Okay, so remember 2008? Remember how the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act – which would replace the crappy paperless touch-screen voting machines we use to vote on now with paper ballots by the 2010 election – passed nearly unanimously in the General Assembly session that year (hint: possible only with broad bipartisan support)? Then remember Election Day? When the Republicans took control of both houses of the General Assembly for the first time since Reconstruction, allowing them to appoint a new Secretary of State, which they did? So what, we feel the need to ask, changed in one year’s time to dramatically reduce the price of secure and verifiable elections to the point that paper ballots are no longer a priority and the whole thing has become a highly partisan issue? We await Republican State Election Coordinator Mark Goins’s next answer because the ones we’ve gotten so far aren’t good enough.
Tomorrow, May 6th, the bills that would delay implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act until 2012 (read: delay it into oblivion) will be heard in both a House Subcommittee and a Senate Committee.
SB872 will be heard in Senate Finance at 8:00 am in Room 12 and HB614 will be heard in the House Budget at 11 AM in Room 29.
Please consider coming to one of the hearings because, as you know, there are strength in numbers. We also urge you to email (don’t forget to put your zip code in the subject line!) and call your state legislators as well as Governor Phil Bredesen before tomorrow morning and ask them to keep on the straight course to secure elections and implement the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act by 2010.
- Read What You Can Say [pdf]
- Find Members of the House Budget Subcommittee
- Find Members of the Senate Finance Committee
- Find
Your Legislator - Contact Governor Bredesen
Visit VoteSafeTN.org or search “Tennessee Voter Confidence Act” on the Liberadio.com site for history of the legislation as well as a list of the reasons [pdf] why we should move forward to rid ourselves of paperless unverifiable touch-screen voting machines (DREs) and get paper ballots by November of 2010.
[...] the Senate and House versions of the bill to delay implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (which would give voters in Tennessee paper ballots by November 2010), SB0872 and SB0614, were [...]
[...] Liberadio updates us on the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act So what, we feel the need to ask, changed in one year’s time to dramatically reduce the price of secure and verifiable elections to the point that paper ballots are no longer a priority and the whole thing has become a highly partisan issue? [...]