This comedy/drama is good insofar as it goes, with comedian Tom Dobbs (Robin
Williams) finding he is running to become President of the USA. A joke,
which became his reality.
But the move has one major flaw (to my mind) and that relates to the whole
basis of electronic voting - itself a question of lack of a paper trail, in
real life.
The Presidential Ticket, in the movie, goes thus -
( ) Kellogg
( ) Mills
( ) Dobbs
The movie centres around a glitch in the computer program, as suspected by
an employee of Delacroy. Eleanor Green (Laura Linney) thinks something is
wrong, and tries to tell the boss. But the boss, and his lawyer, (having
too much to lose), subsequently try to shut her up - and they'll stop at
nothing.
As you canl see above, the three names have double letters in them, and
the supposed fault in the system leads to the computer latching onto this,
and allocating numbers by alphabetic order on such basis - BB, GG, LL. I
suppose this relatively simple flaw is for the benefit of us viewers, lest
we fail to understand a more subtle ruse.
But we, as BASIC operatives, would know that any INPUT would use names as
mere on-screen labels, while denoting the three numeric variables with
appropriate letters (a,b,c). The collation of a vote count for each
variable would be a simple programming task. No way would any spelling
anomaly be involved.
Certainly, it would be possible to devise a program which could subvert an
honest system. For example, if a>b>c, then take some of the count from one
or two, and add it to the third, But even that would be easily spotted.
In real life, it is inadvisable to entrust any electronic voting system
entirely to one company, or even one system - unless constantly audited.
As voters press a button (against candidate of choice), some finger-print
recognition of index finger could be involved, as a check, and to match one
person to one vote.
Yes, a good movie, but for this one oddity.