Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Tennessee Secretary of State Says Up-to-Date Voting Machines Available for TVCA But Costs Still Prohibitive
Posted by Jackson Baker on Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 2:20 AM
- JB
- Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett
The good news first: “I think we’ve got a 2005-quality machine,” Hargett said in Memphis Tuesday night. Meaning that an optical-scan voting apparatus with paper-trail capability would soon be available in enough quantity to conduct statewide elections in 2010.
“Maybe two months,” said former Bartlett state representative Hargett, who was in town to address the annual Master Meal of the East Shelby Republican Club, along with Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey and state Treasurer David Lillard.
Hargett would go on to identify the apparatus in question as one about to be marketed by Unisyn Voting Solutions, a California-based company. Assuming Hargett’s estimates of availability to be accurate, the existence of the Unisyn device would seem to allay one of the Secretary’s persistent doubts about being able to implement the TVCA in 2010.
Hargett and other skeptics had questioned whether machines meeting 2005 standards of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission would be available in time to meet the 2010 deadlines imposed when the authorizing legislation for TVCA was passed in 2008. He and state Election Coordinator Mark Goins had been reluctant to fall back on the 2002-vintage machines that Nashville Chancellor Russell Perkins recently ruled would be adequate to the task.
“But this has always been about the cost to the various counties,” said Hargett, keeping to the second focal point of his resistance to immediate implementation of TVCA — that many of the 93 Tennessee counties currently not employing optical-scan devices would be forced to appropriate ruinously large expenditures to retrofit, amounting to some $11 million statewide — this despite the availability to the state of some $25 million in federal funds for the purpose, provided under HAVA (the Help America Vote Act of 2002).
“The real question is if there are other costs required of the counties. We can purchase the machines, but that’s all we can do,” Hargett would say in his remarks to the GOP audience, implying the existence of other logistical expenses beyond the federal funds available, but not elaborating.
And now the bad news for TVCA advocates: Hargett as much as said that the Act’s chances in 2010 ranged from dubious to nil. He noted that in the waning days of the 2009 legislative session, a measure to delay implementation of TVCA passed the state House and failed of passage by only one vote in the state Senate, largely due to absences of key senators.
“I understand that the Senate is going to go back in January and take the necessary steps to protect the taxpayers, throughout the state,” Hargett said. “But we’re going to be prepared to implement that law, no matter what.” In his remarks to the Master Meal audience, he did not mention the imminence of the Unisyn machines but said the state was prepared to lease 2002-vintage machines, if necessary.
Acknowledging that the TVCA issue had settled into a partisan battle, with Democrats pushing for immediate implementation and Republicans including himself predominating in the opposition, Hargett attempted some irony, noting that the voting machines in the 93 Tennessee counties without them had been purchased by Democratic election commissions under a system of Democratic election administrators. (Until the Republicans acquired a legislative majority in both houses in the 2008 statewide elections, all county commissions were dominated by Democrats under state law.)
“Either they think that I’m gong to take these election machines that they were honest with and steal elections. Or they’re telling me that they were stealing elections, and now I’m gong to turn around and do the same,” Hargett said.
Comments (23)
Showing 1-23 of 23
Why wasn't Hargett wearing his brown uniform replete with red arm band? He's a worthless, weasel and should be put out on the curb with the rest of the trash next to the current voting machines. There is ab-so-freaking-lutely NO reason to delay implementation of the TVCA. Can we bring him up on treason charges if does not do so?
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The TVCA is a giant waste of money and opens the door to massive voter fraud. Hargett is a hero for standing up against it. The legislature shouldn't just delay it, they should repeal it.
The TVCA is a check against voter fraud, in that there will be separate electronic and paper tabulations which can be checked against each other. Defrauders would have to tamper undetected with both. That is why over 26 states have passed similar laws, and about 30 are using optiscan statewide as a practical matter. Once again, Tennessee is lagging behind the rest of the nation.
I just looked up Unisyn on the 'net, and the description of their parent company's mission (International Lottery and Totalizator (huh?) Systems) does not include any mention whatsoever of voting systems. Google the company's name (but don't spell-check it first.)
There are at least three problems with Master Tre's latest comments in Memphis (besides the fact that he speaks as our Secretary of State):
1) Master Tre continues to frame the honest elections debate as requiring 2005-certified machines, when the recent court decision that Tre and his flying-monkey minions continue to ignore states that this "requirement" was invented from whole cloth. Every other state in this union has acceptable optical scan voting machines certified to 2002 standards (and I expect none of them have a "Totalizator" feature.)
