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HBO: How did you come to the project?
Sarah Teale: Initially, I wanted to do a documentary with
Robert Cohen on Bev Harris and the voting
machines, but we couldn't get anyone
interested. This was 2003, and most people
thought of it as a conspiracy theory. Robert
was in Los Angeles, and hooked up with a
foundation there. And the head of that
organization suggested we talk to (directors)
Simon Ardizzone and Russ Michaels, who
were already out there filming with Bev
Harris.
Simon and Russ are both very accomplished
filmmakers, and they couldn't get anyone to
commission this either, except that they had
done a very good ten minute piece for
Channel Four News in Britain about Diebold.
Normally, I don't hook up with other
filmmakers but I called Simon, and liked him
immediately on the phone, and just thought,
well, this makes sense.
HBO: Why do you think people have such a hard
time grasping this subject?
Sarah Teale: I think people don't like to even contemplate
how easy it is for people to access our election
systems, and change the vote. I think it's a
very scary concept for people. I mean, how
did they do it? It's a technical puzzle. But the
most basic thing is that, in fact, our election
systems are now privately owned, and
privately managed. And that basic fact does
get people interested.
This all started with Bev Harris finding the
specs for the software on Diebolds FTP site,
and downloading it. So it was out there. It's
just that nobody thought to look. And, she
did. And once she downloaded it, she took it
to Avi Rubin at Johns Hopkins, and to other
computer experts, because she's just an
ordinary woman who was horrified at how
easy it was to access the system. And so Bev
went from there, really. She formed Black
Box Voting , and she went on the road. She
thought, initially, that she would show people
the findings she had come up with, and they
would be horrified, and changes would be
made, and it would all be over. But that isn't
what happened.
She showed Howard Dean how to hack the
vote on Tina Brown's show, on air, and that
was before the last election. But it didn't
change anything. And, that's when she got
really mad, and started these series of hacks
that got increasingly more sophisticated and
complicated to show how anyone could have
hacked the vote.
HBO: It seems like you're not taking a partisan
point of view, but more presenting the facts
and letting the audience decide.
Sarah Teale: Simon and Russ and I decided that we were
going to make a bipartisan film that it is not a
conspiracy theory film. That we were simply
with Bev Harris from Black Box Voting, going
to film the facts. And so she went on the road
trying to alert people about how easy it is to
hack these systems, and find out more about
the companies that control them. We wanted
to keep it factual and non-partisan as much
as we could.
I mean, Bev is diving into dumpsters in this
film, and so there are funny parts where she's
trying desperately to find out the inner
workings of the companies, but the things she
found in those dumpsters were important,
and factual. So, we've been quite careful to
keep it balanced.
The research that was compiled by Bev Harris
and the computer experts who hacked these
systems was recently verified by Princeton
University and the Brennan Center for
Justice. That was then picked up by the
Washington Post, and the Miami Herald, and
the New York Times, and when that happened
people started to really look at this issue.
HBO: One would think ordinary citizens would be
outraged and demand change, and yet it
seems like change isn't coming.
Sarah Teale: No, change isn't coming, I believe, because
people haven't had it in front of their eyes,
and we're hoping that this film will change
that because in this film, you see it. You see
the fact that computer analyst Harri Hursti
was able to hack the code. We set up a
dummy election, and he was able to reverse
the vote. And you see it in front of your eyes.
And I think that's very shocking.
HBO: What do you hope audiences will take away
from the film?
Sarah Teale: When Simon and Russ started out they had
no idea that this film would ever see the light
of day, that there'd ever be any place where it
belonged. And all of us just kept going,
because we felt it was too important to stop.
Simon and Russ have been working on this
full time, with no pay, for many years now.
We've all put in a great deal of time because
we just felt it was too important.
Now, fortunately, there's HBO, which changes
everything. It means that there will be an
audience for this film; it means that there will
be an audience in Washington for this film,
and it will be covered in the press. And that's
changed everything for us, because there's
nowhere else where people are willing to put
this on television, and have a debate.
That's all any of us are asking, is that people
see the problems with the machines, and that
there is a debate about how we can fix this
before it's too late. Before the 2008 elections
which are around the corner. It's already too
late for the midterms, and so we're hoping as
many people as possible see this and that
they will demand honest elections and
changes in the system.
In a larger sense, we should perhaps be
asking ourselves whether our elections ought
to be owned by private companies. And I
think there needs to be an honest look at how
this is working, and not working, and a re-
think.
I think for people since 9/11, and with the
war in Iraq, it's very hard to add on yet
another huge issue. I think people's brains
are almost full up, and can't cope with one
more awful thing going horribly wrong in this
country. And I think that is one of the
reasons why people just can't stand to think
about this. I have friends who say, I just
don't want to know. But I'm going to make
them watch the film, and then they will have
to think about it.
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