A documentary set to air tonight will raise serious questions about the reliability of electronic voting just days before the US midterm elections. A copy of the film has been obtained by RAW STORY.

Hacking Democracy, scheduled to run on cable network HBO starting this evening, consists largely of a collection of videos taken by advocacy groups, interviews with experts, and documentation that suggests something could go very wrong on election night.

At the center of the film is advocacy group Black Box Voting, headed by voter activist Bev Harris, along with other Seattle natives. Among them was the late Andy Stephenson, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2005. At the time of his work with Harris, Stephenson had just failed in his bid to win the Washington State post of Secretary of State.

While the advance buzz about the documentary has focused almost entirely on Diebold, a leading vendors of voting machines, the film explores a wider range of issues, suggesting that something far more insidious than technology is at play, and could threaten our democratic process.

The Machines

The film presents Diebold, for all of its obvious partisan ties and questionable funding, as a tool for something much bigger, engulfing the national media and both parties: a bizarre "don't ask, don't tell" game that creates an illusion of fair and honest voting, despite mathematical realities and the documented criminal activities of partisan loyalists at the local and national levels.

It opens with disturbing numbers from the 2000 election: The Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Al Gore, came up with negative 16,022 votes in Volusia County, Florida. The investigators looking into why the votes were subtracted by Diebold's election technology ruled out machine failure, because the subtractions only occurred in votes cast for President/Vice President. However, questions about the error remained unanswered, because Diebold’s software is a trade secret.

Bev Harris, incensed by these and other allegations of machine count irregularities, began digging and, by chance, unearthed paydirt in the form of Diebold’s online FTP site, left unsecured. Harris took the Diebold documents she had downloaded from the FTP server to Johns Hopkins University security expert, Dr. Avi Rubin, who concluded that the software was not secure, and open to tampering.

Joined by Stephenson, Cleveland election advocate Kathleen Wynn, and others, Harris began dumpster-diving from state to state to obtain information that should be readily available in a democracy and open to the public.

Who Benefits?

One example of what the team from Black Box Voting found during their digs through garbage was that an internal Diebold accounts receivable ledger showed money owed to the company from the Republican Party of Texas' 8th district. But for what? Harris et al do not know, and neither do voters.

We learn also from the documentary of an infamous fundraising letter sent in 2003 on behalf of the Republican National Committee by Walden O’Dell, then CEO of Diebold, promising to deliver Ohio to President Bush the next year.

While election fraud has always been a reality, with both parties taking part in vote theft and voter suppression, those activities have previously tended to happen only in small pockets and on the local level. It is only with electronic voting machines that there is now the potential for vote-rigging on a widescale basis.

The film presents one example from New Orleans, where a Republican candidate in Jefferson Parish, Susan Bernecker, found that when her name was selected, her Democratic opponent's name would instead appear in the result box.

But overall, the majority of glitches and technical anomalies appear to work in favor of the Republican Party. Never before has one party allegedly been so effective at manipulating the system across the nation, using corporate alliances in order to orchestrate an election coup.

Largely through implication, the filmmakers present a picture of an historically unprecedented, well-funded and well-organized national effort to rig elections since 2000 to favor one party: the Republican Party.

The system is broken

The most astonishing aspect of this story, however, is not that the Republican Party is so often favored by these glitches, or that a private company using proprietary software is also raising money for the Republican Party, but that the mainstream media does not question and the Democratic Party does not seem to challenge the outcome of election cycles since 2000.

In one telling scene in the film, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH) is attacked by the Republican Party for demanding that Ohio voters be heard, after having watched her state disenfranchise black voters in large numbers and the recount be manipulated, and even though local election workers were indicted as a result.

Tubbs Jones, backed by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), issued a challenge to the official Ohio certification of the 2004 presidential election, asking that Congress review the results before certifying them. The challenge, the likes of which had not been seen for nearly a century, aimed merely to present her findings and explore the serious allegations.

Members of the Republican Party, including Tom Delay, the former Republican House Majority Leader who is now under indictment for money laundering, took to the floor, attacking Democrats. In the end, the election was certified by Congress despite widespread allegations of voter fraud, documented evidence of voter suppression, and eyewitness accounts of ballot tampering.

