to endorse it uncritically. If I'm right, then it's a shame since the issue really is vital to the country.

Bev Harris, from the film's depiction, is a concerned citizen who stumbled across a mistake when she was doing an Internet search. Concerned about Diebold, which makes, programs, and sells electronic voting machines, she happened to find an ftp site that the company had neglected to remove from the Web. She downloaded over dozens of hours all sorts of files, including code to earlier versions of the voting programs. She allowed experts to look at the code, and they found serious flaws.

However, Harris did more than just download codes. She went through the trash of various organizations, including a local government in Florida, finding all sorts of things, including (the film would have us believe) evidence of illegality in Florida. She also oversaw the hacking of a Diebold data card in what the film claims is proof that machines can be hacked. (The scene, it must be admitted, is impressive. Eight people vote in a pseudo-election, and the machine reports the results incorrectly. A 6-2 vote turns into a 7-1 vote the other way.)

"Hacking Democracy" is a gripping film, one that seems to strive for neutrality. There is one scene with a Republican candidate who noticed and videotaped an electronic malfunction. There is also a passing reference Republican objections to the voting machines in some states. Nonetheless, the focus on the two elections of 2000 and 2004 leaves the film with an apparent, if not actual, partisan bias. Even so, the film is more than compelling. It is frightening. Whether President Bush was duly elected once, twice, or never is beyond the point of the film, at least for me. The fact is that many parts of the country have entrusted elections to machines that are not sufficiently trustworthy, and more and more, the mechanisms of vote counting are hidden from nearly everyone. All we know is that people vote, the votes go into the proverbial black box, and then a result comes out.

This is not to say that the machines are inaccurate. The film stops short of actually saying that any particular election was "stolen," but the point that an election COULD be stolen is made abundantly clear. Therein lies a serious problem.

"Hacking Democracy" is at its weakest when it goes off on tangents that question the problems in Ohio and Florida. This is not to say that there were no problems; of course there were. Any human enterprise on the scale of a national election is going to have problems. However, "Hacking Democracy" seems to fail to appreciate this point. Thus, a mention of intolerably long lines at some Ohio precincts is present apparently to add information to the evidence against the Ohio election. But this parenthetical mention is not entirely fair; it is, as presented, more innuendo than substantive fact.

"Hacking Democracy" is, by contrast, at its strongest when it focuses on Harris, her fellow crusaders, and their struggles against a huge corporation. At the heart of the movie is a David versus Goliath story about a few individuals who take on a large, apparently corrupt corporation and, amazingly, come out ahead quite a few times. This human element seems to be missing from the film, which seems instead to want to rely on Harris's grandmotherly qualities to engender the viewer's sympathy.

Still, "Hacking Democracy" is a vitally important film. Its message, however imperfect the delivery, is one that should be heard. Even if the charges in the film are incorrect (and I understand that Diebold vigorously denies most of them), it is vital that the country protect faith in the system, and the film offers a convincing argument that transparency is the most important step.

Many of the revelations brought forth in Hacking Democracy probably would have seemed crazy if I hadn't been living in Florida when it all happened. During the 2002 election the computer voting machines forced me to write in a third party candidate that was supposed to be a choice. If I got one letter wrong in his name, the vote would not have counted. In 2004 I personally witnessed machines that would not accept a Presidential vote for John Kerry, each time the vote registered for Bush. In addition were the endless stories of problems in heavily democratic districts, most of which never made it onto the news. The media appeared to be ovewhelmed by the stories and had to pick the ones that seemed most credible.

Ultimately I was able to confirm much about how the Florida elections were manipulated. Bev Harris was a public figure showing what so many others were discovering on their own. In the end I wrote a novel called Purple State full of stories about what I witnessed. It was made more credible by the work that Bev has done with her organization Black Box Voting. Her efforts and this movie are invaluable to the integrity of our democracy.

I first heard Bev Harris ( the chief Star, by "acclamation," of this film, and called by Time Magazine the "Godmother" of voting reform ) on AM radio, a national broadcast, at the start of 2004. And that revelatory and long interview (4 hours) she gave on the overwhelming evidence of electronic fraud in our elections persuaded me to devote much of my time during the last three years to election fraud investigation and commentaries (such as this review of a GREAT film). That also launched my own involvement as journalist and radio guest in this fight to restore our democracy, including invitations to discuss this at length on broadcasts on the East Coast, and many postings at the think tanks that have sprung up to address this incredibly dangerous threat to the very basis of our public life and government.