2) Master Tre continues to use the totally debunked "having honest elections will cost our counties $11 million" agit-prop when the figures he based that statement on are so ridiculous (e.g., one county said it would cost $70,000 to store a single filing cabinet of ballots, several counties said it would cost them $5/ballot to hand-count a few hundred ballots for the random manual audit (a task that costs other states a nickel/ballot to conduct), etc, etc, ad nauseam) that not even Republican legislators believe them anymore. (Well, at least not those who live in a reality-based Tennessee.) Our own analysis of costs (that moving to honest elections will actually save our counties $10-$14 million a year) seems to be both understood and accepted by many legislators. Senator Doug Henry got the legislature's Fiscal Review staff (in the Senate Finance committee hearing on the effort to delay the TVCA) to acknowledge that they had simply accepted the nonsense numbers from Master Tre without question and had done nothing to independently verify that merde (pardon my French).
3) By saying that there is only one company that can supply us opscan machines, Master Tre introduces another argument that some legislators have stated publicly as a reason to oppose reforms -- namely that the legislature should not pass any bill that gives a single company a monopoly on state business. (That is one argument that I actually think has some merit and thus -- even though it is also completely bogus -- it adds more fuel to the honest elections bonfire that Master Tre keeps building.) Of course, there are perhaps a dozen companies that can sell us acceptable opscan machines. We know that and I am sure Master Tre does too.
I do give Master Tre credit for one thing -- he learned his "staying on point" debate style well (no doubt from the Joseph Goebbels School of Governance) and demonstrates the intellectual and patriotic vacuousness of that strategy in a democracy that, heretofore, has been based on free and open debate. If the forces of election fraud in Tennessee (which is beginning to look like Somalia-in-the-South) had any valid arguments for delaying democracy, I do believe all of us would listen. This isn't about valid arguments anymore -- it is about keeping our elections unsafe and tamper-prone, at all costs.
One final point -- Master Tre is absolutely correct that the election commissions of Tennessee counties were controlled by Democrats when 93 of those counties bought the unverifiable voting machines (that now are worthless because no democracy worth its salt -- and the blood shed to keep it free -- wants them anymore.) However, he neglects to mention that all those county election officials were selected by State Election Coordinator Brook Thompson; that they were required to attend training at the Election Center, a Texas operation established and funded by the same companies that manufacture these unsafe machines; and that they were required to sit through indoctrination year after year by the director of that same Election Center at our state's annual meetings of election officials, at Brook's behest. This just goes to show that, exactly like these unverifiable voting machines, sometimes it is necessary to "corrupt" only one public official (or to find one who is already corrupt) to dismantle the bedrock of American democracy. (Just where is Brook Thompson these days, and how deep is his Cayman Islands tan?)
Free, fair and verifiable elections are not a partisan issue -- they are the bedrock of our country and they always have been. Our group, Gathering To Save OUR Democracy, has based our election integrity activism for the past five+ years on a nonpartisan premise that honest elections serve ALL OF US well. That is why we have members from all political parties in our midst. We need every Tennessee voter -- regardless of political persuasion -- to demand that Master Tre respect the law. Or we need to find someone who can. Surely, the Tennessee Republican Party, once so well-known and respected nationally for its voices of moderation and intelligence, can find someone left in their party who has not been gagged with tea-bags. (I am communicating with some of those honorable Republican leaders myself, and I hope to see some evidence from them soon that their patriotic backbone is worth my support, and my vote, in 2010.)
Otherwise, we might just have to follow Tom Paine's admonition that "it is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government". (Since "terroristic" statements like that have earned me visits by the TN Bureau of Investigation at Master Tre's instigation in the past, I will put a fresh pot of coffee on in anticipation of another visit).
Save our democracy -- keep the TVCA intact and on-track for 2010.
Bernie Ellis, Organizer
Gathering To Save OUR Democracy
tracevu@bellsouth.net
Let's be clear here. Hargett has now acknowledged (as he must) that the TVCA can indeed be implemented on time for 2010 as the law requires, without any real logistical or technical problems, and with ample funding for the machines themselves.
The unspecified burden on counties is a red herring. Hamilton and Pickett Counties have been doing this for years without undue costs.
