cam: This comment on the documentary misses: the point ;

I have just finished watching the HBO documentary \"Hacking Democracy\" and what a surprise -- Diebold, and its Republican backers, are doing everything they can to stop it from showing tonight.

As Bev Harris pointed out, the concern was non-partisan, as encumbant Democrats in other states were buying the technology too, and opposition Republicans were wary of it.

When we assume voter fraud, we think of a massive top down operation from the highest levels of government but this isn\'t the case with decentralised technology. Since the memory cards carry executables, all it takes is a zealot at the local level to pollute the memory card and tamper with the votes.

Some of the worst zealots and partisans are party supporters rather than politicians themselves. You only have to look around the internet to see party apologists contort themselves to absurd levels to support their \'team\'.

Yes, Diebold and the other voting companies have a vested interest in protecting their investment in the technology, but I might have more empathy for them if their system wasn\'t built on a MIcrosoft Access database.

As the documentary showed, a direct query into Access changes the data without a log being produced that there was a change, and there was no hashing of log entries or important column values to determine if they have been tampered with outside of the application\'s confines.

To be honest their technology is simplistic, naive - it is cheap and nasty.

Australia has electronic voting systems, but the specification procedure, procurement method and requirements are far to different to what has been practised in the United States as this Wired article from 2003 writes ;

Although a private Australian company designed the system, it was based on specifications set by independent election officials, who posted the code on the Internet for all to see and evaluate. What\'s more, it was accomplished from concept to product in six months. It went through a trial run in a state election in 2001.

Critics say the development process is a model for how electronic voting machines should be made in the United States.

Called eVACS, or Electronic Voting and Counting System, the system was created by a company called Software Improvements to run on Linux, an open-source operating system available on the Internet.

Much preferable methodology to the manner in which Diebold have conducted themselves. Better technology choices too.

cam