A real conspiracy

“Invisible Ballots: A Temptation for Electronic Vote Fraud” is a shocking documentary about the perils of computerized voting systems, which are apparently mandatory in the United States. The documentary is introduced by G Edward Griffin, a well-known conspiracy theorist and member of the John Birch Society. However, the people interviewed seem to be “main line” computer technicians, activists and politicians. Their demand is a simple one: scrap the machines and bring in paper ballots (as in Europe).

Many of the facts in “Invisible Ballots” would be enough to trigger a color revolution, if revealed in a less stable nation than the United States. Even if we assume that no conscious vote fraud is taking place, the voting machines themselves frequently malfunction or don't work at all. The volunteers at the polling stations have no idea how to handle them. One of the persons interviewed is an investigate reporter who was asked by election officers at “her” polling station to help them out with the computers. The volunteers knew that she was a reporter writing an exposé on chaos at polling stations, but asked her to help out anyway, since she was the only one who knew how to handle the machines!

“Invisible Ballots” further reveal that one of the companies making the voting machines is owned by a Congressman, while another is owned by a group of people convicted of fraud and bribery. A third provider is owned by a British business, i.e. not even by American citizens. One of these companies, Diebold, had so lax security that a large portion of their internal correspondence had been accidentally stored on a public part of the web, including access codes to the voting machine software, and damning admissions by employees about many computer problems not being fixed prior to election day. Bev Harris, author of the book “Black Box Voting”, had no trouble finding computer technicians willing to investigate various ways by which voting machines could be hacked. Harris also managed to find personal details of Diebold programmers on the web, including who was afraid of losing their job. This means that somebody who wanted to blackmail or bribe the programmers could easily profile them.

Since there is no paper trail in computerized voting, recounts are virtually impossible. While no evidence exists (yet!) of deliberate tampering with the machines, the makers of this documentary suspect that some crucial elections have been either rigged or at the very least miscounted due to serious computer problems. In 2002, the Republicans carried the state of Georgia for the first time since 1872. It was also the first time a computerized voting system was introduced in this particular state. Of course, the 2000 presidential elections (awarded to Bush) is the mother of all election frauds.

With the most hotly contested presidential election in recent memory coming up this fall, the revelations in “Invisible Ballots” are deeply disturbing. It doesn't really matter who wins the election - if it's by foul (or seemingly foul) means, the consequences could be devastating.

This, apparently, is a real conspiracy waiting to happen.