More important, it’s not the Secretary’s job to second-guess the Legislature on policy. If they’d implemented TVCA all along as they were supposed to, we’d already see that it was feasible without undue cost.
This has been a consistent pattern of delay and obstruct, ignoring the law and waiting for the GOP Senate to save them in January. They went around the state for a year saying the law required unobtainable 2005 standards, despite the fact that proponents pointed out the law never says anything about 2005 standards. It took a lawsuit and a judge's ruling to get them to stop saying this.
We have a similar pattern on the county level. The local Election Commission promised a timeline for TVCA implementation back in May, and have yet to produce one. Some of the GOP folks at that shop talk about their personal policy objections to TVCA, overlooking the fact that their job is to faithfully implement the law, not second guess the Legislature.
I think it's pretty clear. With secure systems in 2010, they're going to lose their thin majority, and they know it.
Tennesseans deserve the chance to have fair and accurate elections.
So I have to ask, which would you prefer, paperless electronic voting machines that count votes using secret software that the good folks of Tennessee aren't allowed to even see (let alone monitor), or paper ballots that give the citizens of the state something tangible to oversee, recount, and audit?
The power for accurate elections should be in the hands of the people of Tennessee, and the people of Tennessee want paper ballots. That's why the original legislation to give us paper ballots (plus mandatory random audits and the paper ballot as the ballot of record when recounts are necessary) originally passed almost unanimously in the TN General Assembly - that means that 56 out of a possible 59 Republicans voted for the TN Voter Confidence Act in 2008.
It truly was a bi-partisan effort.
The bill to delay the TN Voter Confidence Act that will most likely be voted on in January of 2010, not only delays the date the Act must be implemented (until 2012) but also guts the mandatory audit procedures.
But audits are important, as The Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR), who spent over a year studying the vulnerabilities of different voting systems, stated in their comprehensive report, Trust But Verify: Toward Increasing Voter Confidence in Election Results, TACIR: “(Paper ballots) reassure voters that their vote is being counted accurately and can be audited or recounted….. Governmental entities and private corporations are routinely audited regardless of whether problems are suspected. With so much at stake, the same should be true for elections.”
As for the money, it is much less expensive to conduct elections using paper ballots.
Which sounds more expensive to you - having to populate a precinct with 8, 10, 12, 20 paperless electronic touch-screen voting machines (machines that have to be programmed, updated periodically, maintained, stored and transported (maintenance contracts anyone?) or having only one machine per precinct (an optical scan that counts the paper ballots)?
I just noticed, the GOP elephant logo in that photo is incorrect. The stars are upside down.
In the offical GOP logo, the stars point down, in the traditional Satanist/ Freemason/Illuminati pentagram of magical power.
Is Tre also trying to hide the Republican party's Satanist roots? Enquiring minds want to know if he's ever kissed a cat's anus or ridden a billy goat in the woods at midnight.
Jeff, I have two questions for you. 1) Do you believe Tennesseans deserve fair and accurate elections? and 2) Which would you prefer, paperless electronic voting machines that count votes using software that the good folks of Tennessee can't see or monitor, or paper ballots that give the citizens of the state something tangible to oversee, recount, and audit?
SOS Hargett should contact the North Carolina State Board of Elections, to learn how this is done.
The NC SBoE worked with lawmakers to submit a HAVA plan that allows for the use of some HAVA funds to assist in ballot programming and some printing. This helped our counties alot when we ditched paperless machines in 2005.
North Carolina is a state where we have appointed election officials, who have a job as long as they do a good job, its not political and we don't hire our elections officials by voting for them. This way, we avoid the ditch to ditch scenario seen in so many states where the SOS runs elections.
We do have bi partisan BoEs for each county and one at the state level.
Joyce McCloy NC Coalition for Verified Voting
www.ncvoter.net
Jeff I think that in order to truthfully answer your question, you must clarify "ridden a goat". Too much ambiguity there.
Hey Merc, I guess I can ask you the same questions I asked Jeff and perhaps between the two of you, one of you will answer.
1) Do you believe Tennesseans deserve fair and accurate elections? and
2) Which would you prefer, paperless electronic voting machines that count votes using software that the good folks of Tennessee can't see or monitor, or paper ballots that give the citizens of the state something tangible to oversee, recount, and audit?
