Senator Tim Burchett, Real American

Senator Tim Burchett, Real American

About an hour ago, both the House and the Senate of the Tennessee General Assembly adjourned for the year without passing HB0614/SB0872 – the bill that would have delayed implementation of the paper ballot bill.

The Tennessee Voter Confidence Act lives to fight another day. And that day will probably include more obstacles from the Secretary of State’s office before actual, you know, implementation. Just sayin’…

Big thank you to every Tennessee Senator and Representative who voted no to delay and yes for secure and verifiable elections.

But a special mention to Senator Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville) who, unlike all of his Republican colleagues, knew the right thing to do for secure and verifiable elections in Tennessee and voted with his conscience instead of with his party.

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Knoxville News-Sentinel Nashville Bureau chief Tom Humphrey tracked down State Election Coordinator Mark Goins for a statement about HB614/SB0872 – which would delay implementation of paper ballot elections in Tennessee – failing to pass in the Senate:

Sponsors said a delay will save money for counties in tight financial times and state Election Coordinator Mark Goins says no machines are currently available to meet criteria set out in the law enacted last year.

Wrong and not only wrong, but if you want to read it the way Coordinator Goins is reading it, easily fixed.

As Pam Smith of Verified Voting points out to me in an mail:

As to the comment Sen. Ketron made about the 2005 standards becoming law, he’s referring to the “Voluntary Voting System Guidelines” in the 2005 iteration. These guidelines are expected to be updated soon. No state can be forced to adhere to them. The federal government can impose some standards, which it did with HAVA, and which it could with amendments to HAVA, but the only pending amendment to HAVA is the Holt bill. It requires optical scan. If TN buys opscan for 2010, they would not have to replace it when Holt passes.

As for the cost of the ballots, which sponsor Senator Bill Ketron suggested would cost Tennessee counties $4 million dollars:

It would take four elections a year, with 100% turnout expected, at $0.25/ballot, for TN to even get close to $4 million dollars for ballot costs. If the whole state goes optical scan, the SoS and Elections could negotiate a fair ballot price for the entire state, which could be below $0.25 per ballot, and everyone wins.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, there is only one reason why the Secretary of State’s office is pushing so hard to delay implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act – they simply do not want it.

(H/T and stolen post title: A Kleinheider Joint)

UPDATE: The AP released a story as well but makes a common mistake. it states: “Under the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act passed last year, new optical-scan machines are required to create a paper trail in case there are voting irregularities. Every county in the state was supposed to have the machines ready in time for the gubernatorial election in 2010.” The machines are not required to create a paper trail. The voters are required to vote on a paper ballot, which the optical-scan machine counts. This is what makes the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act such a strong piece of legislation – the focus is on recording the voter intent first before a machines ever touches it. This also allows for hand counts of the ballots that have recorded the voter’s intent in the cases of recounts and counting machine malfunctions.

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HB614 (SB872), which would have delayed implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act, was beaten back a bit by a well-informed and impassioned Senator Roy Herron (D-Dresden). Senator Herron, who offered an amendment to address all the concerns of those orchestrating the delay, along with Senators Jim Kyle and Andy Berke, gave the citizens of Tennessee who want secure and verifiable elections a voice on the Senate floor.

The final vote for the bill was 16-14 and failed to get the majority needed to send it to the Governor for his signature.

As of 5:00 PM this afternoon, the bill has been referred back to Calendar & Rules.

UPDATE: The vote to keep the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act intact and on track for the 2010 election was along party lines, except for Sen. Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville). Yay, Senator Burchett!

Sen. Tim Barnes (D-Adams)
Sen. AndyBerke (D-Chattanooga)
Sen. Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville)
Sen. Charlotte Burks (D-Monterey)
Sen. Lowe Finney (D-Jackson)
Sen. Ophelia Ford (D-Memphis)
Sen. Thelma Harper (D-Nashville)
Sen. Doug Henry (D-Nashville)
Sen. Roy Herron (D-Dresden)
Sen. Doug Jackson (D-Dickson)
Sen. Jim Kyle (D-Memphis)
Sen. Beverly Marrero (D-Memphis)
Sen. Eric Stewart (D-Belvidere)
Sen. Reginald Tate (D-Memphis)

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Yesterday, despite a last ditch effort by Democratic House Minority Leader Gary Odom (D-Nashville), secure and verifiable elections in Tennessee were dealt a serious blow when HB614 – which would delay the implementation of paper ballots from the 2010 general election to the 2012 general election and would also replace a mandatory hand counted audit of a certain percentage of the ballots – passed through the House 70-23.

