Hacking Democracy

I have watched this video and I am shocked. Of all the databases they could use, Diebold use Ms Access to tally the votes! It's a joke! Ms Access was never design with the necessary security in mind required for an election. It's a small application to drive development for small database uses. I can only guess what the other companies uses but I hope it's better than that.

I am so glad that my own government choose to ban these machines. These machines are the worst thing that could happen to a democracy of any kind: They do things in secret. They can easily fail. It's hard to prove they haven't been tempered with. It's impossible to guaranty the results.

Yet they were used in 80% of the polls in the US. Why?

Because they are the only one-stop-shop systems that satisfies all the requirements in the HAVA (Help America Vote Act). They also represents millions of dollars in contract for the private industries that supplies them. There is no economic incentive to produce a really good voting machine, and there is little political pressure to ensure that these machines worked as advertised.

They are only there to give the people the illusion of democracy. But there is no conspiracy. It's not malice that gave America those machines. It's a combination of tough requirements lobbied in by the manufacturers of those machines and a general "I don't care" attitude by the elected official as long as the public opinion doesn't change much (no scandals).

As long as people don't care about this issue, big corporation will continue to get multi-million dollar contract to build less-than-adequate voting that fails to protect the will of the people. Someone in the US really new to crack those machines on the night of the election. It may be a federal crime to do so, but if it is the only way to prove democracy is dead, it may be a worthy sacrifice.