Mary, I think it's easy to tell that I am most definitely in favor of the paper trail. It is the only way to insure fairness and transparency. There is no way that the current system is safe especially with reports of the various remote PC access programs that have been found loaded in them.
Hargett is a puppet of the uber, goose stepping, fringe right. I have met him on more than one occasion. He was selected for the SOS position because he would lock step with the rest of the right wing fringe movement. His being in the position that he is in and doing everything within his power to delay the implementation of the TVCA is violation of the rights of every citizen in the state, hence the venom I feel whenever I see or hear him.
Those of us, who agree that the SOS and his ilk are against free and fair elections along with our belief that Tennesseans deserve to vote on paper ballots that can be scanned by a speedy and efficient opti-scan device, must contact our legislators and inform them that we demand the immediate implementation of TVCA. Let us talk with our local election commissioners and let them know that we are concerned and why. Impress upon them the improved efficiency of paper ballots scanned quickly by one opti-scan machine rather than having to set up and maintain many unreliable touch screen machines. Insist they pressure the SOS to implement TVCA. Call, write, fax, email! It is up to us. We can't sit around and let our voting rights be denied. Are we intelligent, brave, and free citizens of Tennessee, or are we sheep? So, fellow citizens, let us do our civic duty and make sure that our public servants obey the law.
I am a former election administrator and I must make a few corrections.
Fact: Brook Thompson did not appoint or pick any election administrators.
Fact: According to the statutes, the State Election Commission and the County Election Commissions have a political composition which is controlled by which party has the majority in the legislature.
Fact: Election Administrators, one per county, are appointed by County Election Commissions. No where in the statutes does it specify this is a partisan appointment.
Fact: County Election Commissions are appointed by the State Election Commission who are mandated to "consult with legislators" who represent each county.
Fact: The State Election Commission is appointed by the legislators.
Fact: Even though the legislature and the county election commissions were controlled for many, many years by democrats, I know for a fact that not all Election Administrators were Democrat. The Republicans who were not directly involved simply assumed if the Democrats had control they would only appoint Democrat Administrators of Election.
Fact: It is true that many Administrators lost their position because of their voting history, and were replaced by persons who are Republicans. This was done even though the Attorney General issued an opinion in early April which stated that dismissal of Administrators of Election on the basis of party affiliation should not be done.
Fact: The major cost that the counties would be responnsible for are the ongoing costs, and some other initial costs which would not be covered by the grant money.
Fact: While it seems logical that one opitical voting machine would cost less than multiple electronic machines, there will be the cost of printing the ballots and storing the ballots. There are multiple ballot styles which are determined by the offices on the ballot. For example some offices are elected by voters only in certain wards, districts or precincts. I don't think it is easy for most people to imagine how large a space it will take to secure prior to an election. After an election ballots have to be stored at least 6 months,ballots with federal offices have to be stored securely for 21 months.
Fact: The space needed to store the optical scan machines and the ballots will be larger than the space required to store the electronic machines.
Fact: I do not know any election administrators who do not want secure, safe elections and who do not want the voters to be confident in the voting system used.
Fact: There is a mandated system of checks and balances that includes documentation to verify the integrity of the voting machines and the elections.
That is for any voting system used in the counties.
Fact: The electronic machines were not chosen by the counties in order to "steal" elections. Many election commissions were run by members of both parties working in a cooperative effort with one goal....safe and secure elections. They were not run by sheer dominance of the controlling party.
Fact: Electronic machines can be and are audited. They have the results stored in more than one place and in more than one format. They simply don't issue a paper receipt when the voter casts his ballot. Electronic machines have an accuracy check which is the candidates and public can attend.
Fact: Each election produced documentation to verify the integrity of each election held, and are public record.
The above facts to not mean that I am against optical scan machines. Each voting system has pros and cons. The legislature has passed the TVCA and if not amended or repealed, the counties must implement the optical scan systems.
I want to thank the anonymous former election administrator (1voter1voice -- nice pseudonym, BTW, though it would be nice to know your real name) for her/his thorough and far-reaching comments. It gives me a chance to correct one phrase in my earlier long-winded post, to point out a few places where we disagree and -- most importantly -- to focus on our agreements.
But to begin, thank you for your past service to democracy in Tennessee (regardless of how you vote personally). I hope you didn't lose your job in the recent purge of seasoned and experienced election administrators we have suffered statewide in favor of reich-wing, true-believin' flying monkeys who now hold the keys to our elections in too many counties, thanks to the wicked witch from West Tennessee, Master Tre.
