LIBERADIO(!)

In anticipation of this week’s House Budget subcommittee meeting (Wednesday, 4/29, 11 am in Room 29), where some legislators will fight to stop a movement by other legislators to delay implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (HB 0614, the paper ballot bill), the Sunday Tennessean will print an editorial by Bernie Ellis of Gathering to Save Our Democracy and Margie Parsley, state action chair for the League of Women Voters of Tennessee:

With a stroke of Gov. Phil Bredesen’s pen last year, Tennessee went from being one of the 12 worst states for election security to one of the 18 states with the most secure election systems in our country. We should all be proud of that accomplishment. It took us three years of study, hard work and perseverance to come to the conclusion that our elections are too important, too vital to the survival of our American way of life, to be left to unverifiable touch-screen voting machines (also called “direct record electronic” machines or DREs) that are easy to hack and impossible to audit.

The Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations recommended [pdf] the move to paper ballots, as did the legislature’s Joint Committee on Voter Confidence. Many newspapers around the state editorialized for this legislation. This was truly a nonpartisan effort, and the success was cheered by all Tennesseans — regardless of political party — who want our votes to be counted as they were cast.

On June 5, 2008, more than a dozen Tennessee citizens joined Gov. Bredesen on the podium when he signed the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (TVCA) — regular people who had worked hard to help save our democracy. On that day, the governor said: “The right to vote is one of the cornerstones of our democracy, and every voter deserves the 100 percent assurance that his or her vote will be counted. I am proud that Tennessee is taking a big step forward in improving voter confidence.” We were proud too, and shared the governor’s belief that the TVCA had made our elections safer and more secure for all citizens. But that was then. This is now.

Now we don’t have enough time to implement (although it’s 18 months until the next election). Now it’s too expensive to implement (even though a single optical scan machine counting paper ballots can do the work of more than 10 DREs). Now we don’t have the money to buy the equipment (we have the same 35 million from the federal government earmarked for buying new machines that we had when the bill was passed in 2008).

The only way to stop the delay is to contact Governor Bredesen (Phone: 615.741.2001, Fax: 615.532.9711, Email: Phil.Bredesen@tn.gov) and your legislators before Wednesday and tell all of them to keep the TVCA intact and on track for 2010.

(You can do a search for your legislator at www.capitol.tn.gov/legislators/.)