Other forms of fraud

The film sticks closely to issues relating to electronic voter fraud, and does not consider all claims of voter fraud in recent years, omitting the allegedly extensive voter suppression tactics used against African American voters by the Republican Party – including phony felon lists, false police inspection check points, and full-out scrub and caging lists – which essentially suppress a large segment of the Democratic voting demographic from ever casting a vote.

The documentary also does not address the massive money fraud engineered in states like Ohio, where it has come to be known as Coingate, or the conflicts of interest on the part of many election officials – for example Katherine Harris, who in 2000 was not only Florida’s Secretary of State, and thus in charge of elections, but also co-chair of the Bush-Cheney Florida campaign.

Hacking Democracy premiers tonight at 9 PM EST on HBO.

Diebold Inc. insisted that cable network HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair.

The program, "Hacking Democracy," is scheduled to debut Thursday, , five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims that Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results.

"Hacking Democracy" is "replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting," Diebold Election System President David Byrd said in a letter to HBO President and Chief Executive Chris Albrecht posted on Diebold's Web site. Short of pulling the film, Monday's letter asks for disclaimers to be aired and for HBO to post Diebold's response on its Web site.

According to Byrd's letter, inaccuracies in the film include the assertion that Diebold, whose election systems unit is based in Allen, Texas, tabulated more than 40 percent of the votes cast in the 2000 presidential election.

The letter says Diebold wasn't in the electronic voting business in 2000, when disputes over ballots in Florida delayed President Bush's victory for more than a month and raised questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines.

"We stand by the film," said Jeff Cusson, a spokesman for HBO, which is a unit of Time Warner Inc.

"We have no intention of withdrawing it from our schedule. It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing."

David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold, said the company bought another firm, Global Elections, in 2002 that served about 8 percent of balloting in 2000, including voters in Florida. The company, which hasn't seen the film, based its complaints on material from the HBO Web site, Bear said.

This is Diebold's second recent defense of its system. On Sept. 26, Byrd wrote to Jann Wenner, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone, saying a story written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., "Will the Next Election Be Hacked?" was "error-riddled" and that readers "deserve a better researched and reported article."

The HBO documentary is based on the work of Bev Harris, the Renton woman who founded BlackBoxVoting.org, which monitors election accuracy. In 2004 the attorney general of California took up a whistle-blower claim filed by Harris against Diebold and settled with the company for $2.6 million in December.

HBO's Hacking Democracy (premiering tonight at 9 pm/ET) tells the story of Bev Harris, a grandmother and writer who started investigating the subject of electronic voting in 2002 after questioning her county's switch to electronic touch-screen voting machines. Unsatisfied with their explanation, Harris set out to learn about electronic voting systems on her own, and in doing so stumbled upon shocking revelations about the vulnerability of the software and hardware. Harris, who went on to form the watchdog group BlackBoxVoting.org, recently spoke with TVGuide.com about her illuminating, though unsettling, journey.

TVGuide.com: Have you read any of this week's news stories, about Diebold [a leading manufacturer of voting systems] asking HBO to slap a disclaimer on the documentary?

Bev Harris: They haven't seen the real film at all.

TVGuide.com: Apparently they are taking issue with, among other things, the hacking demonstration which shows how central tabulators can be tampered with by modifying a single memory card [on which a single machine's votes are recorded].

Harris: It's interesting they would bring that up because the State of California commissioned its own independent study, Diebold was ordered to cooperate with the study, and all of the scientists said, "The hack is real, and it is dangerous." And they found 16 additional vulnerabilities. You have to sort of decide who it is that has more credibility - a manufacturer that wants to sell a system, or six independent scientists commissioned by the State of California.

TVGuide.com: The machines at issue, how widespread is their current use?

Harris: The film isn't just about Diebold - it also talks about Sequoia and other companies - but computerized voting systems will account for 80 to 90 percent of this coming [Nov. 7] election, depending on how you define it.

TVGuide.com: Is it just optical scanning and touch-screen machines that are of concern?