First to my correction of the only phrase I would take back from my earlier post. As you point out, I misstated when I said that "... all ... county election officials were selected by Brook Thompson ...." I, too, am aware of the selection process and know that Brook is just at the end of a long procedure for selecting those officials. However, if I had stated instead that "... all ... county election officials were persuaded, and heavily influenced, by Brook Thompson ....", I don't think we would disagree.
My major point of disagreement with your post has to do with the auditability and verifiability procedures for the DREs, which you covered in your last three or four "facts". Those existing procedures focus only on the extent of match between the number of people who vote and the number of votes recorded. They do nothing whatsoever to determine (as a matter of policy and procedure) that the machines counted the votes correctly as they were cast. The DREs in a precinct could be incorrectly (or intentionally) calibrated to switch every single vote cast (or every tenth one) and the existing audit procedures would have no way of catching that "glitch". With paper ballots, all we need do is recount (manually) the ballots to determine if the vote totals reported for each candidate by the opscans match the votes that were recorded (and cast) on the paper ballots. No muss, no fuss, no question --- and no paper trails anywhere. Paper ballots, paper ballots, paper ballots -- that is what we are talking about, and have always been talking about.
We also disagree that honest elections (using paper ballots and opscan, coupled with the random manual audits) will cost us more to implement. As Mary Mancini pointed out above, multi-year studies in other states (Florida, Maryland and North Carolina among others) have documented that paper ballot/opscan elections are, year in and year out, 30-40% cheaper to implement than elections that use DREs. That is the basis for our estimate that implementing the TVCA will save our counties between $10-14 million per year, rather than costing them an extra $11 million, as the merde mound of nonsensical numbers collected (with Master Tre's helpful coaching) would lead us to believe. Until, that is, you actually look at the nonsensical numbers behind Tre's estimate, and the well-documented fiscal impact studies that are available from states that are now where we want to be once the TVCA is implemented. Please don't take my word for this. You or anyone else can email me (tracevu@bellsouth.net) and I will send you as much documentation as you desire that proves that paper ballots/opscan/manual audit voting systems are faster, safer AND cheaper than keeping our current equipment.
As far as the costs for paper ballots that require different ballot faces with different races, what you neglect to mention is that every TN county already uses paper ballots -- the absentee ballots. Thus, we are already paying for the ballot construction costs for these paper ballots now. Printing many more ballots adds only small marginal costs. In fact, the more ballots that are printed (as with almost any other printing job), the lower the unit costs will be.
Now let's focus on where we agree.
We agree that the best election administrators have the experience, the intelligence and the commitment to administering elections in a completely nonpartisan fashion -- attributes that are necessary to protect and preserve our democracy.
We agree that a decision orchestrated at all levels by the TN GOP in a fashion that would put most federal RICO organized-crime cases to shame caused too many of these qualified and honorable election administrators in Tennessee to lose their jobs once Master Tre took the helm.
We agree that Master Tre seems disdainful of the rule of law in leading this purge, and in ignoring the admonition of the courts to stop inventing excuses for delaying democracy and GET WITH THE TVCA PROGRAM. I sincerely hope that you were not one of the honorable and experienced TN election officials who lost your job, but my guess is that you are. My condolences, to you and to the honorable institution of election integrity.
We agree that "... the legislature has passed the TVCA ..." We also agree that a continued dead-ender effort to " ... amend or repeal ..." the TVCA is in the offing, In fact, it is being bandied about quite openly by Master Tre and Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, as if subverting the consent of the governed in our state was something to be proud of, as if facts, patriotism and honor mean nothing anymore in our fair state.
Finally, we agree that we have lost good public servants like you and (as an intended result) we are about to lose the very foundation for the legitimacy of our government -- an honest ballot box.
It would be nice for us to be able to debate -- in as many open forums as possible statewide -- Master Tre on the merits of our position and the merde of his. But I see that Master Tre only crawls out from his hiding place when he can speak to friendly audiences (the East Shelby Republican Club -- talk about home cookin'!). In fact, we don't even have to debate. Since all else has failed to persuade Master Tre of the treason of his position, I'd be willing to wager this entire exercise in saving our democracy on an arm-rasslin' contest between this 60 year old man and that twinkly eyed election theft enabler, Master Tre.
