I think the people have spoken. Voters in Shelby like the touchscreen. Jeff and Joyce obviously have no voting history knowledge in Shelby County. If their counties or states actually have the problems referenced, then their counties/states should defnitely switch methods or commissioners. In Shelby, we have not had those problems. Our commission was deligent and professional when instituting touchscreen voting in 1998. We have seen no shift from the normal voting pattern -- TN goes one way and Shelby goes another

Our Commission, like the other 94 election commissions in TN, was Democrat-controlled and had been for decades when touchscreens were introduced.

Shelby had 403,000 votes in the November 2008 election, I cannot imagine how big that stack of paper ballots would be or how much it would cost to store them for the required 2 years. Those experienced in voting matters do not think there is "plenty of money" available to institute paper ballots.

Unlike bank transactions, votes are confidential and CANNOT be connected to a person. Bank transactions definitely need to be linked to a person's record.

It is very sad that we send our military into harm's way to help give others the right to vote in fair elections, while Tre Hargett and his ilk continue to do the opposite to the citizens of Tennessee.

What I find most disturbing about Mr. Holden's editorial is what he leaves out.

Nowhere in his editorial does he mention that the touch screen machines we use now simply do not work. They are broken and as such they cannot be trusted to record the votes of Tennesseans accurately.

Recently we’ve seen an example how these machines malfunction (vote flipping) during the special election last month in Williamson County. And we’ve seen countless other instances of these machines malfunctioning since 2006.

The broken machines even made Newsweek (”Short-circuiting the vote”, November 2008) and the NY Times (”Can you count on voting machines?”, January 2008) and in October 2008, the Brennan Center for Justice, the non-partisan public research and law institute, sent a letter telling the Secretaries of State in 16 states that the machines didn’t work.

Nor does Mr. Holden address the importance of giving Tennesseans secure and accurate elections or how continuing to use these broken touch-screen electronic voting machines inherently diminishes that importance.

The people of Tennessee deserve secure and accurate elections, not broken machines, and any election administrator who refuses to replace these broken machines is failing in his trusted pursuit to give the people of Tennessee true access to the democratic process.

This from Black Box Voting:

Memphis: Candidates in Memphis asked Black Box Voting for help securing public records from the Aug. 3, 2006 election. Black Box Voting recommended getting a copy of the Diebold GEMS database, along with the Windows event log. What we found shocked us: The sheer number of legal and security violations in the event log were horrifying, and it also showed that Shelby County — or someone — was accessing the file during the middle of a Temporary Restraining Order prohibiting this.

- A remote access program called PC Anywhere was found resident in the system

- Evidence of insertion of an encrypted Lexar Jump Drive was present

- Evidence of attempts to alter or write HTML files (used to report results) was present

- Apparently without a firewall, the GEMS system was opened up to the County Network

- A prohibited program, Microsoft Access, which makes editing the election chimpanzee-easy, was installed on the system AND USED shortly after the election.

To read more about Memphis, click here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1…

No, Mr. Republican happy-talk man, there have never been any problems in Memphis!

Shannon Williford
Nashville

Mr.Holden's concern seems only about money. Meanwhile voters are waiting for the system that will give them the assurance of a actual paper trail of their important vote. The electronic voting machines have been shown everywhere to be unreliable and possibly hackable and mainly unverifiable. Tennessee's lawmakers have seen the problem and have mandated the change to paper by 2010...stick with it.

Mr. Holder writes as if he is unaware of the fact that there are massive data showing that DRE voting machines are unreliable. They have been shown to be susceptible to electronic malfunction and willful manipulation to produce a desired outcome. The votes recorded on a DRE may or may not be those that the voter intended and there simply is no way for them to be checked. No one can watch the counting of votes on an electronic voting machine. That is why Tennessee passed the VCA and most other states have switched from DREs to optical scan machines whose vote counts can be checked by having the paper ballots counted by humans who can see how the voter intended his vote. It is distressing that those entrusted with the accuracy of our vote totals choose to ignore such evidence. Phil Schoggen, Nashville

Holden's initial premise - "if it ain't broke" - has been demonstrated to be way off the mark by all credible studies of DREs, his $12 million cost estimate far too high and his claim of the delaying impact of one opscan per precinct without merit. For substantiation, see comments below by Bernie Ellis, Joyce McCloy and Jeff.

