Hacking Democracy (2006) | Finnish security expert Harri Hursti showed how to rig USA voting system

A computer security expert Harri Hursti rigged the Diebold optical scan voting system to make the wrong candidate win by adding negative (minus) votes to one race. This system is still in use TODAY in the USA.

Hacking Democracy is a 2006 Emmy nominated documentary film featuring a Finnish computer security expert Harri Hursti. The method he uses here is commonly known as "the Hursti Hack".

In this hack, Harri Hursti rigged the Diebold optical scan voting system to make the wrong candidate win by adding negative (minus) votes to one race. This resulted in that race having votes literally subtracted from its vote total. These methods were tested by the Leon County Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho, on the actual Diebold optical scan voting system used by Tallahassee, Florida in all their prior elections.

This method demonstrated, contrary to a previous Diebold statement, that a person attempting to rig the votes of a precinct would need access to only the memory card, not the optical scan voting system or tabulation software. This method, when cross-checked between the optical scan voting system and tabulation software, perfectly mimics a legitimate result, and further makes the voting machine produce a false zero-vote print-out, falsely confirming that the memory card has no votes inside it before voting begins.

Following this historic hack Ion Sancho stated: "If I had not known what was behind this I would have certified this election as a true count of the votes."