Accenture Targets Black Box Voting with DMCA Cease and Desist

In June 2012, Accenture Global Services Ltd took legal action against Black Box Voting, a nonprofit election integrity organization, by filing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown demand. The company sought to suppress public access to its deeply flawed voter registration software, which Black Box Voting founder Bev Harris had published online for transparency purposes.

Flawed Voter Registration Software Exposed

Accenture had sold its “ESM” voter registration and voter history platform to multiple U.S. states and counties. The system performed so poorly that Colorado outright refused to pay for it. Other jurisdictions, including Wisconsin and Shelby County, were forced to purchase the underlying source code just to patch it into a functional state. Despite these well-documented failures, Accenture attempted to charge Colorado approximately $20 million for the software, with similarly inflated fees burdening taxpayers elsewhere.

Critical Security Vulnerabilities Discovered

Analysis of the exposed software revealed alarming architectural weaknesses. The entire system was built on Microsoft Access database tables plagued by broken joins and a complete absence of referential integrity. Perhaps most concerning, the platform was vulnerable to hidden Visual Basic or Java scripts that could be executed from any machine connected to the network. Security researchers concluded the system could not be secured without a total architectural redesign.

Among the documented anomalies were instances where the software doubled or tripled reported vote counts for certain voters, predominantly in suburban Republican-leaning precincts. The system also exhibited a pattern of altering voter party affiliations and erasing voter history records without authorization.

DMCA Takedown Mirrors Previous Diebold Censorship Attempt

The legal tactic was not without precedent. In 2004, Diebold Election Systems filed a similar DMCA takedown notice when its voting system vulnerabilities were published. That effort backfired spectacularly when Diebold was hit with punitive damages for abusing the DMCA to suppress material published in the public interest.

Accenture issued its cease and desist through hosting provider Rackspace on June 22, 2012, demanding removal of the published software by June 27. Harris indicated she would comply with the timeline not because the claim had merit, but to focus resources on the upcoming election season. By that point, the software had already been widely mirrored across the internet following coverage on Slashdot and by international researchers.

Corporate Secrecy and Offshore Tax Havens

Further scrutiny revealed that Accenture Global Services operated from offshore jurisdictions, initially based in the Cayman Islands. Critics pointed out that this corporate structure served dual purposes: avoiding U.S. tax obligations while simultaneously shielding ownership details from public scrutiny. The use of a tax haven as a corporate base raised additional questions about accountability for a company handling sensitive election infrastructure.

Hacking Democracy Documentary Validates Concerns

The vulnerabilities in election technology that Black Box Voting sought to expose were extensively documented in the Emmy-nominated 2006 HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy.” Directed by Simon Ardizzone and Russell Michaels, the film followed Bev Harris and associate Kathleen Wynne as they investigated electronic voting irregularities from the 2000 and 2004 U.S. elections, with particular focus on Volusia County, Florida.

The documentary demonstrated multiple methods for tampering with Diebold Election Systems machines. The most significant was the “Hursti Hack,” discovered by Finnish computer security expert Harri Hursti, which proved that election results could be altered by modifying only a memory card. No passwords, cryptographic keys, or access to the broader voting system were required.

Independent Verification Confirmed the Vulnerabilities

When Diebold dismissed the hack as fraudulent, California Secretary of State commissioned scientists at UC Berkeley to investigate. Their report confirmed unequivocally that the attack was real, stating that Hursti successfully changed election outcomes by doing nothing more than modifying memory card contents.

Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho, who facilitated the testing on actual voting equipment used in Tallahassee elections, stated afterward that without knowing the manipulation had occurred, he would have certified the fraudulent results as a legitimate vote count.

The hack exploited a fundamental design flaw: the Diebold Accu-Vote system used standard Microsoft Access databases that could be opened and edited outside the voting program without any authentication. Even when jurisdictions disabled direct Access database editing, researcher Dr. Herbert Hugh Thompson demonstrated that a simple Visual Basic program could bypass those protections entirely.

Industry Pushback Failed to Suppress the Evidence

Diebold President David Byrd pressured HBO to cancel the broadcast, calling the documentary inaccurate, though the company admitted no one from Diebold had actually watched the film. HBO refused to pull the program from its schedule. The documentary went on to receive an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Investigative Journalism in 2007.

This article is based on reporting originally published by Black Box Voting and information from the HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy.” All factual claims are attributed to the sources cited.