Harris: Computer systems are complex systems that all interact. So yes, they have optical scanning machines in every jurisdiction, because those are what count the absentee ballots. And there's the central tabulator, which is the one Dr. Herbert Thompson hacks [in Hacking Democracy], which compiles all the different information from the different locations. Diebold now makes an electronic poll book that replaces the sign-in sheet, and that is having a lot of problems in Maryland and Georgia. The film would be overly complex if it talked about all the different computer issues, but there are a lot of them.

TVGuide.com: Watching this unsettling documentary, you come away feeling like paper-chad ballots are our best bet.

Harris: Actually, those are counted by a computer, as well. There are a couple of solutions that are more in the direction we want to see. For example, this election, 45 percent of the jurisdictions in New Hampshire will be counting by hand. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has introduced a bill into the U.S. Congress to have the entire presidential race counted by hand in 2008. Canada counts their federal elections by hand, and they have the results generally in about four hours, and with little controversy.

TVGuide.com: Why did John Kerry concede in 2004, when there was evidence pointing to "negative vote" tampering [in which a hacked memory card directs a tabulator to subtract votes]?

Harris: You know, that was something that I was baffled by, because he had specifically promised, and collected money, to fight for every vote and get to the bottom of any issues that arose. It was very disappointing to a lot of people.

TVGuide.com: One fact reiterated during the film is that if vote totals are somehow cooked, there is usually no electronic record of the tampering.

Harris: Some of the clumsier tampering efforts we are starting to catch now, because they don't know how to erase their tracks. But the one demonstrated by Harri Hursti [in Hacking Democracy] is particularly elegant because it deletes itself afterward. There's no way to find it at all afterward.

TVGuide.com: Did Diebold ever step away from its contention that there is no "executable program" on the memory cards? That they can't be hacked to register "negative" votes?

Harris: They do a lot of parsing of words.... And at one point, they tried to redefine for themselves what "executable" means. [Laughs]

TVGuide.com: At the end, we see that Ohio's Cuyahoga County, despite much controversy and unanswered questions about the fidelity of its voting system, went ahead and ordered $21 million in new Diebold machines....

Harris: They did, and what's so interesting is they ordered these touch-screens with a paper trail, and when there was an audit of their May primary, the paper trail did not match the machines. None of the results matched the central tabulator. It was a complete fiasco. I would not want to be the election supervisor there.

TVGuide.com: With an eye on this coming Tuesday's elections, are there any options for anyone who doesn't feel complete faith in their ballot being accurately cast? Is there any alternate ballot-casting method, anything "old-school" a voter can request?

Harris: In some places they represent that there is - like, in California, voters can ask for a paper ballot - but those are still counted by machines. It goes into the same system. In Riverside County, some citizens followed those paper ballots to see what they did with them, and what they found is people were hired to enter the paper ballot into a touch-screen. It added insult to injury. This election, what we really have to do as independent citizens - and Black Box Voting is working with them to help them know what to do - is to ask questions and document. Once that body of evidence comes in, we're going to see some real change.

TVGuide.com: Is there any chance that we as a nation, going into the 2008 elections, will feel complete confidence in the vote-counting system? Is there enough time?

Harris: It depends on how well we make the case this time around, and how effective we are at solving the problems that we document in this coming election.

TVGuide.com: After the 2000 election, I remember thinking, "Why isn't there a singular, unified vote-casting system?" But now I realize that in the wrong hands....

Harris: The missing ingredient has been the citizens. Any system that we end up with has to be one that citizens can oversee. Anything that says, "You don't get to look at how it works" or "You have to trust the vendor," doesn't really cut it. In a communist country, you have to trust the government. In a democracy, you get to check.

Sequoia touch-screen is California's most widely used.

Days before the election, state officials have learned that California's most widely used electronic voting machines feature a button in back that can allow someone to vote multiple times.

Several computer scientists said Wednesday that the vulnerability found in all touch-screen machines sold by Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems was not especially great because using the yellow button for vote fraud would require reaching far behind the voting machine twice and triggering two beeps.

"If the machine beeps loudly and someone has their arms wrapped around the machine, the poll workers are going to become suspicious," said David Wagner, a computer security and voting system expert at the University of California, Berkeley.

"It's kind of hard for me to see how this could be used very widely," he said. "It's retail fraud, so it's onesies and twosies and can only affect very close races."

