Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Optical Scan Voting "Insanity," Says Election Commission Head
Posted by Jackson Baker on Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 1:29 AM
The Voter Confidence Act passed by the Tennessee General Assembly in 2008 is a creation of “the liberal wing of the liberal party” and a “bad idea,” according to Bill Giannini, the chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission.
In particular, said Giannini in the course of remarks Monday night to members of the Southeast Shelby Republican Club at Perkins Restaurant on Germantown Parkway, “it would be insanity to go back to paper ballots.” As Giannini noted, the law mandates statewide voting in 2010 by optical scanning machines — a process in which paper ballots are read and tabulated electronically, with the originals maintained for possible recount purposes as a “paper trail.”
The paper costs by themselves would be “astronomical,” said Giannini, who argued further that to carry out the mandate next year requires state-of-the-art optical-scanning devices certified by both the state and federal governments and that” no such animal” exists.
Giannini, a former chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party, thus concurred with arguments made by state Election Coordinator Mark Goins and by Secretary of State Tre Hargett. Both are Republicans who ascended to their offices as a consequence of Republican victories in 2008 legislative races that gave the GOP a majority in both houses of the legislature.
The Voter Confidence Act has been stoutly defended by leading Democrats, including state House Majority Leader Gary Odom of Nashville and state Democratic Party chairman Chip Forrester, who maintain that Republicans are using sham arguments to delay implementation of the Act.
Giannini contended that even the Democratic members of the local Election Commission agreed that to try to implement the act next year would be impractical, but he said the commission had” no choice but to comply” without emergency relief by the legislature.
The electronic voting machines now in use in Shelby County are acceptably accurate, argued Giannini, who maintained that to rig a vote with them would necessitate “a conspiracy of unbelievable magnitude.”
Another immediate concern of the local commission is to update voter rolls, which still contain the names of numerous deceased people, according to Giannini. He said there might be “forty or fifty thousand names” that shouldn’t be on the rolls for one reason or another.
Yet another priority is to create at least two new early voting sites in eastern Shelby County, Giannini said. He maintained that the current pattern of 12 “Democratic” sites and 6 “Republican” sites is inequitable.
Giannini also advocated stricter voter ID measure to prevent fraud, and called for Republican pollworkers to volunteer for deployment at inner-city precinct locations. He was optimistic that instant runoff voting, approved in a countywide referendum last year, could streamline elections and curtail expenses but said implementing such voting would not be feasible by next year.
On the big issue of the day, whether and when there will be a special election to succeed Mayor Willie Herenton, Giannini acknowledged that Herenton had apparently informed media people on Monday that he'd be leaving the office on July 30, but there was still a hitch.
"We can't do a thing until we get certification from the City Council of the minutes of their last meeting," he said. Giannini referred to the meeting two weeks ago at which the council officially declared a mayoral vacancy as of July 31. An effort to pass a "same-night minutes" resolution failed by one vote, however, and, as the Election Commission head said at the time, "that ties our hands."
Comments (3)
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Here are several points for Tennessee voters to consider:s:
1. The top state election officials is a partsian and is elected by the system that he overseas, this is a conflict of interest. Elections should be overseen by non partisan officials.
2. Mr. Giannini may be a nice person and good administrator, but he clearly has an overtly partisan background and should not be overeaing elections for "the people". There are many qualified people to run elections, and they should always be servants of all of the people, not 50% or fewer.
3. Mr. Giannini is using rhetoric that is easily disproved - using paper ballots is NOT insanity.
If you treat elections as you would treat business transactions, then you would expect to have a paper backup in the event of computer failure or else fraud.
It is crazy to have democracy depend on paperless voting machines.....North Carolina saw one voting machine lose 4,400 votes in the Nov 2004 election. This caused the outcome of a statewide contest to be undecided. It took about 1 year to get that contest settled, and it was thanks to one candidate dropping out.
