Bev Harris

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Bev Harris is the executive director of Black Box Voting Inc., an advocacy group opposed to electronic voting methods based on non open-source code. She popularized the term Black Box Voting.

She first gained national prominence in 2002 when she discovered that Senator Hagel of Nebraska owned a large share of ES&S, a major voting machine manufacturer of the machines that counted the majority of votes in Nebraska. In 2003, she discovered the source code of another voting machine manufacturer, Diebold. Researchers at Rice University and Johns Hopkins University studied the programs she had obtained and found weaknesses in it which made it unreliable, and which afforded opportunities for abuse, such as multiple voting by an individual or changing the vote totals. Diebold officials and state election officials disputed the findings.<ref>Krugman, Paul, "Hack the vote," New York Times, December 2, 2003, pg. A31</ref><ref>Schwartz, John, "File sharing pits copyright against free speech," New York Times, November 3, 2003, pg. C1</ref>

On Tuesday December 13, 2005, Harris was invited by Ion Sancho, Leon County, (Florida) Supervisor of Elections to oversee a test election of one of Leon County's Diebold machines resulting in proof that Diebold machines were not secure and could be hacked and results altered.

Her work assisted by Andy Stephenson to expose security weaknesses in electronic voting systems is featured in an HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy, which premiered November 2, 2006."<ref>[1] "Hacking Democracy," HBO documentary. Retrieved October 16, 2006</ref><ref>[2] HBO Documentary Films. retrieved Nov. 6, 2006</ref>