Today, Tennessee House Republicans won another round in their assault on free and fair elections in Tennessee. Take it away, Knoxville News Sentinel Nashville bureau chief Tom Humphrey:
The House’s 50 Republicans, including Speaker Kent Williams, united today to give their party control of the State Election Commission.
SB547, which has already passed the Senate, would add two Republicans to the commission, which now has a 3-2 Democratic majority. With the 50-45 approval of the House today, the bill now goes to the governor.
Democrats roundly criticized the bill. For example, Rep. Henry Fincher, D-Cookeville, said it was part of a Republican “assault” on the election process.
House Republican Leader Jason Mumpower, however, said the bill is fair. Republicans now have a majority of legislative seats and control all 95 county election commissions.
Why did they feel the need to change the makeup of the election commission, you ask? Well, because they can. And because they had the “leverage” to do so. Here’s a video of two State Senators threatening the House – either give us two more members and the majority on the State Election Commission or we will let the Election Commission die:
Senator Norris: Correct. It’s moved out of committee. I think it’s on the desk of the floor of the House. And that’s where it met it’s potential demise and I just think everybody should realize if it meets its demise there then the State Election Commission will meet its demise here [Senate Government Operations Committee].
Senator Jack Johnson (Senate Government Operations Committee Chairman): And so what I wanted Senator Norris to address in this committee is, uh, we will roll this for one more week – we hope that next week will be our last committee meeting for Senate Government Operations, so they essentially have 7 days to either deal with this issue or we will be more or less forced to allow the State Election Commission to sunset.
For those keeping score at home, here are the other weapons of mass election destruction in their arsenal this year:
1) The delay of implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (HB0614 / SB0872) State Election Coordinator Mark Goins is leading the fight to keep the paperless touch-screen voting machines we use now in 93 out of 95 counties because they a) can be easily manipulated to change vote totals and flip votes from one candidate to another, b) provide no mechanism for a meaningful recount in the case of close elections, and c) increase the length of time it takes for each voter to cast a ballot thereby suppressing the vote by allocating too few machines in certain areas and creating long lines and long waits.
2) The replacement of all county Election Administrators with partisan Republicans.
Mary: Please explain to me why this is a GOP assault on the election process? If you would do your homework you would learn that in the 1970’s the Democrats changed the law about who controlled the county election commissions. It was divided by the party that carried the county in the presidential race. So some counties were controlled by GOP and some by Dems. The Democrats in Power in the general assembly changed the law just like they did with the Judicial Selection system when a GOP Gov. Dunn won because they saw into the future that our state was turning red. And they admit this if you talk to someone who has been around awhile. Ask John Jay Hooker. The Republicans are only doing what the law allows and what the Democrats have done all along. I am sure you would not blink an eye if the situation was reversed if you would be honest.
I think the verified paper ballot trail is a great idea , but now it is known that the counties cannot afford this process and the state doesn’t have the money. Please be practical. Many Republicans sponsored this legislation originally and then Rep. Gary Moore stole it from them and passed it. Except I don’t think he realized his version was going to have this unintended price tag for the local governments.
The GOP wants honest, fair elections. That is why they are for voter photo ID and proof of citizendship to register. I don’t know if you are from Tennessee, but you should check out the book “The Hopewell Box” it is out of print but you can check it out at the library. This will give you a history on the rampant, blatant voter fraud in Davidson County by Democrats in the Hopewell box in Old Hickory. Everybody–both sides in politics in Middle Tennessee knows about the Hopewell Box. It is legend.
Thank you for the history lesson and for telling me what I would do if the situation were reversed. And I read The Secrets of the Hopewell Box (I believe Book Man Book Woman in Hillsboro Village still has copies). It’s one of my favorite books and a whale of a cautionary tale.
I know that those who count the ballots control the outcome of elections and so I also know that you are missing my point.
House Republicans could have waited until the natural terms of state electioncommissioners were over. They already controlled the county election commissions, so why not, right? But no, they resorted to threats and blackmail so they could – prior to the 2010 Gubernatorial election – control everything related to elections in Tennessee.
They have control of the Secretary of State’s office, the State Election Coordinator, the State Election Commission, and the county election commissions.
So you have to ask yourself, why the urgency to control it all? Again, why not allow the State Commissioners to finish out their terms?
And when they first started out this session the bill to “delay” the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (the paper ballot bill) was a bill to repeal it. And when that didn’t fly they came up with the delay bill (which, in effect, kills it). The Secretary of State and State Election Coordinator only became concerned about the cost after trying 3 or 4 other excuses to gain traction for what they wanted to do with the bill and found that this was the only issue that would stick in the mind of the legislators who were fighting to keep the paper ballot bill intact.
Now, I’ve seen the numbers and it is cheaper to run a paper ballot election than one with the machines we are using now. One obvious way to view this is that each precinct only needs one machine to count paper ballots instead of 4, 6, 8, 10, 20 of the machines we are using know to vote on. That means fewer maintenance contracts and lower storage costs.
Ah…fewer maintenance contracts. Now we may be getting somewhere. Because you can’t seriously believe that printing and storing paper ballots and building privacy screens would be more expensive than the maintenance contracts of, oh let’s say, all the Microvote paperless electronic voting machines that are used in voting precints of at least 45 counties in the state, can you?
Ok, so let’s tally this up again.
1) Republicans control every office connected to our elections – the Secretary of State’s office, the State Election Coordinator, the State Election Commission, and the county election commissions.
2) They want to repeal the paper ballot bill – a less expensive and more fraud proof way to conduct an election. WIth the machines we use now there is no way to conduct a meaningful recount and even more damaging is that using these machines manufacture long lines which go a long way to suppressing the vote (It takes less time to vote on paper than on the machines we use now which would eliminate long lines and the hours-long waits that discourage participation in the process. Manufactured long lines are a tried and true voter suppression tactic.)
3) They attempted to also suppress the vote by introducing photo ID laws and proof of citizenship requirements which, contrary to what you believe, do nothing to combat “voter fraud” because “voter fraud” doesn’t exist. What these laws do, instead, is suppress the vote of the elderly, the indigent, and the disabled.
Doesn’t this all seem a bit suspect to you?
So it seems that your buddies up on the Hill also read Secrets of the Hopewell Box – only they used it as a textbook.
No matter your party or your ideology, we need to all be vigilant about elections. I mean, really, do you want to win by cheating?
They are just trying to follow what is already in the law. Why do Democrats have so much of a problem simply following the law! Damn liberals…
The law is conflicting. One statute says that the commissioners have a set term.
2-11-104. Election of members. —
(a) All members shall be elected for a term of four (4) years, beginning on the first Monday in May 1979.
[...] But first, let’s look at a press release by the Tennessee Republican Party celebrating the Republican takeover of the state election commission as well as a recent discussion going on in the comments section of a recent Liberadio.com blog post (”Oh, Well, if Rep. Mumpower Says it’s Fair“). [...]