Hacking Democracy
May 2007 Reviewed by: Marc Mickelson Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Ever since the 2000 Presidential election, in which George W. Bush squeaked out a highly controversial win against Al Gore, the election process in the US has been under great scrutiny. Hacking Democracy adds fuel to the fire by calling attention to the shakiness of a widely used computer voting machine and its software. Computers count nearly 80% of America's vote, but is the outcome of each election accurate?

Hacking Democracy follows the work of journalist-turned-activist Bev Harris. While researching a story on electronic voting, Harris stumbled onto an unsecured Internet site on which Diebold voting-machine software was available for the taking. Not knowing what she discovered, Harris grabbed all of the code and then set about discovering what it was and how it was used. What she discovered was a shocking lack of security in the software and an abundance of apathy among election officials.

Harris enlisted the help of computer scientists who were able to uncover the security problems. Two places in particular were vulnerable: the system's central tabulator and the memory cards on which the votes are stored. Harris and her team of computer experts proved that the former could be hacked with a simple script, and the latter was vulnerable because of an executable file stored on each card. I have worked in the computer industry, but I don't have a programmer's understanding. Even so, I could easily comprehend the security issues from the limited information presented in the movie. Hacking the Diebold machines looked to be easy work and certainly something that someone with a little knowledge could be trained to do, perhaps without even knowing.

The movie shows parts of the public hearings that were held. Surprisingly, few officials seemed to care about what Harris had uncovered. She persists to this day, not in the name of dogging one company, but rather to make sure that elections held in the US are not easy prey for political operatives or computer hackers. Sadly, even with all of the security problems in the software (and the reliability issues with the machines themselves), counties all over the US still purchase multi-million-dollar Diebold election systems.

The DVD's video image is impressively clear. It looks like high definition in places. Extras are scant -- just a few deleted scenes that you will be compelled to watch after the movie finishes. I would have loved for the filmmakers and Harris to put the Diebold source code on each DVD!

Hacking Democracy is an angering movie that every American should see. We in the US think that the purity of our elections is sacred and above the win-at-any-cost spirit of partisan politics, but this movie shows how open to coercion and wrongdoing it is. In a galling bit of irony, while Americans die ostensibly to bring democracy to Iraq, the Iraqi people, with their hand-counted paper ballots, hold more reliable elections than we do here in America. I look forward to the day when Bev Harris testifies to Congress on her findings.

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