Goins Bites Ballots

On June 16, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

So there I was minding my own business in the LP cafeteria last March when State Election Coordinator Mark Goins plopped down in the chair besides me.

After an exchange of pleasantries, we got into a spirited discussion about HB0614, the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (aka the paper ballot bill).

We didn’t agree on much: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with buying new optical scan voting machines certified to 2002 Election Assistance Commission standards. He thinks that would be a waste of money. I think there is no way to do a meaningful recount with the machines we use now. He thinks that pressing a button and getting the same total that you got before is a meaningful recount. I know that conducting an election with paper ballots is cheaper than conducting an election with paperless electronic voting machines. He disagrees.

But we do agree, according to him, on the importance of paper ballots. “I’m on the side of paper ballots,” he said.

That’s why, he continued, he’s conducting an all paper ballot election in Roane County on June 2 and inviting 12 new Election Administrators in the area to monitor and “learn from it.”

“I’m a friend of paper ballots,” he said again, “But when you push your friends too far, sometimes they bite back.”

And, he added, “I’m this close to biting back.”

This afternoon (or maybe tomorrow…or the next day…) on the floor of the House we will see the size of the chomp Coordinator Goins will take out of paper ballots – and Tennessee’s secure and verifiable elections.

It’s been nice to know, all this time, that his decision on whether to allow implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act to go ahead for the 2010 election was based solely on what’s best for the voters of Tennessee and not on how much push-back he received from people who disagree with him.

UPDATED 6/25/09: In response to Jeff Wood’s fantastic post (“What Kind of Buffoons are Running the Secretary of State’s Office Now“) on the misuse of power in the Secretary of State’s office, I must clarify one thing…during my discussion with Mr. Goins I never felt personally threatened. If I had, I would have pulled a Hargett and gotten the TBI involved.

That said, Mr. Goins did indeed threaten the implementation of the law (Tennessee Voter Confidence Act) that would bring paper ballots – and secure and viable elections – to Tennessee.

As I wrote originally, it was nice to finally find out definitively that his decision on whether to allow implementation of the paper ballot bill for the 2010 election was based solely on how much push-back he received from people who disagreed with him rather than what was best for the voters of Tennessee.

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I Want a Recount!

On May 29, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

“Tennessee’s Elections are Screwed” Friday continues with a trip in the way back machine.

It’s the year 2000, and Microvote, the company that provides paperless electronic voting machines to more than 45 counties in Tennessee, describes 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]. Unlike the much-maligned punch-card ballots used in much of Florida (and a fair amount of Indiana), MicroVote’s machines have no use for “chad,” the little ballot tidbits that caused such a stink in November. And they don’t allow “overvoting,” picking more than one candidate.

That’s right! The recount from the machine never changes. And lady, let me tell ya, that’s not a good thing considering we have no idea if the voter’s intent was correctly recorded by the machines’s software in the first place. And if the voters intent was not recorded correctly – either because of malicious software or poorly calibrated machines or a mistake in the code – we will never know because we can’t see inside the machines to check.

The Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (the paper ballot bill), which was passed almost unanimously in 2008 by both the House and Senate and which Tennessee Republicans are looking to now repeal, 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 it would be recounted (and yeah, you might actually get a different total when recounted – but it would be a more accurate total!).

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The Curious Case of the Paper Ballot Bill Amendment

On May 20, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

If State Election Coordinator Mark Goins wants us to believe that he doesn’t have the time to implement the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act by the 2010 election, but that he really really really wants to implement it by 2012 – which would mean supplying paper ballots and buying the optical scan machines to read them – then why does the amendment [pdf] he offered today change this:

2-20-101. Purchase or lease of voting system. — [Effective January 1, 2009.]

(a) Notwithstanding any other state law to the contrary and consistent with federal law, after January 1, 2009, any voting system purchased or leased shall be a system using precinct-based optical scanners.

To this:

AMEND Senate Bill No. 872 House Bill No. 614* by deleting all language after the enacting clause and by substituting instead the following:

SECTION 2. Tennessee Code Annotated, Section 2-20-101(a), is amended by deleting the language “January 1, 2009″ and substituting instead the language “November 1, 2012″.

Seriously. I’d like to know how we will be able to vote on paper ballots in November 2012 and have them counted on machines that we wouldn’t be required to purchase until AFTER November 2012?

