Bev Harris
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Bev Harris in image from HBO's "Hacking Democracy" documentary |
Radio: Bio of Bev Harris
July 2, 2006
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Bev Harris is the founder and director of blackboxvoting.org. Harris has been referred to as "the godmother" of the election reform movement by the Boston Globe. She is the author of the book "Black Box Voting."
In 2003, just weeks after a stunning electoral upset in Georgia that tipped control of the U.S. Senate, Harris discovered 40,000 secret voting machine files on the web -- including a folder called "rob-georgia," containing instructions to replace Georgia's computerized voting files before the election. She downloaded the files and ultimately arranged to set them free into the wild, and the files were then studied by several security experts, revealing deep flaws in voting system security.
Harris's work has revealed that modern-day voting systems are run by private for-profit corporations, relying on a few cronies for oversight, using a certification system so fundamentally flawed that it allows machines to miscount and lose votes, with hidden back doors that enable "end runs" around the voting system.
Harris filed a false claims action against Diebold Election Systems. In 2005, the firm paid $2.6 million in restitution to the state of California. Her investigations have led some to call her the "Erin Brockovich of elections."
Harris's original investigative work has now been covered in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Associated Press, Reuters, Investor's Business Daily, and on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News.
--Bio provided by Bev Harris
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