It has since been proven, as if there were ever really any question, that electronic voting is impossible to protect from hackers, especially those who have the most access to the machines: voting officials and voting machine vendors and their employees. Add to this the eerie and vast presence of the CIA, NSA, FBI and many other covert agencies behind the scenes in the counting of our vote, which can be easily documented beyond a "shadow" of a doubt, and you have a full blown catastrophe. Such is what many of us believe has happened. We currently have no way of knowing what has occured in the casting and counting of electronic votes. I made my views public several years ago that I also believed optical scan machines, which have been counting our votes since the early 1980s, are just as impossible to secure, and as easy to rig. Unbelievably easy. In fact, they seemed designed to rig. The clear conclusion of all this is that we really have no way of knowing what the results of our elections have been for over a quarter of a century at least. The greatest payoff in this truly outstanding and crucially important film ( as in "must see for every American," if not all other world citizens as well ) was what they saved for last, the best: that Harri Hursti performed a hack of an optical scan machine at the film's end under Florida Voting Supervisor Ion Sancho's supervision ( previously interviewed by Bill Moyers on PBS "NOW" at the beginning of August 2004 ) and complete rig of a vote, he reversed the results of winner and loser in the most easy and quite shocking way, in just a few moments ~~ before, as Bev Harris has since written, "Bip, bip, bip, we could even get our camera equipment set up." It was done that easily.

People and my fellow American viewers: watch this film, and then help us return to a procedure of voting that is dependent upon the people of this country, its citizens, and not "experts." Return to hand counting paper ballots, and then posting the results in plain view of the public at the precinct level, on the doors or walls of the polls themselves. And don't close the polls until the results are counted, re-counted to match, and posted on the premises, the same night. If poll workers are not available, they can be easily drafted, randomly, and paid for the day's work. The most important day's work, the most important job, in the country. Obviously a job that is currently more "important," certainly more relevant, than the presidency itself....

Computers have many benefits to offer us: counting our votes clandestinely is NOT one of them.

Over 75% of the world's democracies cast and count votes on hard copy, paper. And they make sure the counts match. WE, on the other hand, while lecturing all the world on the supremacy of our democracy, only "audit" TWO PER CENT of our votes, if that. Ever. What does that smell like, to you. This movie investigates all of these shocking gaps in security, and leaves you to decide whether or not we're getting our votes heisted electronically (and/or otherwise) by parties known or unknown..... And it leaves a simple conclusion: vote on hard copy, paper, and count in public, with full disclosure. Most importantly, at the precinct itself, posting them for public view, so that the chain of custody of the votes can NOT be hacked, somewhere higher up the chain. Only posting vote totals for all to see in the local neighborhood, polls, will establish what really has taken place, before any opportunities to alter vote totals, elsewhere. This is the key priority of them all, and something that cannot be achieved on machines: totally de-centralizing and disclosing vote results and totals at their point of origin, not elsewhere with opportunities for theft and fraud, but ONLY in the locale of each poll. Anyplace else is an open door for fraud......

If anyone tells you this is somehow outlandish, beware of a vested interest. Hand counting paper ballots is how Canada does it. Germany does it. In fact, MOST countries do it. Dan Rather even has reported that we are now outsourcing our voting "technology" to the Philippines with no thought of security or quality control, a staggering fiasco. And guess what, since 1999: THEY now do it: on paper.

Is this what has happened to our democracy? The Filipinos themselves were targets of such electronic fraud, and their case in one election went to their Supreme Court. Result? They now hand count paper ballots.

When our very gravely, greatly rigged 2000 election, with memory cards stolen in Florida (one was substituted that gave Gore a MINUS 16,000 votes, in Volusia County, documented, and just enough to put his "well-known" rival over the top) went to OUR Supreme Court (Bush vs. Gore), the Supremes, unlike their better behaved counterparts in the Philippines, awarded an unverified and wholly illegally processed election to our current illegal "pResident."

Whatever party you belong to, or don't, we must ALL understand that it is unacceptable to select presidents in such an obscure manner. What's sauce for the goose, the gander too, and next time it may be not be the other guy's candidate, but yours....

WE the PEOPLE are constitutionally empowered to decide that, not criminals and illegally ensconced Supreme Court judges ( if the "presidents" that appointed them were illegally sworn in, then so were these court appointees, am I right? ).

