An article about the broken voting machines we use in Tennessee - from almost 2 years ago.
Last week, the Memphis Flyer ran an editorial about the impact of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act on touch-screen electronic voting machines by Rich Holden, the chief administrator for the Shelby County Election Commission.
Mr. Holden’s assertion that “the General Assembly should revise the act’s deadline provisions or, better, rethink it altogether” is being eviscerated in the comments section of the piece (“Holden’s initial premise – ‘if it ain’t broke’ – has been demonstrated to be way off the mark by all credible studies of DREs [electronic voting machines],…” etc..), with the only agreement coming from someone who can’t be bothered to give his real name.
There’s really nothing new in Holden’s editorial that we haven’t already heard from people who for whatever reason refuse to accept that the election machine system in Tennessee is already broken. What really stands out is what he didn’t say.
Nowhere in his editorial does he mention that the touch screen machines we use now simply do not work. They are broken and as such they cannot be trusted to record the votes of Tennesseans accurately. Recently we’ve seen an example how these machines malfunction (vote flipping) during the special election last month in Williamson County. And we’ve seen countless other instances of these machines malfunctioning since 2006.
The broken machines even made Newsweek (“Short-circuiting the vote”) and the NY Times (“Can you count on voting machines?”) and in October 2008, the Brennan Center for Justice, the non-partisan public research and law institute, sent a letter telling the Secretaries of State in 16 states that the machines didn’t work.
Nor does Mr. Holden address the importance of giving Tennesseans secure and accurate elections or how continuing to use these broken touch-screen electronic voting machines inherently diminishes that importance.
The people of Tennessee deserve secure and accurate elections, not broken machines, and any election administrator who refuses to replace these broken machines is failing in his trusted pursuit to give the people of Tennessee true access to the democratic process.
[...] » Note to the Shelby County Election Administrator: The Voting Machines are BrokenPosted 102 minutes [...]
[...] post by Mary Mancini and software by Elliott [...]
Thanks, Mary, for posting a link to the Beale Street election integrity smack-down that is occurring on the cyberpages of the Memphis Flyer. That paper has announced that they will publish an opposing op-ed piece this week (and we know who’ll be writing it.)
This issue if finally being elevated to the level of urgency that it deserves. Our pro-American campaign for free, fair and verifiable elections is really aided when our opposition (like the sock-puppet for unsafe elections Holden) out themselves for the self-serving, sinister, stupid slime-molds that they are. I hope all the real Americans — regardless of political persuasion — who live in Tennessee will run these reich-wing lizards and cockroaches back under the rocks they crawled out of.
Or maybe they crawled out from the packaging that the DREs arrived in.
You’re so right, Bernie. The issue is urgent! We can’t let another election go by where Tennesseans vote on broken election machines!
“There’s really nothing new in Holden’s editorial ”
That is somewhat humerous coming from a broken record that NEVER has anything new to say about voting machines other than they are broken and she just really can’t put her finger on a good explanation.
humorous* pardon me…
“That is somewhat humerous coming from a broken record that NEVER has anything new to say about voting machines other than they are broken.”
Speaking of humorous: Are you saying that instead of focusing on the 2 percent of machines that are broken, we should focus on the 98 percent of them that work?
The touch screen electronic voting machines we use in Tennssee don’t work. Why are we still voting on them?
I wish I knew.
Probably cost and a lack of attention to detail. And a lack of media attention.