I demand a recount in District 62. Too bad that’s impossible.
It’s as if the two people responsible for ensuring fair elections in the state of Tennessee – Secretary of State Tre Hargett and State Election Coordinator Mark Goins – took all the votes from yesterday’s special election, counted them secretly in a smoke-filled back room, announced the results, and then burned the ballots so no one could ever count them again.
In the year 2000 (almost 10 years ago!), Microvote, the company that provides paperless electronic voting machines to two of the counties that make up District 62, Bedford and Rutherford, described the “miracle” that is their products’ recount feature:
Counting the ballots is as simple as pulling the memory cartridge out of the unit (it’s a smart card in the new Infinity) and inserting it into a reader hooked up to the PC handling the vote tally. Recounting can be just as simple; MicroVote maintains that the Florida recounts that dragged on for days could be done in a morning on a MicroVote system.
What’s most important about the recounts: “We’ve had many recounts up here in Lake County, but nothing where the machine vote ever changed,” Fajman says [Michelle Fajman, supervisor of elections in Lake County].
That’s right! The recount from the machine never changes. And that’s not a good thing considering we have no idea if the voter’s intent was correctly recorded by the software in the first place. And if the voters intent was not recorded correctly we will never know because Hargett and Goins, the guys running our elections, are not allowed to see the proprietary software – a.k.a. the secret secret smoke-filled back room – that counts the votes.
The Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (the paper ballot bill), which was passed almost unanimously in 2008 by both the House and Senate and which Secretary of State Tre Hargett says we cannot implement, would allow us to vote on paper ballots thereby capturing the actual intent of the voter. Optical scan machines would then count the paper ballots. In case of a recount, the paper ballot would become the ballot of record.
And yeah, you might actually get a different total when recounted – but it would be accurate.
Mary, you are crazy… absolutely nuts.
Why in the world would you want to go to a system that requires recounts? That is so moronic. If we have a system in place that records and tallies votes accurately.. no recount is needed.
Just like a liberal to whine about something that is nearly flawless.
If someone doesn’t vote properly with the big names and huge buttons (or place on the screen to touch), that is their fault.. they would do the same thing with a paper ballot, and more than likely a worse thing, like not vote at all.
If the people that are voting for your candidate so often doesn’t get their vote in properly.. you need to teach them how to use the machine.. NOT try to change a system that works.
[...] District 62 Jump to Comments Mary Mancini tells us why we really don’t know which candidate won the special election in District [...]
Please prove to me that one vote cast during an election on the machines we use now has been counted accurately. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
You might want to call Tre Hargett and ask him if he can prove it as well.
Or, conversely, Mary, prove that they were counted inaccurately.
I said it on Twitter already, but it bears repeating: the Democrats bought these machines. What does it say about *them* that now, all of a sudden, the things are flawed? To me it suggests that insiders know they can be tampered with, and that they might have tampered with previous election results.
The fact of the matter is that Tennessee Democrats LOST in 2008, and this is just a shiny little lure that people are casting into the water, hoping people will bite, because the Democrats’ campaign apparatus pretty much fell apart (or, at any rate, is still licking its wounds).
Further, Mary understands that next year, in November, her cronies aren’t going to have a cold chance in the bad place of being re-elected. She is starting this paper ballot thing now, so she can use it as an excuse when her candidates lose.
“Or, conversely, Mary, prove that they were counted inaccurately.”
I can’t! That’s the whole point! We have no idea how the votes are being tallied. None. Zero. Zilch. No clue.
“I said it on Twitter already, but it bears repeating: the Democrats bought these machines. What does it say about *them* that now, all of a sudden, the things are flawed?”
Never made a mistake, eh? People were crowing about the problems with these machines since 2002 and they were called “paranoid” then. The only difference between 2002 and now is that most of the rest of country realized their mistake and followed through with replacing the 100% unverifiable touch screen voting machines. Tennessee Democrats did the same thing – they were still in control when the Voter Confidence Act was introduced and passed in 2008 – but it took Republicans taking back control to stall fixing that mistake.
This has nothing to do with winning and losing. It has to do with votes being counted as cast.
Don’t you want to know that the vote you cast for your candidate was counted correctly?
I guess I just have more faith in technology than you do. In short, yes. I think you’re being paranoid.
Ryan, I want the person who got the most votes to win. I want the democratic process to be free and fair. I want the citizens of Tennessee – R, D, and I – to be vigilant about the integrity of electoral process. I want there to no longer be a shadow of doubt over the results of every election conducted in Tennessee. This is not about winning or losing. This is about the very fundamentals of our democracy.
I can take losing. I am willing to study election results to figure out why we lost. But what’s the point of studying the results of an election if we can’t be sure of the results?
I’ve written before that if you hold an election, cheaters will come. But why start out with a system where no one can see how or even IF the votes are being counted correctly?
