HBO recently aired a documentary entitled Hacking Democracy which looks at the secrecy surrounding electronic voting machines in use within the US, particularly those manufactured by Diebold; how do the machines work, how are votes counted, how are they audited and why is the whole process so secret?

It follows a group of concerned citizens as they try to break through the veils of secrecy and figure out exactly what is going on with these machines, and uncovers some ugly incidents: Gore being counted a total of -16,000 votes (yes, minus votes) in 2000, differences between official ‘on-the-night’ audit trails from Ohio 2004 and those published later, and those official trails ending up in the garbage; the official record of the public’s vote being deliberately thrown out?? It closes with a demonstration of how easy it is to fix an election by pre-loading votes onto the memory card before the election starts. The voting machine doesn’t pick up any tampering and duly certifies a rigged election.

Although it’s 1h20m long, this doco is well worth a look as a testament to what basically the death of democracy in the very nation which proclaims itself the greatest democracy on the planet.

See it on Google Video