As Gathering to Save Our Democracy, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters of Tennessee, VerifiedVoting.org, Voter Action, and VotersUnite.org, stated in a press release, yesterday’s floor debate missed the mark:

Arguments made during the Wednesday night debate focused on the 2005 voluntary federal standards, which Tennessee law now requires for all voting equipment. Rep. Gary Moore (D-Joelton) spoke of the need to wait for paper ballot scanners compliant with the 2005 voluntary guidelines.

“Rep. Moore’s argument is like wanting to wait to put a roof on your house until fancier shingles come along, when all the while there are perfectly good materials to keep the rain out,” VerifiedVoting.org president Pamela Smith said. “The argument ignores the TACIR recommendations back in 2008, and ignores the findings of other major state reviews of voting systems in Kentucky, Ohio, Connecticut, and California,” she said. “States that have taken a serious look at voting system security are not saying, ‘Let’s wait for new paper ballot scanners.’ Current paper ballot scanners have proven themselves time and again in live elections, so in the last two years states like Kentucky, Florida, California, and Iowa are moving to better systems that are available now,” she said. Existing optical scan systems have proven highly accurate, she added. A study of the recount of the 2008 Minnesota US Senate election showed paper ballot scanners to be 99.99% accurate.

Removing the requirement for a hand counted audit flies against the recommendations of many computer scientists. “HB 614’s new “audit” scheme would be an ineffective way of detecting software error. It would take less time and be just as effective to make election officials do a brief incantation and certify the election,” Smith said.

“Last year, over 50 counties in Kentucky switched to paper ballot scanners. Kentucky is ahead of Tennessee in trustworthy voting,” said Ellen Theisen, Director of VotersUnite.org.

On Monday, a group of computer scientists sent lawmakers a letter explaining the need for a hand count to check electronic vote tallies. Over half the states have conducted a hand-count sample to verify electronic vote tallies, or plan to do so in future elections. Hand-counted audits also were also recommended by the 2008 report of the Tennessee Advisory Commission in Intergovernmental Relations (pdf).

HB 614 amends the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (TVCA). The Voter Confidence Act was enacted in 2008 after TACIR recommended that the state adopt voting technology with a reliable, independent paper record of every vote, and that election officials use those records to conduct routine hand-counted audits of electronic vote tallies. When the law takes effect, all votes in Tennessee elections will be cast on paper ballots read by electronic scanners.

The state has sufficient federal funds on hand to pay for the law’s shift to better equipment. All but two counties in Tennessee now use purely electronic voting machines with no paper trail. In recent years, paperless electronic voting systems have been strongly criticized by leading computer scientists. The TACIR report noted that if Tennessee’s electronic voting machines store votes incorrectly because of malfunction or fraud, recounts are “useless.”

“Delaying the implementation of the Voter Confidence Act until 2012 (if it is even implemented then) does nothing whatsoever to protect and honor our franchise,” said Bernie Ellis of Gathering to Save Our Democracy. “It’s hard to fathom the legislature doing the exact right thing just last year, and now trying to do the wrong thing. It makes no sense at all. Voters deserve better,” said Smith.

The group, and just about every citizen in Tennessee, urges the Senate to reject the delay. The Senate will take up the bill this afternoon at 3 PM.

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Goins Bites Ballots

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 know, I know, the U.S. is not Iran. Which is good because if we used paper ballots like they do, we would count every ballot and count them all correctly – especially if we all did our part to be vigilant in election monitoring.

Or do you prefer the system we have now using electronic voting machines without a paper ballot in which we have no earthly idea if our votes are being counted at all let alone counted as cast?

This scene from Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, illustrates all that is wrong with elections without paper:

Visit A Kleinheider Joint for various linkage about the greening of Iran.

