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Saving Democracy Through YouTube
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YouTube isn't just for silly lip-synching anymore -- the upload giant is turning out to be one of the last, uncorrupted bastions of pure democratic ideals.
In less than two years, the site has featured government whistleblowers, caught more than one politician putting his foot in his mouth, and just last week, hosted an alarming expose on the dangers and vulnerabilities of electronic voting machines.
As The New York Times reported on Sunday, a Princeton professor and his students conducted an experiment -- currently viewable on YouTube -- that shows how easy it is to hack into the Diebold-made AccuVote voting machine. The video has already been viewed more than 20,000 times.
Either pick the lock (one graduate student could do it in 10 seconds) or simply unlock the screws on the back of the machine to get inside, then replace the memory card with a virus that can create a predetermined outcome. With the right software, the whole hack couple be accomplished in a couple minutes. In the University's election experiment, George Washington gets the most votes, but the computer counts his rival, Benedict Arnold, as the winner (no doubt a bit of Princeton humor).
While Diebold continues to resist any outside accountability or tests for its machines, state governments, researchers and, with the help of YouTube, voters continue to grow more skeptical.