A former poll worker in Tehama County tried alerting state elections officials to the vulnerability about a month ago and said he was told the problem did not seem significant. Ron Watt then obtained poll worker-training documents through a public records request and brought them to the attention last Friday of the state's chief voting systems tester.

On Monday, state elections officials issued a caution to the more than one-third of California counties that use Sequoia equipment, including Santa Clara County, where the touch screens are the primary voting system, and Alameda

County, which relies on almost 1,000 machines as a secondary voting system intended for disabled voters. State elections officials reminded the counties to keep a close eye on the machines and post warnings that tampering with election equipment is a crime.

"All counties confirmed that they had implemented security measures, and they were aware of it," said Susan Lapsley, assistant secretary of state for elections.

Some counties were backing the machines up against walls; others were roping off the rear of the machines, state officials said.

"You can't do it surreptitiously," said Guy Ashley, spokesman for the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. "You have to know what you're doing.

"We train our poll workers to keep their eyes peeled, stay on the lookout for stuff like this. We think that will suffice."

Recognition of a potential new security problem that requires no knowledge of special passwords or access to the inner workings of a voting machine revives questions about the effectiveness of state and national evaluations of voting systems.

Twice earlier this year, computer experts and critics of electronic voting have discovered profound vulnerabilities in Diebold touch screens that allow someone with a few minutes of access to a machine to alter or replace its core software and load votes into it undetected.

Debate about the security and reliability of electronic voting has been central to the race for secretary of state, and Sequoia's yellow button became instant fodder Tuesday night in back-to-back radio interviews with Republican appointee Bruce McPherson and his Democratic challenger, state Sen. Debra Bowen, now neck-and-neck in the polls.

McPherson has said California's certification of voting systems is the nation's toughest and most stringent and he has certified several electronic voting systems for the November elections, including the Diebold and Sequoia touch screens.

Bowen has pointed to numerous findings of security problems by computer scientists and argued that electronic voting systems are not mature enough to be trusted in elections.

"And just this morning we learned that the Sequoia machine will allow a voter to vote multiple times if they do something very simple, which is to hold a button in the back down for three seconds," she said on a Los Angeles radio show Tuesday night, adding that McPherson's office "must have known" about the vulnerability for some time.

"No, that is not true," McPherson replied later in the same show. "That is not true. I think she is throwing a lot of fear and doubt out there, and it's unwarranted."

Sequoia's yellow button isn't a hack or flaw. The button has been a feature on Sequoia's mainline AVC Edge touch screens for years, designed as a backup for the typical method of voting on the machines.

In most counties, poll workers use a separate machine to activate a card that a voter inserts into the touch screen in order to retrieve the proper ballot. The yellow button is for counties that can't afford the separate machine or for cases when the card activator becomes inoperable, as happened to Diebold systems in March 2004 in Alameda and San Diego counties and last primary in Kern County.

Pressing, then holding the button for several seconds twice and answering a screen prompt sends the machine into a "manual activation" or "poll worker activation" mode. In that mode, someone can call up one ballot after another and vote them.

"You can literally vote continuously until you are physically restrained," said Watt, the former Tehama County poll worker who reported the problem to state elections officials.

Unlike the Diebold vulnerability, he said, using Sequoia's yellow button "takes no tools."

"In 18 seconds I can switch that to manual and start voting. In 30 seconds I can train you to do it," he said.

Watt and Bowen, the Democrat running for secretary of state, say the vulnerability should have been caught earlier, before the state approved the machine for use in elections.

"You shouldn't have a reset button on the outside of the machine," Bowen said. "Certainly when I'm secretary of state I'm going to want to know if there's a button that only requires physical access to the machine to vote multiple times. And unfortunately if someone does that, you're in a position where you don't know what votes to throw out."

Computer scientists say the manual mode can be rendered inoperable in the touch-screen software, but elections officials worry that it is too close to the election to attempt and may not be useful.

"It's a feature of the machine, it's one that's necessary from a couple of different perspectives but as long as people employ security measures that are already in place then it's mitigated," said Lapsley.

Progressive Democrats are saying "we need to get people to the polls in large numbers, win big, and protect the vote counting to make sure that the congressional elections are not stolen on November 7th."

