Who? Where?

“That is where fraud occurs, not with machines.”

Actually, fraud can occur with both systems. That’s why when we do get paper ballots citizens need to be vigilant about monitoring the process itself as well as the chain of custody of the ballots. That’s why the counting is done at the precinct – in the view of citizens, press, poll workers, etc. – instead of moving the ballots back to a central location for counting.

“Show me elections in Tennessee that have been “tainted” by the use of touch screen machines!”

That’s the whole point. We can’t. We have no idea what goes on within the machines. The counting software is secret – we can’t see what it’s doing.

“What is the justification to trash the millions of dollars of machines purchased in 2006 in order to purchase millions of dollars of counting machines in 2010?”

We want to know that the intention of our vote is recorded accurately. We want secure and verifiable elections.

“The optical scan machines are not voting machines, people will be marking paper ballots that are then put through an optical scan to be COUNTED. Those optical scan machines are software operated computers!”

That’s right. But also written into the law is a mandatory audit process of hand-counting some of the paper ballots that will allow a random check of the counting machines. Also written into the law is that the paper ballots become the ballots of record in the case of a close election or a recount.

“This is a foolish waste of taxpaper money in a very critical time in Tennessee.”

The money we have to implement the TN Voter Confidence Act – 35 million – are federal dollars that was given to us to use for buying election equipment. It can be used for nothing else.

How can you say that ensuring secure and verifiable elections a foolish waste of tax payer dollars? Does democracy mean that little to you?