Hacking Democracy (2006)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: With electronic voting machines tabulating more than 80 percent of the ballots cast in America, Seattle grandmother Bev Harris set out to determine the obvious: Do they work? Based on the evidence presented here, the answer is “not really” The picture that emerges as Harris unearths a treasure trove of info about mishandled votes and the inner workings of the machines is that they’re not only fallible but also highly vulnerable to hacking.
REVIEW: Even though I also watched the original slasher classic Black Christmas, this was the scariest movie I saw over the Christmas break. Although the filmmakers obviously have every reason to sensationalize potential problems with electronic voting systems (”good news is no news,” right?), the implications here are frightening. Not only did Bev Harris (founder of a non-partisan watchdog group) find voting machine code unprotected on the internet, she was able to successfully hack it and prove that results could be manipulated (you can watch this being done in a matter of seconds in this film). The lack of oversight of the companies who control the majority of electronic voting is astounding, almost as bad as the sloppy manner in which our government oversees the elections themselves.
4.5 stars
HAWK
