LIBERADIO(!)

In the midst of the end of session and the bill that would have delayed bringing paper ballots to Tennesseans failing to make it out of the Senate, Memphian Steve Ross of Vibinc.com asks a most valid question, “What next?”:

The question facing Election Commissions in 97.8% of the counties in Tennessee is a much more practical, “What next?” Are they going to hang back and wait to see what happens in court…should any case appear, or are they going to start making plans to comply with the law? What about all the training that will be necessary for their employees? This stuff doesn’t just happen overnight. It seems to me that in order to be in compliance with the law, as it stands now, Election Commissions have to get going on this, no matter what happens or could potentially happen. So I decided to ask around and find out some answers.

Turns out, it’s not only been on their radar, they’ve been looking at solutions since the beginning of the delay debate. Shelby Co. budgeted money to deal with any shortfall that may from HAVA funding not that there should be any. Obviously, it sucks for the taxpayers that Shelby and some 92 other counties have spent scads of money on touch screen voting machines, but there are lots of lingering questions out there about these machines, and Diebold the company that makes the machines we have here in Shelby Co., hasn’t done ANYTHING to answer these questions.

These allegations would be less unsettling if there were some other mechanism than just the “word of the computer and its programmer”. Unfortunately, the idea of using a receipt printer or some such other device isn’t within the letter of the law, and to my knowledge, no such device is certified under the necessary standards. So, it looks like some unfortunate state is going to be buying a whole bunch of used touch screen voting machines from Tennessee Election Commissions…or not Turns out nobody wants these so the market may be saturated with these unwanted beasts. In short, we may just have to let them rot in some warehouse somewhere.

Of course, until Mr. Goins [Tennessee State Election Coordinator Mark Goins] makes a decision on whether to take this case to court, all of this is just speculation. It is good to know that, at least here in Shelby Co. someone’s thinking about the consequences and ready to deal with it when they become reality. I just hope, for the safety of our votes that we don’t have a long and costly legal fight on our hands.

Like the quote at the beginning of this post says, “It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.

True. True.