Yesterday’s New York Time’s Magazine cover story, Can You Count on Voting Machines?, offers valuable and in depth coverage of electronic voting machines and the threat they pose to the foundation of our democratic process - our right to vote in free and fair elections. This important and non-partisan issue (there are just as many Republican election and elected officials concerned with this issue as there are Democrats) is finally making it’s way into the mainstream.

In Tennessee, 93 out of 95 counties use electronic voting machines with no voter verifiable paper trail. That means there is no way to be completely sure of an accurate tally or recount in the event one is needed.

This Thursday, January 10, the legislature’s Voter Confidence Act Legislative Study Committee will meet to discuss the findings of the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) report, “Trust But Verify,” which recommends that to improve election integrity in Tennessee we move away from electronic voting machines and replace them with paper-based optical scan machines. Now is the time for them, and us, to act.

Please contact the members of the Study Committee and urge them to move fast so that we may have optical scan machines in place prior to the November 2008 election. Urge them to support SB 1363 (Senator Haynes), HB 1256 (Representative Moore), legislation that will mandate that all voting equipment in Tennessee use or produce a voter-verified paper ballot and that statewide random post-election manual audits be conducted to verify the vote count. Ask them to make sure this is done prior to the November election. You can find all the information you need to act immediately, including email addresses, phone numbers, and talking points at http://www.votesafetn.org.

A couple of things to remember because the Election Commission and perhaps even some legislators will tell you the opposite - there is time to implement these changes before November and we do have the money. 35 million federal dollars allocated through the Help America Vote Act are available and waiting for this very rainy day. It is estimated that cost of replacing the machines in all 93 counties is 12 million, with another 12 million to be spent to help those voting who special needs.

I mean, really, if Tennessee legislator Jason Mumpower wants the balls back because he doesn’t trust computers to pick our lottery numbers, how can he possibly trust them to accurately count our votes?

Also, One of Nashville’s own, filmmaker David Earnhardt, has produced a marvelous and timely documentary on the subject that tells the story of how the issue of election integrity and electronic voting traveled from the fringes to the mainstream due to the hard work of some local activists as well as the bravery of whistleblowers throughout the country. These are the stories of citizens who recognized the threat to our franchise and chose to do the right thing. David’s film, Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, will be have two screenings at the Belcourt Theatre on the Monday, February 4, 6:30 and 9:30, the night before Super Duper Tuesday.

This post was written by Mary Mancini