Educational Media Reviews Online

When you cast a ballot in a U.S. election, you often get a little sticker handed to you that says, “I Voted.” This documentary takes the statement on the sticker and puts a question mark after it because it raises serious doubts about whether the choices you make on a ballot are the ones recorded as votes.

Producer/director Jason Grant Smith had not made a film before, and had to order the video equipment he used. He was inspired after hearing a story about the 2010 Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat in South Carolina. The man declared the winner in the election, Alvin Greene, never campaigned for the office and was unknown to all political insiders and reporters covering government in the state. Reasons for why Greene won ranged from the mundane (his name was listed first on the ballot in the race) to the fanciful (voters may have confused Alvin Greene with legendary singer Al Green) to the sinister (Greene was a Republican plant, serving as a patsy so that the Republican candidate could get an easy win in the general election.) Greene did lose to the Republican incumbent, but the mystery of his victory in the primary was never solved. When Smith talked to Greene’s Democratic opponent, Vic Rawl, he was told by Rawl that some voters said they wanted to vote for Rawl, but voting machines recorded the votes as being for Greene. An audit of the election results was not possible because South Carolina was using voting machines with direct recording electronic voting, meaning there was no paper evidence of the votes cast.

As Smith investigated, he uncovered some disturbing truths about how elections are run. The debacle over the Florida vote in the 2000 presidential election prompted Congress to pass the Help America Vote Act in 2002, which appropriated millions of dollars for states to buy new voting equipment. But no standards were set for the purchase of the equipment, and most states bought machines with touch screen technology from the 1990s and proprietary software that could not be accessed by elections officials.

Smith went to a conference of computer science professors, and found from them that it was easy to hack the machines being used for voting. One professor reprogrammed a machine to play the Pac-Man video game, but those intending to affect the outcome of an election could easily introduce a virus into machines that would change the results of votes cast. And voting machines are delivered up to two weeks before an election. There is little to no security around these machines before the voting, so hackers could gain access to them without difficulty

Voting by Internet has been tried in a few states, and is regularly used to vote by those living overseas A University of Michigan professor bluntly states in the documentary that it will be “decades, if ever” before technology allows for secure Internet voting.

Computer science professionals and voting activists have advocated that elections around the country be conducted with paper ballots that will provide a way to audit the results if problems arise. Florida adopted this method after having trouble with its touch screen machines, which were bought to replace the punch card systems that caused the infamous hanging chads in the 2000 election. The ability to audit came in handy when an election in Wellington, Florida was botched, and votes for a City Council candidate were recorded as being for the mayor. When the City Council candidate asked for an audit, the “paper trail” of the votes showed he was the winner in the Council race.

Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey has introduced a bill in five different sessions of Congress that would provide for a federal standard mandating a paper trail. The bill has never passed because of the belief that election procedures should be under local control.

By the end of the video, Smith was convinced of the need for paper ballots and implored viewers to contact their local, state, and federal officials to demand use of paper ballots in elections. A message on screen says the video may be viewed for free by public officials, and an epilogue tells us that a South Carolina legislator who viewed a rough cut of the video subsequently introduced a bill to provide for paper ballots in South Carolina. The measure passed.

The revelations in this video make it highly recommended for high school, academic, and public libraries. As a Brown University history professor says in the video, right now we have to take it on faith that election results are legitimate. Perhaps this video can spur changes in election procedure so that our confidence can be based on more than just blind faith.