Guber Candidate Ron Ramsey takes aim at fair elections.
Last week, Lt. Governor and gubernatorial candidate Ron Ramsey appeared with Republican Secretary of State Tre Hargett and at an event in Kingsport and told business leaders that not only wouldn’t they follow the law and implement the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (TVCA), but delaying it would be a legislative priority during the next session of the Tennessee General Assembly.
Clearly, GOP leadership does not want the voters in Tennessee to have confidence in their elections.
They also clearly want to suppress voter turnout.
I wrote earlier of all the ways in which the Tennessee GOP can suppress the vote (voter roll purging, creating partisan election administrations, baseless accusations of voter fraud, etc.) and why they feel it necessary to do so (“…our leverage in elections…goes up as the voting populace goes down…,” Moral Majority founder Paul Weyrich).
Keeping the 100% unverifiable touch-screen electronic voting machines in Tennessee is simply another tool in their arsenal of voter suppression tactics.
Using electronic voting machines as a tool of voter suppression can be accomplished in two ways:
1) It takes much longer to vote on a touch-screen electronic voting machine than on paper ballot, thereby creating long lines that discourage participation. Only one voter can vote on a machines at one time, but 10, 20, 30, etc. voters can all vote on paper ballots at the same time.
2) The allocation of voting machines, which is controlled by county election commissions (all 95 county election commissions are now controlled by a Republican majority), can be manipulated so that voting precincts in certain areas are allocated too few voting machines, thereby creating long lines which, you got it, discourages voter participation.
Don’t let Tre Hargett and Ron Ramsey tell you that “it’s about the money.” The state has over 35 million dollars in reserve from the federal government that can only be spent on the purchase of new voting equipment.
And don’t let them tell you that there are no machines available to purchase that could count the paper ballots required by the new law. 49 states and two Tennessee counties have already used these types of machines in election after election without incident.
Delaying the TVCA and keeping the touch-screen electronic voting machines we use now is undoubtedly another voter suppression tactic to add to their arsenal
[...] Now Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey continues the tradition of ensuring our elections are anything but secure, telling a Kingsport crowd that delaying implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act would be a legislative priority for him next year. [...]
How would voter suppression benefit the GOP?
BWLIB, this is a red-state… if people stay home its going to be the republicans, not the democrats.
You make no sense.
Ryan, Calling me “Brain washed liberal” inherently dismisses anything I write. You are not only revealing your utter contempt for me but also for anyone who might disagree with you. What kind of manners did your mother teach you?
Leave my mom out of this and answer the question.
Do you think $35 million dollars is enough money to change the way we tally votes in our state?
Mistaken, you are.. if you believe that.
Mary, I didn’t think you could become more irrelevant or impotent.
I was mistaken.
Nice picture. I see little has changed here.
Man, it’s a good thing these comments don’t get personal.
Number9.. I gotta be with the liberals on this one…
At least post your name if you are going to talk about people’s looks.
This has nothing to do with a beauty contest.
I’m hoping that number9 was referring to the picture of Ramsey holding the gun. I like to assume the best in everyone
As for voter suppression helping Republicans, these things can be pretty targeted. But the “help” would certainly be short-sighted.
As to how much money it will take to change the way we tally votes, I have no idea how much it will cost. but $35 mil couldn’t hurt.
I am a fan of the electronic voting booth. It seems like the right way to do it. Having a printable receipt should add the security you’re looking for to run validation tests. What would it cost to do that?
Dan
That is what we have… Mary suggests that we change to a paper ballot..
I guess its so “hanging chads” can be her rebuttal when her candidate doesn’t win.
Dan – Casting a vote on a paper ballot – they are like the tests you took as a kid where you have to fill in a bubble with a pencil/pen – is preferable because doing so records voter intent on the front end. The paper ballots are then counted by optical scan machines.
Casting a vote on a touch-screen voting machine – even if you have a receipt coming out of the machine after the vote is cast – may not accurately record the intent of the voter.
In other words, we have no idea what the vote-counting software inside the touch-screen machine is doing with the vote.