"We can't let the machinations of possible electoral problems prevent us from getting to the polls in massive numbers; in fact, it is an argument to get even more people to vote, so that the majorities are fool proof." - Robert Greenwald, Producer, Director Iraq for Sale and Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices.

Emotions are running high as the mid-term election approaches, and polls show Democrats are ahead in many key Congressional races. Less than two weeks before the Nov. 7 election, the latest Associated Press-AOL News poll found that likely voters overwhelmingly prefer Democrats over Republicans.

Voters are angry with President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress, and say Iraq and the economy are their top issues. In the poll, 56 percent of likely voters said they would vote to send a Democrat to the House and 37 percent said they would vote Republican - a 19-point difference. Only 12 percent of likely voters say they are enthusiastic about the administration. The percentage of those who say they are angry with it has grown to 40 percent from 32 percent in early October."

In the light of such overwhelming poll numbers, Democrats and progressives sense the opportunity to win back at least one of the Houses of Congress, perhaps both, ending the iron rule of the Republicans. But - there is a big "but."

The hope of many Democrats for success on November 7th is sharply tempered by still-fresh memories of perceived Democratic victories turned into defeat in 2000 and 2004. Even more disconcerting is the fact that since 2004, there has been overwhelming documentation of voter repression and fraud. The result is that many believe that past elections have been stolen, and efforts to prevent people from voting - especially minorities - have been successful.

Voter Protection Groups Gearing Up

In the face of the fear about what might be in store come election day, a veritable cottage industry of voter protection/election reform groups and coalitions has emerged. They include ElectionDefenseAlliance.org, Do More Than Vote, VerifiedVoting.org and the Velvet Revolution, which has developed an Election Protection Strike Team (the Strike Team has offered rewards for evidence of fraud and have a hot line for people to call: 1-888 VOTETIP), and MoveOn.org has a comprehensive progressive voter contact program to reach out to voters.

Other innovative efforts are emerging and ratcheting up their operations for November 7th, to protect the vote and stymie the voter shenanigans that have frustrated the country in recent elections, including: Video the Vote, which are taking advantage of inexpensive video cameras, and the Internet, planning for their teams to be the eyes and ears of the voter protection effort. Meanwhile, Working Assets has created a Voter Protection Immediate Response Network for using text messaging to alert voters of problems where they may send a message about a short and easy action that could be taken - like get more voting machines to a precinct that is overloaded.

Overcoming the Negative Expectations

However, part of the struggle leading up to the election is to neutralize negative expectations about voting and counting, as well as increase turnout amidst widespread worries that votes won't be counted or they will be turned away at the polls. Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, told Ian Urbina of the New York Times:

...[E]pisodes of voter suppression that were dismissed in 2000 as unfounded recurred in 2004 and were better documented because rights groups dispatched thousands of lawyers and poll watchers. In addition, the first national data-tracking tool, the Election Incident Reporting System, offered a national hotline that fed a database of what ended up to be 40,000 problems. This hot line is live for the 2006 election at 1-800-OUR-VOTE.

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile told the Times, "This notion that elections are stolen and that elections are rigged is so common in the public sphere that we're having to go out of our way to counter them this year. This will be the first midterm election in which the Democratic Party is mobilizing teams of lawyers and poll watchers, to check for irregularities including suppression of the black vote, in at least a dozen of the closest districts."

The Voting Situation Is Dicey

It is no exaggeration to suggest that the overall voting situation is dicey and volatile. Advocates and experts who have exposed the system for its many failures are now faced with the fact that very little has been fixed or changed to make the system more transparent, accountable, or trustworthy. In fact Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar writing in the Los Angeles Times suggests: "Election Day could bring a new round of problems, confusion and partisan rancor. Unproven electronic voting machines, stricter voter identification requirements in many states, new databases and partisan disputes over registration campaigns are all contributing to the concern."

Thus, the situation at the polls is arguably worse than in 2004, and the steady drumbeat of election fraud has had its impact. No one disagrees that the Republicans benefit from low turnout: the lower the better, to take advantage of their effective consumer voter targeting - something that the Democrats have yet to master. In fact, some would say that Karl Rove is smiling at every report of election fraud and machine breakdown, thinking that it will make the Democratic voters more paranoid. Rove's recent assertion on NPR that, based upon "secret polls," the Republicans are going to keep control of Congress was evidence to some that the election was already being stolen.

