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Hacking Democracy Film Screening

Hacking Democracy film screening
Tuesday, January 29 / 7pm
Stevenson College Event Center
Free and open to the public

Join us for this Emmy-nominated documentary on the vulnerability of electronic voting machines. Following the film there will be a discussion led by Robert Kibrick, legislative analyst of Verified Voting Foundation.

Electronic voting machines count over 80% of the votes cast in America today. But are they reliable? Are they safe from tampering? From a current congressional hearing to persistent media reports that suggest misuse of data and even outright fraud, concerns over the integrity of electronic voting are growing by the day.

In the HBO documentary Hacking Democracy, Seattle grandmother and writer Bev Harris taps the expertise of computer scientists, politicians, and activists before concluding that the top-secret computerized systems that count approximately 80 percent of votes in public elections across the United States are fallible and vulnerable to undetectable hacking. Hacking Democracy was nominated for an Emmy Award for outstanding investigative journalism.

"The bottom line of this whole problem is that if we don't have the ability to authenticate our own elections as citizens, we don't live in a democracy," Harris has said. The timely, cautionary documentary Hacking Democracy exposes gaping holes in the security of America's electronic voting system.

Robert Kibrick will lead the post-film discussion. Mr. Kibrick has been the legislative analyst for The Verified Voting Foundation since 2004 and has testified before the California state legislature on these issues. He was the co-organizer of the Forum on Electronic Voting held at UCSC in October 2003.

Please visit http://cowell.ucsc.edu/votes for more information or call (831) 459-2255. This event is presented by Cowell College Programs Office, in conjuction with Cowell 60: Social Justice and Diversity.