Gathering to Save Our Democracy founder, Bernie Ellis sends a time sensitive dispatch, complete with action items. If you want next year’s voter registration drives to have more oomph then get down with Bernie:

Most of you are familiar with the serious concerns and risks associated with paperless voting systems, like the direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines, and their propensity for malfunctioning.

These paperless, non-verifiable voting machines were purchased in 2006 in many of our Tennessee counties with federal funds through the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). These machines have already malfunctioned in Tennessee elections and multiple reviews of the security procedures used in these machines (including one in-depth examination in Shelby County) have produced clear and convincing evidence that these voting systems lack even elemental audit and/or recount capability. The evidence has mounted in the past four years that paperless electronic voting is insufficient for the demands of free and fair elections.

Now that we have had several election cycles with this equipment, the vulnerabilities of these electronic voting machines are quite obvious and require a more secure alternative NOW. Thirty-five states have already acted to change their voting machines to require voter-verified paper ballots (without waiting for the Federal government to act). However, Tennessee is among the 15 states that has not made this a priority. We are also now considered to be one of the eight most insecure states for election integrity in the country as a result of the mistakes we made in spending our HAVA funds.

Senator Joe Haynes and Rep. Gary Moore (among other legislators) introduced a joint bill to accomplish our goals in the 2006 legislature and re-introduced it in 2007, only to have it sent to a Study Committee. The study committee is meeting on December 18th at 1:30 in LP Room 12. In addition, the very influential TN Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) meets on December 12th and will vote on whether or not to recommend the election reforms recommended in the TACIR staff report, “Trust but Verify” [pdf], and included in the Haynes/Moore bills to the Study Committee before which these bills are being considered before being presented to the entire Tennessee legislature.

In the past month, more attention has been drawn to the threats on our election process by the release of the documentary film, “UNCOUNTED: The New Math of American Elections”, by Nashville film-maker David Earnhardt. If you’ve seen this film, you know just how important our efforts are at this moment. If you haven’t seen the film, we strongly recommend that you do so. Additional public showings of the film are being organized throughout Tennessee now so if you’d like to know when and where the film is scheduled or you’d like to arrange a showing, please contact me.

Here are three things YOU CAN DO NOW to help us ramp up the discussion for voter-verified paper ballots and mandatory random audits and perhaps get the very important legislation passed in the 2008 Tennessee Legislative Session.

• Action Task 1 Email or call the members of TACIR. (They meet on December 12 so please contact them right away.) Tell them that you want them to endorse the TACIR staff report, “Trust But Verify”. You also recommend to the legislature that we move rapidly away from paperless touch-screen voting in Tennessee and toward optical scan voting systems that start and end with a voter-completed paper ballot. You also endorse the need for mandatory random audits of those paper ballots to ensure that the opscan systems also count our votes completely and accurately. [Click here for a sample letter Bernie sent to the TACIR Commissioners]

• Action Task 2 Contact the members of the Legislative Study Committee who will review the Haynes/Moore bill entitled: “Tennessee Voter Confidence Act” on December 18. Ask them to support repairing our election process by requiring voter-verified paper ballots and mandatory random audits here in Tennessee as soon as possible, preferably 2008. [Click here for a sample letter Bernie sent to the Study Committee]

  The members of the Legislative Study Committee, which is ’studying’ the Haynes/Moore “Tennessee Voter Confidence Act” are Rep. Larry Turner, Rep. Joe McCord, Rep. Gary Moore, Rep. John Litz, Rep. Jimmy Eldrige, Rep. Susan Lynn, Senator Joe Haynes, Senator Roy Herron, Senator Mark Norris, Senator Tim Burchett, Senator Jamie Woodson.

• Action Task 3 Contact other Tennessee officials NOW to ask them to pay attention to this issue and to act themselves, if necessary, to insure that these reforms are enacted. Here’s a preliminary list of state officials that we should be contacting in some way. I hope each of you will e-mail your thoughts directly to some or all of these officials. In addition, you might want to mail copies of David Earnhardt’s documentary film entitled “UNCOUNTED, The New Math of American Elections” (DVD available online at ) or the postcards recommending that it be watched, to these same offices. I think the post-cards in particular can generate attention to these issues within these state offices and we will be happy to provide them to you and your friends. Call me at 931/682-2864 or send an email with your mailing address and let me know how many postcards you want and I’ll send them right out to you.

  We are asking all of these officials to do the following:

  1. To please give serious consideration to the number of threats which our elections face and to consider what they can do to restore election integrity in our state
  2. To do whatever they can do in their official capacity to help us replace the current non-verifiable voting systems used in most Tennessee counties (touch-screen and push-button voting machines) with verifiable voting systems that incorporate paper ballots (for example, the optical scan voting systems)
  3. To encourage others in positions of responsibility for our elections to expedite the changes necessary to make our elections more secure and verifiable before the November, 2008 elections or as soon as possible, by whatever means available.

  Bottom line: It’s not too late to restore election integrity in Tennessee, but we must act NOW.

  Governor Phil Bredesen
  First Lady Andrea Conte
  Governor’s Office
  TN State Capital
  Nashville, TN 37243-0001
  615/741-2001

  TN Attorney General Robert E. Cooper, Jr.
  P.O. Box 20207
  Nashville, TN 37202-0207
  615/741-3491

  Department of Finance & Administration Commissioner Dave Goetz
  312 8th Ave., North, 16th Floor
  Nashville, TN 37243
  615/741-0300

  Secretary of State Riley Darnell
  312 8th Ave. North, 8th Floor
  Nashville, TN 37243
  615/741-2078

  State Election Coordinator Brook Thompson
  State Election Commissioners
  312 8th Ave., North, 9th floor
  Nashville, TN 37243
  615/741-7956

  Department of Economic and Community Development
  Commissioner Matt Kisber
  Asst. Commissioner Paula Davis
  312 8th Ave. North, 11th floor
  Nashville, TN 37243
  615/741-1888

  Department of Veterans Affairs
  Commissioner John Keys
  215 8th Ave. North
  Nashville, TN 37243
  615/741-6663

  Keep visiting votesafetn.org for more information on our activities. Thanks in advance for any time you take to help us raise the volume for safe elections in Tennessee. Email us with your questions and suggestions.

This post was written by Mary Mancini