Perhaps my dream of hand-counted paper ballot elections is closer than I think.

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Vice Chair of the Davidson County Republican Party Wants His Paper Ballots

On April 25, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

Matt Collins – Vice Chair of the Davidson County Republican Party, Davidson County Coordinator for the Campaign for Liberty, and Talk Radio Producer at Supertalk 99.7 WTN – agrees with us (and most Tennesseans) that we need the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act implemented by 2010 and not delayed as some legislators will try to push for in a Budget subcommittee meeting this Wednesday.

Matt has tried to contact both Rep. Curry Todd (R-Collierville), sponsor of HB 0614, and Senator Bill Ketron, sponsor of SB 0872, to ask for an explanation but has yet to receive a response.

He is also urging everyone who reads his remarks at Campaign for Liberty website to call their legislators and urge them to keep the Tennessee Voter Confidence intact.

(You can do a search for your legislator at www.capitol.tn.gov/legislators.)

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Voters are More Confident with Paper Ballots

On April 25, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

In anticipation of this week’s House Budget subcommittee meeting (Wednesday, 4/29, 11 am in Room 29), where some legislators will fight to stop a movement by other legislators to delay implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (HB 0614, the paper ballot bill), the Sunday Tennessean will print an editorial by Bernie Ellis of Gathering to Save Our Democracy and Margie Parsley, state action chair for the League of Women Voters of Tennessee:

With a stroke of Gov. Phil Bredesen’s pen last year, Tennessee went from being one of the 12 worst states for election security to one of the 18 states with the most secure election systems in our country. We should all be proud of that accomplishment. It took us three years of study, hard work and perseverance to come to the conclusion that our elections are too important, too vital to the survival of our American way of life, to be left to unverifiable touch-screen voting machines (also called “direct record electronic” machines or DREs) that are easy to hack and impossible to audit.

The Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations recommended [pdf] the move to paper ballots, as did the legislature’s Joint Committee on Voter Confidence. Many newspapers around the state editorialized for this legislation. This was truly a nonpartisan effort, and the success was cheered by all Tennesseans — regardless of political party — who want our votes to be counted as they were cast.

On June 5, 2008, more than a dozen Tennessee citizens joined Gov. Bredesen on the podium when he signed the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (TVCA) — regular people who had worked hard to help save our democracy. On that day, the governor said: “The right to vote is one of the cornerstones of our democracy, and every voter deserves the 100 percent assurance that his or her vote will be counted. I am proud that Tennessee is taking a big step forward in improving voter confidence.” We were proud too, and shared the governor’s belief that the TVCA had made our elections safer and more secure for all citizens. But that was then. This is now.

Now we don’t have enough time to implement (although it’s 18 months until the next election). Now it’s too expensive to implement (even though a single optical scan machine counting paper ballots can do the work of more than 10 DREs). Now we don’t have the money to buy the equipment (we have the same 35 million from the federal government earmarked for buying new machines that we had when the bill was passed in 2008).

The only way to stop the delay is to contact Governor Bredesen (Phone: 615.741.2001, Fax: 615.532.9711, Email: Phil.Bredesen@tn.gov) and your legislators before Wednesday and tell all of them to keep the TVCA intact and on track for 2010.

(You can do a search for your legislator at www.capitol.tn.gov/legislators/.)

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iPaper

On April 25, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

“The key to ensuring that every vote is counted is to have some record that’s independent of that computer record,” said Lawrence Norden, senior counsel with New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, a group that monitors voting security issues.

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Tennessee Election Coordinator Mark Goins Caught Napping

On April 22, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

If you’re going to use an example of voter fraud as the reason why you need a photo ID bill, and you’re the State Elections Coordinator or the attorney for the State’s Division of Elections, shouldn’t you know the specifics of the case? Tennessee Election Coordinator (and former state Rep.) Mark Goins and attorney Cara Harr do not.

What we know about the Ophelia Ford case is that the three people who plead guilty to faking votes – “two of them cast in the names of dead people” – were poll workers, not voters. And fraud by poll workers is election fraud – not voter fraud.

Election fraud is a systematic effort by those with power to steal an election through vote manipulation and voter suppression. Voter fraud is when a voter attempts to vote more than once or by impersonating someone else.

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