It is nothing less than shadow anarchy, where these decisions are made by people whose faces we will never see and identify. It is an occult process, voting by machine, without citizen oversight, and MUST be stopped.

Watch this movie, and then tell me if you can come up with any other, or better, solution than to hand count, and recount, paper ballots marked with indelible ink, and posted in plain view of a watchful public.

I'm all ears while waiting for any and all answers. If you come to the conclusion I have, then just perhaps your children, and their children's children's kids, just for starters, will thank you......

Meanwhile, your House of Representatives in DC is contemplating a bill known as HR 811 that will put machines in to stay, and wipe out what remains, truly, of our voting rights. That's because powerful lobbies such as Microsoft and Diebold and ES&S, and other such criminal interests, are banging on their doors and rewriting it, and trying to write computerized voting and utterly secret counting into permanent law. Watch the film, and let your representatives know your outrage and what a Zogby Poll discovered last August, 2006: that over 92% of Americans polled said they wanted a system of voting where citizens could see and verify themselves the results of OUR elections...... One of the highest results ever recorded in a major American poll.

The clock is ticking on our freedoms and their very survival. Find out what's happening, really happening, by watching this priceless documentary, and then please, for all our sakes, shout it out.

We, too, will thank you.

This film is excellent in showing how smart grassroots research and
investigation can reveal conspiracist agendas of the ulra conservative
right wing through voter machine tampering. It is amazing to see how the
arrogance of the corporations & political parties involved left enough rope so to speak, unbeknowngst to themselves, to hang themselves.


It is heartbreaking to see how trusting and gullible we have been about
our right to vote and how merciless and unethical these conspirators are
willing to be in abusing that trust. This film pointed up the fact that
our democracy is eroding away due to lack of morals and ethics on the
one hand and fear plus incredulity on the part of ordinary citizens. This
film shatters the illusions of safety in voting at the ballot box but it
also gave me hope by witnessing the courage and perseverance of a few
ordinary citizens to ensure that our votes are counted correctly.

This is a sobering look at what happens after you cast your vote. The many goofy election results that have occurred in the past decade should make all voters demand more accountability from election officials. The shocked election official in this documentary drove that point home in a rather dramatic fashion when challenged by the team. Congratulations to Bev Davis for leading her group to question, step-by-step, the reliability of our voting machines and those who administer the voting process -- one of the most basic tenants of citizenship in our country. The viewer's jaw will drop at the outrageous claims of the voting machine makers and election officials who are brought into the daylight for examination by these determined citizens - and now by us.

I am an extreme left-leaning Democract. Frankly, I'm more Socialist than anything else, at least on many issues. Like many in the party, I was entirely inked that the Bush Bunch managed to steal the Florida elections. I kept referring to him as "The Pretender-in-Chief" for most of his first term.

When the 2004 elections happened, they were messy and foul, but I assumed that at least, sucky though the results were from my point of view, Bush had won legitimately.

Then I saw this film.

Wow.

You know, if even a small amount of what's presented in this movie is true, we have a major problem on our hands. I suspect a lot more than a small amount is true, which makes it even worse.

Ultimately in our democracy we have to trust our elections, even if we can't trust anything else. Given how easy it appeared to be for the Finnish hacker to get into the system, and the comments from the Diebold executive about making sure Ohio would go for Bush, and a number of other things in the movie, I've come to the conclusion that we cannot trust our elections.

One of my friends is a Republican. A gay, neo-conservative, ditto-head, knee-jerk Republican. Imagine Anne Coulter as a not-very-attractive man, and you're on the right track. I've tried to get him to watch this movie and he simply carps about how the Democrats only care about election fraud now that it's the Republicans doing it.

I think he misses the point rather a bit.

The movie is a little overpriced, but well worth the purchase by people of any party. Like I said, we need to trust our elections, or what do we have?

I encourage everyone to watch this amazing video. Our elections are being stolen, right in front of our faces!!! We need to take a stand !!! Thanks Bev for opening my eyes.

This is not a political story. What this investagation points out is that politicans, from all sides, have a vested interest in keeping voting systems secret and the way they are. This is a balanced review of some findings resuting from asking questions about how votes are counted. There are no fingers pointed, no one is directing blame and the film offers very few answers. This film gets your brain working, rather than shutting it down.

It's a well executed show that doesn't stray very far off it's mark. Do people in the U.S. know their vote is counted?