The best part of the TN Voter Confidence Act that Ramsey is so desperately trying to delay is that the paper ballot that records the voter’s intent becomes the ballot of record in the case of recounts or audits.
If this is part of the law, as it is in the TVCA, we have the ability to do a meaningful recount with a piece of paper that recorded the actual voter intent.
A recount using a touch-screen electronic voting machines involves simply pressing a button on a machine, which spits out the same exact total you got the last time you pressed the button. Was the voter’s intent maniuplated by the software (maliciously or not)? We have not way of knowing.
Oh, I have heard what Mary thinks about voting techniques. I’ve been listening to the show for several years! I just happen to disagree with her on this one. I think that her preference is for an optical paper ballot. If this is what we used in Massachusetts, it is a sheet of paper where you fill in circles with a marker as opposed to the famous punch ballots.
What we have is just the electronic booth with no voter-verifiable receipt. This is the step that is missing for quality control checks after the fact. If I remember correctly, the machines that Tennessee purchased were not upgradeable to print out the receipt. And this would mean replacing them rather than upgrading them.
Whoops, posts crossing in the ethernet.
If you get a printout that says who you voted for (without any identifying information), you can confirm that your vote was correct on the paper. Then you run spot checks at a few random locations comparing the paper count to the computer count. If they are the same, great. All good. This should be nothing different from quality control checks based on statistical quality control anywhere.
If you get differences, then you need to look more closely. If the machines captured the voter’s intent correctly the first time, there should be no need for a recount. This is what I like about the electronic voting method. People can’t enter invalid entries. Focus more on the initial vote, and the recount becomes unnecessary. Focusing on the recount is inefficient.
Yes! Mandatory audits or spot checks are equally if not more important and they are part of the TN Voter Confidence Act as well.
The recounts only happen in the case of a close race and all the other recount request procedures are met.
I *might* be able to go with your scenario if the software were open-source. But the machines manufacturers refuse to allow it. All the counting software is proprietary.
Mary, if people aren’t competant enough to push a button, with their intent.. what makes you think they would be competant enough to fill in a bubble sheet? What about people without hands? At least the voting machine gives the ability to use a nub, or a nose..
Mary, do you think the machines are incapable of counting votes.. but the machine that is used to read the paper ballots, is infallable? That makes no sense.
There is a much higher room for error with paper ballots, period.
I guess that is what you want, huh?
That said, we are going to have to agree to disagree on which is the best method going forward but what we can both agree on now is that the system of voting in TN now is not secure nor verifiable.
I think it is very secure, and verifiable..
There are people much more competant at computer programming than either of us that handle this job in a professional manner.
Without that trust.. you will never trust in the voting system.. no matter what.
If you ever saw the HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy” — it can be accessed on YouTube — you saw that it’s possible to tamper with optical-scan systems just like any other machine. Of course, optical-scan machines leave some sort of paper trail, which is good.
I’m not sure why this seems to be a partisan issue. We all have an interest in fair elections.
Dean..
Most of us have interest in fair elections.
Some people feel the need to bring up recounts.. during every election.
With the electorate divided pretty evenly, recounts will probably be the norm for a while.
Even the Obama-McCain election, which was a landslide compared with the two previous elections, was pretty close compared to all presidential elections as a whole. Of course, the two Bush victories were two of the closest in history, and turned on narrow margins in swing states. I think Al Franken asked for a recount and won — and, of course, his Senate seat has proven to be key.
More recounts are coming, and will presumably benefit both sides. Hence, the benefit of paper ballots, mandatory audits and spot checks.
Have a good day, y’all!
[...] as the next threat – delaying implementation of the TVCA as Republican legislative priority (as stated by Lt. Governor and gubernatorial candidate, Ron Ramsey): While Hargett’s statement would appear [...]
[...] as the next threat – delaying implementation of the TVCA as Republican legislative priority (as stated by Lt. Governor and gubernatorial candidate, Ron Ramsey): While Hargett’s statement would appear [...]