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Rep. Joshuah Evans (R-Greenbrier) jumps on the “let’s not count every vote” bandwagon and tweets about as much misinformation in 140 characters as Rep. Debra Maggart did in hundreds. Memo to Rep. Evans:

1) 49 other states and two counties in Tennessee are using optical scan machines certified to 2002 standards without incident. The paperless electronic voting machines we use suck and we’re one of the only states left that are using them.

2) The intent of the TN Voter Confidence Act is to make paper ballots the ballot of record so we do not have to rely on machines of any kind.

3) Studies (pdf) show that switching to paper ballots from the paperless electronic voting machines reduces election costs by 35-40%.

4) If there were to be a close election in 2010 in, say, District 66, and a recount was necessary, the paperless electronic voting machines we use now have no mechanism in place to give any kind of meaningful recount – all you could get is the same tally over and over again.

5) Please ask State Election Coordinator Mark Goins if he can show you proof that one vote using paperless electronic voting machines was cast or counted correctly. FYI, he cannot because the software used to tally votes in the paperless electronic voting machines we use now is proprietary – in other words, the manufacturers keep it secret and we’re not allowed to look.

6) The money to buy the new optical scan machines is federal money we already have (it’s left over from the funds we received to implement the Help America Vote Act) that can only be used to buy equipment to conduct elections. Just what money would we be wasting?

7) Do you really want to put a price tag on secure and verifiable elections? (see #4).

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I received an email recently from a friend who contacted Rep. Debra Maggart (R-Hendersonville) about the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act, which was supported almost unanimously in the House and Senate and signed by an enthusiastic Governor Bredesen in 2008 and would have given Tennessee voter the three things which are almost universally accepted as ways to ensure fair elections – paper ballots, a meaningful recount mechanism, and an automatic audit process.

When my friend wrote to Rep. Maggart in March, he urged her to keep the Voter Confidence Act intact and on track for implementation for the 2010 election. When she wrote back to him in June to explain why she supported delaying implementation until 2012, she had a story to tell:

Thank you for emailing me about the verifiable ballots. I have always supported this legislation and I also sponsored a similar bill before the one we are discussing passed.

Fighting for the integrity of the ballot box is one of the cornerstones of my career as a state legislator as I have sponsored for years the voter photo ID bill and several pieces of legislation about the voting and registration process.

Unfortunately, we have since learned of the enormous costs to the counties to implement this procedure. I have attached the estimated 2010 costs to Sumner County for you to review. Sumner County will have between 97 and 100 different configurations of the ballot because we have so many different elections. Sumner County has city elections, property rights city elections, eleven school board seats, the county commission, the county constitutional officers, and the state and federal elections. We also call for county primaries. Many of our counties face similar circumstances and costs.

For example, the Gene Brown precinct would have six different ballots available. Storage is also an issue, because these types of ballots that are scanned by each voter must be kept before and after the election in a climate controlled area. If these ballots get either too hot or too cold, they cannot be properly scanned through the scanner. This would be an Election Day nightmare if the voters showed up to vote and the paper ballots were unable to be fed through the scanners in each precinct.

Not really. No. If we make the switch to paper ballots and the paper could not be fed through the machines (or if there’s a power failure or machine breakdown or if we needed a recount), the ballots could still be counted – by hand. That’s the whole point. In other words, the new paper ballot system should make Rep. Maggart feel more secure if her “nightmare” scenario were to occur.

The real voting nightmare is what we have now – paperless electronic voting machines in which there is no mechanism for a meaningful recount and no way of knowing if any ballot cast using these paperless machines has ever been cast or counted correctly.

Also attached to her email was a spreadsheet detailing the estimated costs for conducting a paper ballot election in Sumner County. But another spreadsheet from the Secretary of State’s office shows enormous differences (pdf) in estimates from other Tennessee counties.

For instance, the storage of ballots in Sumner County would cost $7,152.00. But Houston County estimates it would cost $50.00 and Cocke County estimates $203.00. Campbell County estimates that it would cost $70,000.