Encouraging Voters

So what do you tell voters to help them combat this psychological problem that could depress voting? "I tell voters we have to win by such an overwhelming margin that it isn't close enough to steal," says Bob Fertik, the head of Democrats.com, an activist web site not part of the Democratic party, that calls themselves aggressive progressives. Robert Greenwald says, "This is no time to play victim, bemoaning all the problems in the voting system. Our job is to get people to the polls and make sure they can vote, and be absolutely tough about it."

Fair voting advocate Brad Friedman, whose Bradblog.com has become possibly the most popular spot to gather information on all-things-voting, says: "There is absolutely zero evidence that speaking about this depresses voter turnout. In fact, I've found evidence suggesting precisely the opposite. Candidates across the country who have come out strong for Electoral Integrity have been winning huge at the box office so far this year."

According to Friedman, "It's not talking about election suppression that keeps folks from turning out. They know about these matters (a recent Zogby poll showed that 92% believe their votes should be counted transparently, 80% were against secret software counting their votes, and 62% had already heard about these concerns). It seems that when these issues are not discussed, people feel the system is rigged - nobody in DC cares, so why should I bother to turn out?"

Time will tell as to whether this analysis is correct, but at the moment, there is some evidence to suggest otherwise, at least potentially for black voters. African-Americans are key constituencies in Senate races that are necessary for the Democrats to secure a majority - particularly in Tennessee, and Missouri where African-American voters are the key to victory for Democrats.

But as the New York Times notes, a Pew Research Center report found that blacks were twice as likely now than they were in 2004 to say they had little or no confidence in the voting system, rising to 29 percent from 15 percent. And more than three times as many blacks as whites - 29 percent versus 8 percent - say they do not believe that their vote will be accurately tallied: "Long lines and shortages of poll workers in lower-income neighborhoods in the 2004 election and widespread reports of fliers with misinformation appearing in minority areas have had a corrosive effect on confidence, experts say."

The larger question of course is whether voters' negative experiences at the polls will diminish turnout, or will the overwhelming dissatisfaction with Bush and the Republicans, as noted in the polls, translate to substantial voter turnout?

Mark Crispin Miller, author of Fooled Again, who travels the country talking about election fraud, is clear that theft is on the Republican agenda, and isn't very confident that Democrats will be able to stop them. Miller says: "We need the national turnout to be very high because the GOP intends to steal this one, too. In other words, people should turn out to vote, not because they can be confident that their particular choices will prevail. It would be irresponsible to offer that assurance. Rather, the American people must turn out to vote as an essential protest on behalf of free and fair elections. To turn out on Nov. 2 is to make a statement of no confidence in Bush or his 'elections,' and a call for the salvation of US democracy. The higher the turnout, the harder it will be for the Republicans. to spin their looming 'upset victory' as legitimate. That's why I advise against early and absentee voting - because it will dilute the impact of the actual E-Day turn-out."

The Challenge to Protect the Vote

Democrats clearly have a big challenge on their hands. They need to run effective campaigns, pull out potentially discouraged voters, protect voting rights, document instances of voter suppression and election fraud, monitor voter counts, and grapple with electronic machines which offer no transparency. Fortunately for the Dems, the stolen election issue has become a cause celebre, raising consciousness about the issues among many activists, and mobilizing people to fight for voter rights at the polls.

Mark Ritchie, a voter reform candidate, who is running hard to be Secretary of State in Minnesota, says: "We know the policies that are needed to help ensure fairness, like paper ballots, Election Day registration, and post-election random audits. We also know that we have to go beyond good policies to include active citizenship. Everyone needs to be a poll watcher. Every voter needs to know who to contact if there suspect any problems. Every person needs to feel empowered to make sure our elections are free and fair."

