LIBERADIO(!)

Not the Tennessean Editor.

Please do not take this personally, Tennessean Letter to the Editor writer John Henderson, because no one is impugning your integrity as a poll worker or the decrying the unsung hard work you do every election day. But to say that the 100% unverifiable electronic voting machine system we use to vote on in 93 out of 95 counties could only be compromised by a “well-organized effort by the entire group of poll workers” is to give yourself as a designated poll worker too much power.

Think about it this way. You wrote in your letter that though the machines “are computer based, each machine produces a paper tape record for each election. This tape must be certified by the precinct officer and two other workers at the start of the voting day, and again at the end of the day.”

“Additionally,” you say, “the total votes cast must be reconciled against the total number of ‘Application to Vote’ forms received, one signed by each voter and verified by the registrar.”

All of that is true. But you neglected to mention how the votes are tallied inside the machine. And you probably did so because you, like the rest of us who do not have access to the secret software used to count the votes, have no idea how they are counted.

We don’t know if votes are being flipped. We don’t know if one candidate is automatically getting every third vote despite who it is actually being cast for.

Although we may know, because of the systems in place that you describe, that the number of votes cast match the number of people who came in to vote, we don’t know how each of those votes is being counted.

In other words, our votes are being cast in secret, as they should be, but they are also being counted in secret, which violates the most basic rule of a free and fair election.

I invite you, John Henderson, any other election worker or official, and State Election Coordinator Mark Goins, to offer evidence that any vote ever cast on any of the electronic voting machines we use now, during any election, has ever been recorded accurately, as per the voters’ intent.