As of today, there has been no explanation for the disparity in the numbers from any legislator or the State Election Coordinator, Mark Goins. And while they contend that it would be more expensive to change to a system of paper ballots, studies in North Carolina, Maryland and Florida have shown that voting with paper ballots (counted by optical scan machines) is 30-40% less expensive than voting on paperless electronic voting machines like the ones we use now in Tennessee.

The Senate version of the bill that would delay implementation of paper ballots until 2012 will probably be heard on the Senate floor next week. The House version will be heard in the House Finance, Ways & Means committee on Monday.

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How can you be sure that the “pro-gun” legislator you voted for actually got your vote?

Mention guns and unending rallying cries erupt from the blogosphere. Why so quiet when it comes to verifiable and fair elections?

The machines we vote on in 93 out of 95 counties in Tennessee fail on every level. Why do you trust your vote to them?

From the press release, “Civic Organizations Urge Lawmakers to Follow Through on Trustworthy Voting Systems:”

A coalition of civic organizations is urging the Tennessee General Assembly to stop legislation that would delay the state’s move toward verifiable elections. Common Cause, Gathering to Save Our Democracy, the Tennessee League of Women Voters, and the national organizations VerifiedVoting.org, Voter Action, and VotersUnite.org call for state lawmakers to reject House Bill 614 and Senate Bill 872. The full Senate may vote on SB 872 on Monday.

The two bills would either delay implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (TVCA), or delete key provisions of the law. The TVCA requires that by 2010, requires all votes be cast in Tennessee elections be cast on paper ballots marked by the voter. The ballots will be read and counted by scanning machines, and after the election, every county will conduct a hand-counted audit of a random sample of precincts to verify the scanners’ tallies.

The TVCA was enacted last year after the Tennessee Advisory Commission in Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) recommended that the state adopt voting technology with a reliable, independent paper record of every vote, and recommended that election officials use those records to conduct routine hand-counted audits of electronic vote tallies.

“The Assembly passed the Voter Confidence Act in order to provide voters with verifiable ballots and election results we can trust,” said Bernie Ellis of the citizen group Gathering to Save Our Democracy. “There is no legitimate reason not to implement this law on schedule,” said Ellis.

The state has sufficient federal funds on hand to pay for the law’s shift to better equipment. All but two counties in Tennessee now use purely electronic voting machines. In recent years, paperless electronic voting systems have been strongly criticized by leading computer scientists. The TACIR report noted that if Tennessee’s electronic voting machines store votes incorrectly because of malfunction or fraud, recounts are “useless.

Tennessee’s law is part of a nationwide trend toward paper ballot voting systems. In the 2008 general election, the percentage of votes cast on paper ballots rose significantly, accounting for almost 60% of the total. A majority of the states also now have a provision for post-election hand audits. The TVCA requires voter-marked paper ballots rather than cash-register type “paper trail” printouts, because paper ballots are more durable, and because many voters fail to check secondary printouts. Since 2006, no states have added paper-trail printers to electronic voting machines.

“Everything depends on the ability of the citizenry to have that confidence their votes are being counted accurately. It’s unconscionable to delay,” said VerifiedVoting.org president Pamela Smith.

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On the eve of HB0614 – the bill that would “delay” the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (paper ballot bill) – once more going before the House Budget subcommittee, I would like to ask a few questions.

But first, a little background.

The Tennessee Voter Confidence Act – which was supported almost unanimously in the House and Senate and signed by an enthusiastic Governor Bredesen in 2008 – would have given Tennessee voter the three things which are almost universally accepted as ways to ensure fair elections:

1) Tennesseans would vote on paper ballots (which would capture our actual intent)
2) The paper ballot would become the ballot of record in case of a recount. (The paperless electronic voting machines we have now only have one mechanism in place for a recount – press the same button again and get a repeat of the exact same totals you got before).
3) Mandatory random post-election audits in 3% of precincts (to insure that the Optical Scan machines are functioning properly).

This year, after Republicans took control of the House for the first time in about 140 years, they decided this legislation supported overwhelmingly by both parties should be repealed. Rep. Curry Todd carried the legislation for the new secretary of state, Tre Hargett, and state election coordinator, Mark Goins, but after a complete repeal encountered some push back, they decided to try for a “delay of implementation” until 2012.

