E-Mail This Article to a Friend SPOOKY BOX Democracy ex machina BY ADAM REILLY

With the advent of electronic-voting machines, Bev Harris has become a kind of voting-rights oracle. Her message is simple: the increasing reliance on electronic voting poses a grave threat to American democracy.

How does Harris know? Two years ago, while doing some research on Google, the Washington State resident stumbled across an open Web site that contained highly sensitive technical information for voting machines manufactured by Diebold, the Ohio-based company at the center of the electronic-voting debate. More recently, Harris cooperated in a lawsuit that claimed Diebold concealed known equipment problems prior to the March primary elections in California. (The company agreed to a $2.6 million settlement.) Harris now runs Black Box Voting (www.blackboxvoting.org), a nonprofit dedicated to monitoring electronic-voting problems, and recently published Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century (Talion).

This Saturday, Harris will issue a clarion-call warning at the Friends Meeting House in Cambridge. Earlier this week, she gave the Phoenix a preview of what she’ll say.

Q: What’s so bad about electronic voting?

A: Well, the machines typically count the votes in secret — in other words, inside the ballot box. And that goes for whether you have paper or not; you can’t see what they’re doing when they count the votes. Given the procedures that surround them, even when you have paper, as you do in Massachusetts, you can’t really do any kind of meaningful audit. Our democracy was not designed so that just two observers and an election official get to see what’s going on. It was designed so that we the people get to verify the election.

Q: Have elections been stolen as a result of voting-machine malfeasance?

A: Oh, most likely. They’re just simply easy enough to tamper with, and are accessible to enough people, that it’s almost inconceivable that they haven’t stolen elections. What we don’t know is exactly where, and what the scale of it is.

Q: Do you think the results of the 2004 presidential election were altered?

A: It certainly could be, but we probably won’t ever know, because it’s so difficult to audit. And I will also say I think it’s equally likely that the [Democratic] primary could have been manipulated, because it’s the same machines. What people don’t really get is, if the machines are vulnerable, it doesn’t make any sense to only use that vulnerability one time and with one candidate. It would give you a much safer situation if you could control a few different variables, such as who the election supervisor is. And that’s also an elected position in many areas.

Q: Are you more suspicious of manipulation by one party?

A: I think it is equally a problem with Republicans and Democrats. That’s an unpopular position to take nowadays. But the evidence we have is that both in procurement and implementation of the systems, there are problems equally in Democratic and Republican areas. But it also stands to reason that one party might be more skillful than the other [chuckles].

Neither party has stepped up to the plate. When it comes to real reform that can open up the process, and make it once again in the control of the people, both parties have pretty much just changed the subject. Republicans tend to change the subject to voter fraud, but that’s such a cumbersome way to manipulate votes. It’s just stupid, quite frankly. If you can change 100,000 votes at a time over a telephone line, why would you go out and pay 100,000 guys $5 each to vote? Democrats like to focus on voter suppression, which is a real problem. But they don’t like to talk about the huge vulnerabilities with optical scans and touch screens.

Q: Why not?

A: Both parties have been inappropriately involved in the money trail. They’ve been much too chummy with lobbyists, and have sometimes taken payoffs. It’s very much like money. If you have a bank, and the bank can get away with saying, " These bank-account statements that we’ve been sending out to everyone are right most of the time. Don’t worry about it. You can’t really see for yourself, but trust us, " you’re going to have bad behavior. It’s just the nature of the beast.

Bev Harris speaks at Friends Meeting House, located at 5 Longfellow Park, in Cambridge, on Saturday, May 21 at 7:30 p.m. A $10 donation is suggested. For more information, call (617) 524-2223.