So much self-serving, sinister stupidity -- so little space to respond.

I am glad that the Memphis Flyer will publish a response to Mr. Holden's uninformed and ill-advised column. Until then, here is another response to some of the more nonsensical statements in his piece. (I will put Holden's comments in quotes, with my response following).

"(The TN Voter Confidence Act) seems to clearly call for purchasing optical scanning devices, certified by the Elections (sic) Assistance Commission, that can meet the 2005 standards required by federal law ...."

While Holden and the other sock-puppets for Secretary of State Tre Hargett keep repeating this big lie, the truth is that the TVCA requires no such thing. It does require purchasing equipment that meet "applicable" voluntary federal standards. Since no voting equipment has yet been certified to the 2005 voluntary standards, it is difficult to understand why anyone would hold us hostage to requirements that cannot be applied. At present, all 50 states use optical scan equipment in at least some of their jurisdictions (including Pickett and Hamilton counties in Tennessee), and none of them use equipment certified to 2005 standards (because none exists). Why can every other state find and use "applicable" optical scan systems, but Tennessee cannot. Maybe it is because only Tennessee is cursed with Secretary of State Tre Hargett, who seems hell-bent to keep our elections unsafe and unverifiable in Tennessee.

Re: the two paragraphs that follow "We estimate the costs ...."

Switching to paper ballots counted by optical scan machines will be 30-40% cheaper to utilize than our current unverifiable touch-screen equipment. How do I know? Because multi-year studies in North Carolina, Maryland and Florida (which have compared counties with optical scan voting vs. DRE voting, or have compared county election expenses in the same counties before and after they discarded DREs for safer, faster and cheaper optical scan equipment) have provided definitive proof of the cost savings.

Using optical scan equipment requires 70% less equipment than we use now and, even with less equipment, voters can vote faster (10 to 15 times faster) than is possible on DREs. We did a simulation here in Tennessee comparing two groups of 21 voters, the first voting on paper ballots counted by opscan and the second voting on DREs. Even though the amount of time it took voters in each group to complete their individual ballots was identical, all 21 voters in the paper ballot/optical scan group were finished voting in 13 minutes (all of them), while it took the DRE group 2 hours and 48 minutes for all voters to complete their voting. (I would be happy to provide documentation for any of the above if readers will email me.)

The "ballot on demand" drivel in this section of Holden's op-ed is equally misleading. Since current TN law requires that enough paper ballots be printed to serve 105% of registered voters in a precinct in major elections (even though we have almost never had more than 80% of voters in any TN precinct show up to vote in any election), it is highly probable that we can conduct elections without ever using a "ballot on demand" system -- something that is not called for in the TVCA. I agree that we could save money by printing a more realistic number of ballots, but that is another issue unrelated to the TVCA.

Finally, the TVCA will require two voting machines per precinct -- an optical scan machine and a ballot-marking device for disabled voters -- both of which will be paid for in all Tennessee counties by the $35+ million in federal money sitting idly in the Secretary of State's account. Thus, neither Shelby County nor any other TN county will have to pay a dime for new equipment.

"The optical scanner machines actually offer little difference in the way votes are tallied."

That's like saying that since elephants and donkeys both breathe air, there is "little difference" between them. To make such a statement, Holden has to disregard the facts that paper ballots/optical scan voting is cheaper, faster and safer than voting on DREs. It is true that optical scan machines are also electronic, software-driven devices and thus susceptible to some of the same problems that DREs encounter. That is why the TVCA also mandates a manual recount of paper ballots in randomly selected precincts to verify the accuracy of the optical scan machines (primarily as a deterrent to tampering with these devices also). In Shelby county, our most populous county, that would mean manual recounts in only three or four precincts, a post-election task that will take about an hour to perform. Little difference between systems? No one whose feet are firmly planted in the reality-based world could make such a statement.

"The outcry from voters in favor of paper ballots is nonexistent. The outcry from candidates and elected officials is also nonexistent."