Of course, to do that, Master Tre would still have to grow a pair of balls.
"It is the duty of the patriot to defend his country from its government." Thomas Paine
"I'd be willing to wager this entire exercise in saving our democracy on an arm-rasslin' contest between this 60 year old man and that twinkly eyed election theft enabler, Master Tre.
Of course, to do that, Master Tre would still have to grow a pair of balls."
I like your style Mr. Ellis! Care to run for office? Need a second for the arm-rasslin contest?
Hello 1voter1voice,
Can you substantiate this statement with actual numbers:
"Fact: The space needed to store the optical scan machines and the ballots will be larger than the space required to store the electronic machines."
For example, what would you estimate to be the cubic footage needed to store the scanners and ballots from a single precinct? How does that compare with the cubic footage needed to store touch-screen equipment for the same precinct? Exactly how many ballots and machines are needed for an average precinct? What are the measurements of each type of machine, and of bundles of ballots? Is it possible to store paper ballots securely inside the ballot box of the optical scan machine itself?
Thanks for any information you can provide.
A hard-copy record of our vote is our right. I know that Republicans prefer electronic voting machines because they're easier to manipulate, but for actual democracy a paper ballot is the only way to go.
Give us our paper ballots NOW!
SOS Hargett has found a machine that meets 2005 VVSG, even though many do not interpret the law to require that. GOOD then, now even the SOS admits there's no excuse not to implement it.
Unless SOS Hargett gets the machines properly implemented and pronto, then
"A perfect storm is brewing for Tennessee voters for the 2010 election."
Tennessee is set up for an election debacle, thanks to the states’ reliance on paperless electronic voting. Currently 93 out of 95 counties in Tennessee use these machines.
...
Tennessee already has warning signs of an election meltdown to come:
In the past two years, Tennessee voting machines have flipped votes, disappeared votes, cut off candidate names, omitted candidate names; run out of memory mid-election, and one voting machine even went up in smoke and perhaps votes with it.
...
Several states have enacted paper ballot laws successfully
North Carolina saw increased transparency and lower residual vote rates. Florida’s Governor Charlie Crist took the bold step to restore integrity to Florida’s elections by swiftly banning paperless voting and implementing paper ballot optical scan systems across the state, increasing confidence in the system and lowering costs to administer elections. New Mexico banned paperless voting and also saw their undervote rate decrease.
Despite the citizens’ overwhelming support of Tennessee’s paper ballot law, the law has not been implemented. There is funding and time to enact the law. $37.1 million in HAVA money is still available according to Tennessee’s Office of Legislative Budget Analysis. Of this amount, only $25 million will be needed to purchase the necessary equipment. Despite the fact that Tennessee needs to move now to get ready for the 2010 elections, nothing has been done. Enough is enough.
Tennessee voters should tell Secretary of State Hargett to implement the paper ballot law in time for the 2010 elections. Tell him that you want an election system free from inaccuracy, malfunction and fraud. Contact Secretary of State Hargett by email at tre.hargett@tn.gov or better yet, call the SOS office at (615) 741-2819
http://twi.cc/ttJq
Responding to HTMLDON, the TVCA is not only not a waste of money -- it's an absolute necessity if democracy in Tennessee is to have any real meaning beyond inflammatory talking points on Fox News.
Fact: DREs count votes in secret which goes against our right to observer that count publicly. The only paper they generate is a summary total of what the machines have already tabulated internally. The voter receives no indication that their individual votes were counted correctly. This undermines public confidence in the process.
Fact: Optical Scan systems require dramatically less machines that DREs so how could they possibly take up more space than say, the 600+ DREs Davidson County alone is required to store -- not to mention thousands of other DREs in county warehouses across TN. I would have to see definitive proof that the number of boxes of stored paper ballots per county would cumulatively offset that gain in warehouse space.
Fact: Ballot costs can be dramatically reduced by NOT just depending on the monopolistic practices and price gouging by the voting machine vendors, but actually putting ballot printing process out to bid to the multitude of printing companies across our state.
Fact: Fewer Opscans versus DREs mean a serious SAVINGS in reduced maintenance costs and software update fees to voting machine vendors.
You get a receipt when you buy a burger and fries; isn't your vote more valuable than that? Or are the people of Tennessee really content to drop their vote into a black hole and assume that there's absolute certainty that it will be counted?
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