If North Carolina had paper ballots (as used with optical scan) that contest would have been decided in a matter of days.
4. Mr. Giannini misleads the public in saying that paper ballot elections would cost too much. The truth is that Mr. Giannini's paperless DRE/touchscreen machines are far more expensive to own and operate than the paper ballot system. (The reason is that with the touchscreens, you need one voting machine per voter while voting, and this means needing multiple machines per polling place.)
The NC Coalition for Verified Voting, in 2005 - completed a study of annual expenditures of the election departments of four North Carolina counties. The study covered a 6 year period. We found that the cost of using touch screen voting or direct recording machines in Guilford and Mecklenburg county was about 30-40% higher than the cost of using optical scan equipment in Wake and Durham county. This means that not only are touch screens more expensive to acquire, they are also more expensive to operate year after year.
One factor that may explain why having touch screens cost so much more than optical scanners is because the county has to own and maintain so many more machines. We estimate that one optical scanner can count handle six voter?s votes a minute (or 360 per hour) as they are cast but because it takes a voter at least three minutes to vote with touch screens, it would take 20 touch screens to perform per hour as well as optical scanners. Additionally, touch screen machines use thermal paper ballots - both require special handling and climate controlled storage. Justin Moore, of Duke University Computer Science Department found that counties using touch screen machines required 20% more poll workers, and about 10% more precincts.
A true cost comparison of voting machines cannot focus just on ballot printing costs. All of the Boards of Elections costs must be considered. This includes staff salaries, staff benefits, training expenditures, equipment programming, maintenance, storage, advertising, printing costs, postage and storage.
See the cost per voter per year comparison for a 6 year period here at this link
http://www.ncvoter.net/affordable.html
5. The argument about the voting system standards is a matter of opinion and I believe a distortion of the intent of the lawmakers.
6. North Carolina implemented its paper ballot law within 8 months of passing the law. This included certifying voting systems, inviting RFPs, evaluating those RFPs, reviewing bids, accepting bid and vendor's bond plus CEO affadavit, bringing new voting system to central location for testing, then sending machines to counties for further acceptance testing. Law passed end of August 2005, new machines used in Primary in April See: 2006.http://votingnews.blogspot.com/2009/07/att…
7. Paper ballots/optical scanners produced a lower residual rate for President than did DRE/touchscreens in the Nov 2008 election according to this study of vote data:
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/Lindeman_…
So voters and taxpayers both are better off with paper ballots optically scanned.
Getting the law implemented boils down to will and also to competency. North Carolina has highly competent and skilled election officials. Does Tennessee?
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Joyce pretty much covers everything here, but I don't think you can emphasize enough that Bill Giannini is so outrageously partisan he has no business whatsoever overseeing elections. We desperately need to modify the constitution to alter the process whereby men such as Mr. Giannini are able to achiece such positions of power.
If Mr. Giannini is serious about cleaning up the electoral rolls, I highly suggest he start, not with dead people, but with people who have moved to the burbs. My parents are STILL on the election roll in thier precinct and they moved away over ten years ago. I even wrote to the Election Commission and was told there is nothing they can do unless the voter writes and informs the commission that they have moved away. Who does that? God knows how many people living in Desoto County are still registered to vote in Tennessee.
Bill,
This is Dennis, an old friend of Bernards.. from the music days. I hope you find this reply.
How do you explain the fact that Prinction university easily hacked each and every voting machine? The videos are easily viewable on Youtube. A paper tail of my vote is the least the election commisison can give me. I dont trust the computers 100%. If ONE can be hacked, they ALL can be hacked....and i think the shelby county volunteers are stellar for giving thier time, but most are as old as moses and would not recognize one had been hacked, i trust many still have trouble setting the clocks on thier VCR's!
Paper trail of my vote is mandentory, not a thermal recipt barfed out by the machine its self.
Again.. Google the Prinction Hack.. see for yourself.
Dennis
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