Blogger Friedman adds, "When we talk about these issues, people realize that someone does care, is fighting to make sure their vote is counted and counted accurately, and they are given tools to use to try and help make sure that will be the case." Democrats.com's Bob Fertik says, "We have to get involved in organized efforts to audit the elections by groups like ElectionDefenseAlliance.org, VelvetRevolution.us, BlackBoxVoting.org, etc. I'd also like to see Democratic voters hold candlelight vigils outside each county's board of elections after the polls close, holding signs saying 'Count Every Vote' and 'No More Stolen Elections!' Imagine a Blue Revolution, every bit as joyous and historic as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution Lebanon, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia - right here in the United States of America."

So, when you add it all up, the consensus seems clear, if not a little daunting. For the Democrats to win big, as they hope, they must work for a large turnout and big voter margins. But especially in races where the margins are razor thin, active volunteers and voters must play their parts, encouraging voters, monitoring polls, documenting foul play, and insisting on voters rights. Only then, and of course this is a sad commentary on Democracy in America, do they stand a chance of winning elections, even those where they have healthy advantages in the polls.

Pentagon warned on security issues for overseas ballots.

Time was when soldiers, if they wanted to vote, had to request ballots by snail mail, fill them out and return them the same way.

The process typically took weeks.

This year, thousands of soldiers around the world have the opportunity to vote in the Nov. 7 elections by e-mail. It's part of a Pentagon effort to make it easier for overseas military personnel to cast ballots in federal and state elections, and it reflects how the Internet has changed life in the combat zone.

But computer security experts inside and outside the government warned that the Pentagon's Federal Voting Assistance Program ignores the risks associated with unencrypted e-mail: interception, hacking and identity theft.

"E-mail traffic can flow through equipment owned and operated by various governments, companies and individuals in many countries," Joel Rothschild, a Navy Reserve captain, said in an August report prepared for the Pentagon. "It is easily monitored, blocked and subject to tampering."

A separate report by four outside computer security experts released last week raised similar red flags and added that the use of unencrypted e-mail for registering overseas voters invited identity theft.

"No bank would ask their customers to send Social Security numbers over unencrypted e-mail," said the report's co-author, David Wagner, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Berkeley. But that is what the system allows, he said.

Rothschild's report noted that e-mails can be encrypted to reduce tampering risks. Pentagon officials said states would need to arrange for that provision.

States have options for getting ballots to and from voters. They can fax, e-mail or mail the ballots, or use a combination of the methods. The federal government began the use of faxed ballots in 1990, with troops stationed in the Persian Gulf for Operation Desert Shield. E-mail is an option in those states that allow it; at the moment eight do. Mississippi was the first, allowing troops overseas to vote by e-mail in a 2003 gubernatorial election.

Neither the Pentagon nor state officials say they track how many of the 294,000 military personnel overseas are voting by e-mail. That information is held at the county level, state elections officials said.

Anecdotally, the number of military personnel voting by e-mail appears limited.

In Colorado, Jefferson County elections official Shawna Weir said she has received three ballots that soldiers sent by e-mail. The service members - two in Iraq and one on a ship - e-mailed their ballots to a federal facility in Virginia, which then faxed them to the county.

They were all "very eager to vote," Weir said, noting that they had called her to make sure they could get their ballots.

The combination of faxing and e-mail "is about as dangerous as you can get," Wagner said. "It's got all of the problems with unencrypted e-mail, plus your ballot is being routed through the Department of Defense. Will soldiers feel free to vote their conscience when they know that the DOD may be able to see how they voted? How do we know that the DOD or their contractors haven't modified soldiers' ballots in transit?"

J. Scott Wiedmann, deputy director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, said the operators at the federal facility cannot alter e-mail content, which is sent in "read-only" format. Voters are also encouraged to mail in an original copy of their ballot as a backstop, he said.

Soldiers faxing and e-mailing their ballots also must sign waivers saying they understand that somebody might see their ballot, Wiedmann said. "There's no U.S. constitutional guarantee to a secret ballot," he said.

Joni Ernst is a county elections official in Iowa and a major in the Iowa Army National Guard who served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004. She delivered mail to the troops and saw how long it could take, so she is glad that soldiers have the e-mail option. Most every camp has an Internet cafe for soldiers, and if the voting process is simple, she said, the troops are more likely to vote.

"Their time is very limited," Ernst said. "We don't want to detract from the mission. But we want to make sure their vote counts."