Scaring the Electorate - Voting Machine Psuedo-Documentory

Shocked, I really am. Who could have expected that HBO would roll out a "documentary" on Voting Machine irregularities? Sadly, this WaPo report calls the film sloppy in a rather sloppy article.

Something -- maybe a lot of things -- is wrong with how America conducts its elections. As you might have heard, there were a few problems down in Florida back in 2000, and more recently in the Maryland primary. No doubt, voting and vote-counting can be messy, complicated and subject to potentially outcome-shifting flaws.

With that as backdrop and five days before Election Day, HBO weighs in tonight with "Hacking Democracy," a somewhat torpid documentary that is itself complicated, flawed and messy.

The documentary's basic theme is that elections can be stolen by people able to manipulate the vote-recording software in electronic balloting machines. That should not shock anyone who has touched a computer. Given the increasing use of electronic voting machines -- they are counting about 80 percent of the votes cast today, according to the documentary -- it's no stretch to imagine that they could be worked to subvert democracy.

Could be. But "Hacking Democracy" doesn't actually show democracy's corruption. The documentary merely suggests the possibilities and tallies the suspicions, leaving viewers to come to the obvious conclusion.

To cast doubt on the results of Ohio's pivotal presidential vote in 2004, for example, the documentary dwells on a mandatory hand recount of the vote in Cuyahoga County (the documentary incorrectly identifies Cuyahoga as "a swing county"; Cuyahoga was a Democratic lock, going 2-to-1 for John Kerry). Indeed, "Hacking" finds a few things amiss, such as a random selection of ballots for the recount that might not have been so randomly selected. And?

Well, that's it. Content with introducing a vague mist of doubt, the documentary moves on.

But hold on. Surely, there was more going on in Ohio in 2004 worth raising questions about. Such as: the state's misallocation of voting machines, which led to long lines at the polls; restrictions on provisional ballots; the rejection of thousands of voter-registration forms by the Republican secretary of state (who happened to be chair of Bush's statewide campaign); Democrats alleging voter "intimidation" by Republicans; and the existence of tens of thousands of "spoiled" ballots.

Naw. At least not here.

You have to enjoy that the writer chose to discuss the one state that the documentary points to and which still is highly bantered about as a corrupt election result. Ohio being the only questionable state right? Forget that Pennsylvania was probably worse, but hey, they got the results right when they through their votes to Kerry. It's ok though, no need to provide more information when limited information keeps the article focused on the topic at hand.

At least he does some further analysis on why the documentary is poor.

Harris's bete noire is Diebold Election Systems, the Ohio-based company that makes many of the suspect electronic voting systems. (Last week, for instance, Maryland election officials acknowledged that Diebold replaced a flawed electronic component in several thousand touch-screen voting machines in 2005.)

Diebold has its own problems with Harris and HBO. The company wrote to the network this week asking it to pull the documentary, which it says is filled with "egregious" errors and "inaccurate reporting."

Diebold is especially upset with the documentary's big windup, a lengthy and somewhat hard-to-follow sequence in which a computer security expert, Harri Hursti, hacks a voting system and manipulates the results of a mock election in Leon County, Fla. Diebold claims that Hursti's hacking could not be duplicated in a real election and says that Hursti has told the company as much.

In case you miss where "Hacking's" sympathies lie, the documentary pounds home the message with sinister music, grave voice-over narration and an oft-repeated rock song that goes, "Something's broken in the Promised Land / A broken promise in the Promised Land."

That lyrics quite possibly might be true. But you'll want more proof than this.

I really like them showing the hacking of the machine. I wonder if they bother mentioning that he would need free access and time to make the changes. Of course, you'd also have to mention that such access would probably a huge violation of any required procedures and would likely require collusion of multiple people for it to occur. Not saying it couldn't happen, just saying that it makes it much less likely.

I'm still fascinated that some government agency hasn't come up with some minimum requirements for what is acceptable for a secure electronic voting system. You'd think with the amount of screeching that followed the 2000 and 2004 races that there would be something that could be agreed upon for standardization. It wouldn't need to advocate any particular company, but it certainly could suggest what is best. Look at this article for what is suggested for building a better voting machine.

Why can't the voting machine companies get it right?

With election season upon us, Wired News spoke with two of the top computer scientists in the field, UC Berkeley's David Wagner and Princeton's Ed Felten, and came up with a wish list of features we would include in a voting machine, if we were asked to create one.

These recommendations can't guarantee clean results on their own. Voting machines, no matter how secure, are no remedy for poor election procedures and ill-conceived election laws. So our system would include thorough auditing and verification capabilities and require faithful adherence to good election practices, as wells as topnotch usability and security features.

The suggestions include the following:

• Combine the best features of touch-screen and optical-scan machines in a single device
• Eliminate removable memory cards
• Simplify voting machine software to use minimal lines of code
• Make self-policing software
• Create transparent code
• Employ mandatory audits
• Random spot checks
• Post-election hand audits
• Post-election voter verification

There really is more, since they don't really make suggestions as to responses to failed audits. It's a good starting point though.