Hacking Democracy
Monty Solomon
Computerized vote-counting machines are sweeping the country. But
they can be hacked -- and right now there's no way to be sure they
haven't been.
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By Farhad Manjoo
Feb. 20, 2003 | During the past five months, Bev Harris has e-mailed
to news organizations a series of reports that detail alarming problems
in the high-tech voting machinery currently sweeping its way through
American democracy. But almost no one is paying attention.
Harris is a literary publicist and writer whose investigations into the
secret world of voting equipment firms have led some to call her the
Erin Brockovich of elections. Harris has discovered, for example, that
Diebold, the company that supplied touch-screen voting machines to
Georgia during the 2002 election, made its system's sensitive software
files available on a public Internet site. She has reported on the
certification process for machines coming onto the market -- revealing
that the software code running the equipment is seldom thoroughly
reviewed and can often be changed with mysteriously installed "patches"
just prior to an election. And in perhaps her most eyebrow-raising
coup, she found that Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, used to
run the company that built most of the machines that count votes in his
state -- and that he still owns a stake in the firm.
Harris hasn't been alone in making such discoveries. A small group of
writers, technologists and activists is working hard to convince
elections officials all over the country that their rush to upgrade
aging punch-card machines with seemingly more reliable touch-screen
systems is dangerous. But so far neither the general public nor
elections officials appear too worried.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/02/20/voting_machines/print.html