This is our democracy. This is no time to bury your head in the sand because you “have more faith in technology.”
And just how many times has your computer crashed this day? Week? Month?
Mary.. you are such a hypocrite.
This is why.
You say you want people to be vigilant about the integrity of the electoral process. In the same blog you are telling people that our voting process is flawed.
If you want to fix our voting system, get behind the system that we have. If it needs small changes, let’s make them. There is no reason to throw these machines that we spent billions of dollars on, just to please you. If we need a paper trail with this.. it can be added.
Going backwards isn’t going to change anything. As someone previously stated, the margin of error with people doing bubble sheets, is extremely high. Ask someone that grades ACT tests.
The best way for us to handle votes is with the least number of people touching them. People make many more mistakes than computers.. wouldn’t you agree?
Mary, computers crash due to their operators.. not due to themselves.
Just because I’m not running around screaming like Chicken Little doesn’t mean my head is buried in the sand.
And, for the record, neither of my computers – laptop or work terminal – have crashed in the year I have owned my personal or the months I have been at my new position, nor has my BlackBerry.
Now, if this isn’t about Democrats being behind statewide in the 2010 outlook, but this, as you suggest, about “our democracy,” and the problem has been ongoing since 2002, have you been blogging about this for the past seven years? Just curious. Because right now it looks to me like the out-party is throwing whatever it can at the majority, hoping that something sticks.
@stackiii, welcome to the party. Mary has been passionate about this for as long as I’ve been listening (over 3 years). I maintain that her focus on recounts is incorrect, but her concern over correct vote counting is valid.
I still say that the best system will have a paper receipt that can be confirmed by the voter, then used for spot-checks of the system. All the same? All good. Something doesn’t add up? Now there’s a problem. The issue right now is that we operate entirely on faith in programmers. I don’t know about you, but I’ve see programs do some weird things in my day. Hardware too.
Finally: Mary, I don’t think that your last sentence makes sense. If it was counted the same way both times, but came out differently, how would we know the second count was accurate?
oh snap… Dan disagrees with Mary..
Mary.. you need to work on yourself..
Dan, The issue is transparency. We would know because we can watch the counting process. With the machines we use now, we can’t watch the counting process.
I’ve talking about this since 2004.
It just boggles my mind that Stackiii and Ryan won’t address the fact that our votes in the state of Tennessee are counted in secret.
Ryan, the other significant parts of the TN Voter Confidence Act is 1) the paper ballot becomes the ballot of record in the case of recount and 2) mandatory audits of a required number of precincts (spot-checks of the system).
It also boggles my mind that Stackiii and Ryan haven’t addressed the fact that we cannot have a meaningful recount in the case of a close election. I would think that would be a universal positive for all political parties.
“Mary, computers crash due to their operators.. not due to themselves.”
Ryan clearly hasn’t spent a lot of time in the computer industry. It’d be hard to make a more ignorant statement about computer technology and software. An operating system with no users can, just by having bugs, crash.
The worst part about our equipment and the rules governing it is that there is no ability for independent security auditing organizations to review the software. Literally no one other than the manufacturer knows what’s happening in the black boxes.
I’m completely in agreement that the issue is transparency. Always have been. I just don’t think that optical scan ballots are the best way to go. Unfortunately, my understanding is that the computerized machines that we have in TN aren’t able to be upgraded to print receipts. That’s the shame, because I think *that* is the best way to go.
And the fact that we disagree on parts but can agree on parts is one of my favorite parts about Liberadio. I think that you guys are great at explaining WHY you think the things you do, and many times it enlightens me (and for the record, I agree with a majority of your opinions voiced on air or in the blog). I’m just drawing on my experience to point out that your heart is in the right place, but by focusing on recounts you are sub-optimizing the process.
One point that you have brought up in the past that does concern me is the rate at which people can use the electronic voting machines and the possible effect of vote suppression that can have. Keep up the good work.
Freddie, this isn’t a program that is having information added to it from say, the internet. It is a voting program on a machine dedicated to such. The idea that it will crash on a regular basis is absurd. It hasn’t crashed yet.. has it?
Ryan, they have crashed, repeatedly. We’ve documented those episodes on the blog and on the show. They were crashing back in 2002 when I was volunteering at a polling location. This isn’t a new phenomenon.
And I’m in agreement with eldano that optical scan machines are not the ideal. But they’re far better than the proprietary black boxes we have now because it is possible to verify voter intent after the ballot is cast.
I’m not typically one to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and what we have now is far from good. And it wasn’t good when Democrats oversaw it. You’ll notice that Mary’s commentary on this issue was critical of the status quo long before Tre Hargett ever appeared on the scene.
Freddie, can you give me a reference of when the voting system crashed during the election..
I never remember hearing about that.
Ryan, which election?