To push the delay they tried several different arguments. But after the first few fell flat, they settled on the fastest way to derail a bill on the Hill (especially during these economic times) – they attached a humongous fiscal note. But the note wasn’t for the cost of buying the new ballot counting machines – the optical scan machines – because that was a discussion that was had over and over and over again during the debate of the original bill and it was well known that this cost for the machines was being covered by 25 million dollars of federal funds (out of a total of 35 million available) leftover from the Help America Vote Act.

And so, a plan was hatched. Let’s survey the counties [xls] and see what they think it would cost to switch over to paper ballots. The resulting fiscal note [pdf] states that it will cost Tennessee counties over $11.7 million to conduct the 2010 elections using paper ballots counted on optical scan machines. But there’s a bit of a discrepancy with the numbers that produced the multi-million dollar figure. Just look at the range of “extra” costs:

Privacy booths (cost per booth):

$10.00 (Haywood)
$19.50 (Blount)
$20.00 (Meigs)
$200.00 (Nine counties)
$700.00 (Putnam)
$750.00 (Cannon)

Training staff

$400.00 (Cannon)
$520.00 (Decatur)
$700.00 (Houston)
$22,200.00 (Putnam)
$25,000.00 (Smith)
$38,739.00 (Williamson)

Security containers (cost per container):

$25.00 (Haywood, Johnson)
$36.00 (Coffee)
$44.95 (Scott)
$2,800.00 (Williamson)
$3,085.00 (Blount)
$5,200.00 (Putnam)

Delivering scanners:

$144.00 (Bledsoe)
$200.00 (Sequatchie)
$240.00 (Marshall)
$10,800.00 (Carter)
$20,000.00 (Wayne)
$20,400.00 (Sumner)
$21,420.00 (Williamson)

Printing Manuals:

$50.00 (Benton)
$110.00 (Marshall)
$160.00 (Van Buren)
$5,000.00 (Grundy, Sevier, Smith)

Storage of ballots

$0 (Davidson)
$50.00 (Houston)
$203.00 (Cocke)
$300.00 (Hawkins)
$7,152.00 (Sumner)
$10,000.00 (Johnson)
$70,000.00 (Campbell)

Audit

$100.00 (Moore)
$136.00 (Anderson)
$160.00 (Haywood)
$6,600.00 (Davidson)
$10,000.00 (Dyer & Tipton)
$13,000.00 (Campbell)
$15,750.00 (Hawkins)
$15,840.00 (Washington)
$20,000.00 (Knox and Smith)

Privacy booths will cost $10 apiece in Haywood county, but they will cost $750 apiece in Cannon county. Security containers will cost $25 a piece in Johnson county, but they will cost $5,200 apiece in Putnam county. Cannon county can train their staff for $400, but Williamson county will spend $38,739 to do the same thing. And on and on and on. Bottom line: The numbers are not trustworthy and do not provide a reasonable basis for delaying the implementation of this legislation.

In addition, studies in North Carolina, Maryland and Florida have shown that voting with paper ballots (counted by optical scan machines) is 30-40% cheaper than voting on paperless electronic voting machines like the ones we use now. Why? Because a precinct only needs one machine to count the paper ballots as opposed to the multiple machines – 4, 8, 10, 20, etc. – needed to accommodate voters now. This reduction in the number of machines also means a reduction in expensive programming, software, maintenance, and storage costs. In other words, fewer voting machines means real cost savings.

So the two questions the members of the House Budget subcommittee should ask Coordinator Goins during tomorrow’s meeting are, “why the disparity in the numbers” and “what’s with all the excuses?”

My suggestion to House Dems is to let Rep. Curry Todd’s original bill pass so that Republicans follow through with their original plan of repealing the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act. Or in the words of Rep. Henry Fincher (D, the fightin’ 42nd!) during today’s House Democratic Caucus meeting, “let them drive the bus off the road” because this bus comes with almost unanimous support and doing so would be the opposite of a popular thing to do. Tennesseans, no matter what ideological stripe – want their paper ballots.

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