To make this statement, Holden must have been hiding under a very big rock for the past few years. Thousands and thousands of Tennessee voters communicated early and often with our state legislators to demand that the DREs be scrapped in favor of paper ballots and optical scan voting. That loud and persistent uproar (which some legislators have told me was unprecedented in their experience) is a major reason why the TVCA passed with a 92-3 vote in the House and 32-0 in the Senate. In addition, if Holden had been able to access any Memphis media at all under his big rock, he would know that there have been at least three lawsuits brought in your county since DREs were introduced related to the obvious security and unverfiability problems with the equipment. (Again, I'm happy to provide citations for this statement.)

Every real American, regardless of her political persuasion, wants free, fair and verifiable elections. Rather than being nonexistent, almost all Tennesseans want our votes to be counted as they were cast, and consider nothing more important than an accurate measurement of the "consent of the governed". If Holden knows no real Americans, I would be happy to put him in touch with the thousands of Tennesseans who support democracy. He has only to ask.

"We are currently using the most accurate, secure and state-of-the-art voting system in Shelby County."

Well, no. Shelby county was the only TN county whose election officials were stupid (or corrupt) enough to purchase their DREs from Diebold. That "state-of-the-art" voting machine company has undergone three name changes since 2006 and was cut loose from its parent company (whose main business is making ATMs) because the failures of its voting equipment were dragging the parent company's stock into the basement. Diebold (or Premiere or whatever they are calling themselves this week) cannot now sell its DREs to anyone, even though they have dropped the cost from over $3,000 per machine to around $500. Wonder why?

If Shelby County's three year old DREs are so state-of-the-art, why do they now have a resale value of $0. Maybe it is because Fortune magazine (hardly a left-leaning media outlet) selected DREs as the worst new technology of 2003. Here we are six years later and yet that fact still hasn't sunk into the consciousness of some of our Republican leaders. (I say "some" because I know there are many Republicans who -- like their Democratic, Libertarian, Green, and Independent neighbors -- support verifiable elections in Tennessee and elsewhere. I know, because I used to be one of them.)

Bottom line: there is only one real reason why some Republicans are fighting tooth-and-nail to keep our elections unsafe and unverifiable in Tennessee and that is because DREs are giving them the results they want. In a state where 8% more voters identify themselves as Democrats than Republicans, I don't blame them (though I would certainly prosecute them). After all, they know who (or what) their real "base" is, and how important it is to maintain an easily hackable system if their illegitimate stranglehold on our state's political institutions is to be maintained. All my Republican neighbors are unafraid to compete on a level playing field when it comes to accurately measuring the consent of the governed. Of course, neither Holden, Hargett nor any of the other sock-puppets for unsafe elections live near me.

I may be tolerant on most issues, but on this one, I am not. That puts me in some pretty good company. Tom Paine once said "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery. For slavery consists in being subject to the will of another. And he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case." (First Principles of Government, 1795). If he were here today, Mr. Paine (known affectionately during the American Revolution as "Common Sense") might update one of his other famous quotes to read "It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government (and from self-serving, sinister, stupid, (s)elected election officials)."

Who did your voting machine vote for? If Holden and the other sock-puppets have their way, you will never know. Keep the TVCA intact and on-track for 2010.

Bernie Ellis, Organizer
Gathering To Save Our Democracy
tracevu@bellsouth.net

The bi-partisan vote for paper ballots, that could be scanned in to be counted, was almost unanimous in the TN legislature. It is interesting that the ant-safe vote became partisan this year from the party that gained power using unsafe, hackable touch screen voting machines. One wonders, also, what influence all that money left over in the Tennessee HAVA account has on the vendors who sell the touchscreen machines [DRE's]. There is a great push to replace broken voting machines with the same discredited machines that nobody wants. Tennessee may be one of the last markets for DRE's. We have the funds`already allocated to rectify the terrible mistake of voting on machines that break down, loose votes that cannot be recovered, and cause long lines because of their limitations. Let us insist that the Secretary of State obey the law and implement safe and open voting.
And let us stay involved in our precious right to vote and to oversee the counting of the votes.

I suggest letting Joyce write the reply column.