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HBO's Hacking Democracy Available Online

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the it's-only-slander-if-it's-not-true dept.

prostoalex writes "HBO's controversial special 'Hacking Democracy' on issues with Diebold voting machines is now available in full on Google Video." Covered earlier on Slashdot, the documentary seems to have gathered quite a bit of heat from Diebold in addition to the one that didn't air.

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  1. Excellent! by oZZoZZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I live in a suburb of Toronto and we have our municipal elections tomorrow. I voted early on Saturday and I noticed my vote got counted on a Diebold machine. All previous elections we wrote an "X" in a circle and they were hand-counted - this time it was electronically counted.

    I asked the elections official how did they know my vote was counted. Her response was, (as she pointed to a small LCD display), "this counter here says how many votes this machine processed." I asked her how does she know it was counted *CORRECTLY* she made the mistake of saying "we're pretty sure it's correct."

    At this point I demanded to know how "pretty sure" she was. Her defense was "there's a paper trail incase of an error" - a fairly valid defense. I proceeded to point to two electronic Diebold machines, the 6" thick ones with an LCD screen, and asked her "what about those?" She told me in a very matter of fact way that there's a paper trail for those too.

    I asked her where the printer was, and if she ever actually say a printer. It was at this point that she no longer wanted to talk to me and kinda laughed me off as some sort of conspiracy wackjob.

    The fact that we used these machines after their utter failure in larger US elections pissed me off, but the fact that they FAILED in CANADA, just one province over (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/25/1 324237&from=rss) really pissed me off.

    I wanted to argue with her further but had no hard references memorized, essentially making my argument invalid. I did a bit of research from the usual sources (http://www.blackboxvoting.org), but I was really hoping to see this documentary before the elections tomorrow.

    I encourage all Canadians voting in municipal elections tomorrow to make your feelings about e-voting (especially on Diebold machines) known to the organizers, and write your MPs and MPPs to tell them that e-voting is not acceptable.