Hacking Democracy

Bev Harris, a Seattle grandmother turned election-security activist, spends years trying to get inside the voting machines that count most of America's ballots. Working with her group Black Box Voting, she and volunteers track down discarded Diebold machines, obtain leaked source code, and eventually gain access to actual election equipment in Leon County, Florida. There, with the cooperation of the county's election supervisor, a hired hacker demonstrates on camera how a memory card can be swapped to flip vote totals without leaving a trace in the paper audit. The film moves between this hands-on test and the disputed 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, using irregularities in Ohio and Florida to ask a plain question: if nobody outside the manufacturer can verify how these machines tally votes, how would anyone know if an election had been stolen? Diebold executives and election officials get their say, mostly insisting the system is secure. The demonstration in Florida is the film's centerpiece, and it is hard to watch and stay reassured.