Hanging Chads and Katherine Harris may be long gone, but Florida’s still having electile dysfunction:

Over 100,000 votes went uncounted in Florida’s November 2006 election — all on the ES&S iVotronic paperless touchscreen voting machines — as described in a recently released report by Florida Fair Elections Center. The report, the result of a year-long investigation by FFEC Executive Director Susan Pynchon and FFEC Research Director Kitty Garber, concludes that it was the failure of the iVotronic machines that resulted in thousands of uncounted votes in the closely-contested November 2006 Congressional District 13 race in Sarasota County–a race that has been the subject of two lawsuits to overturn the results of that election, and which is still the subject of an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Congressional House Administration Committee and the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO).

If “ES&S iVotronic” and “paperless touchscreen voting machines” sound familiar to some of you it’s because 17 out of 95 counties in Tennessee use these machines and, if things don’t go well next week, we’ll be using them again in the November election. ES&S is also the same company that tried to surreptitiously change the contract it had with the state to allow for used equipment in the August 2006 election.

On Tuesday, January 29, the Elections of S&LG (Subcommittee for the House State and Local Government Committee) meets to discuss HB 1256 by Rep. Gary Moore (SB 1363 by Senator Joe Haynes) that would require “any voting system purchased after the effective date of this act to provide the ballot of record be a paper ballot marked by the voter with appropriate accommodation for persons with disabilities; requires such ballot to be available to voter to verify the vote; requires that secrecy of the voter’s choice be maintained.” If it passes the subcommittee then it’s on to the State and Local Government Committee (cue “I’m Just a Bill“).

Please contact the members of the subcommittee before Tuesday and urge them to recommend sending this bill to the committee:

Rep. Eddie Yokley, Chair (D - Greeneville) Email / Phone (615) 741-6871
Rep. Robert Bibb (D - Springfield) Email / Phone (615) 741-3979
Rep. Joey Hensley (R - Hohenwald) Email / Phone (615) 741-7476
Rep. Curtis Johnson (R - Clarksville) Email / Phone (615) 741-4341
Rep. Ulysses Jones (D - Memphis) Email / Phone (615) 741-4575
Rep. John Litz (D - Morristown) Email / Phone (615) 741-6877
Rep. Steve McManus (R - Cordova) Email / Phone (615) 741-1920
Rep. Gary Moore (D - Joelton), Email / Phone (615) 741-4317

This post was written by Liberadio(!)