Following a three-day Tennessee Association of County Election Officials (taceo) conference in Nashville, Hawkins County Administrator of Elections Patricia Lumpkins talks with Bill Grubb at the Review about the new election law. This law requires all voting systems in Tennessee to be paper ballots with precinct-based optical scanners by the November 2010 election. Click here.
Meanwhile, Tim Collins, deputy administrator of the Jefferson County Election Commission is less enthusiastic about the new system, telling Mike Williams at the Tribune:
“We are going backwards.”
“The old system saved money. Under the new law three percent of all ballots will have to be hand counted,” said Collins. “This will cost money for new equipment plus we will need personnel to count the votes by hand.”Although the state will pay for the new equipment Collins still considers it to be wasteful in a time when the state needs to tighten the budget.“
Even though the state is paying for it, they will be paying for it with our tax money. So basically, the taxpayers are footing the bill,” he said.
Collins defended the electronic voting saying it was accurate and a lot easier to manage.
“On election night the machine would electronically print off a tally of the votes. If the machine were to break down we could plug another one in next to it and it would read off the information,” he said.
Collins expressed concerns about the accuracy of the requirement that at least three percent of the ballots be hand counted.
“If you were to give 50 people 500 ballots each and ask each of them to count those ballots you would be amazed at how many different answers you get.”
Click here for Tribune report.
And eight-year old Mr. Smartypants says of the controversy… “WAIT! Do you mean when people vote, it’s like Chuck E. Cheese tickets except they don’t really win anything?”
I don’t trust electronic voting machines at ALL, especially not when they are made by secretive corporations and public inspection and verification of their functionality is prohibited. What the hell is that all about? It’s about fixing elections, that’s what.
I am glad we are going back to paper.
As far as cost, isn’t this the volunteer state? Why not have volunteers count ballots like has been done in most every state for over 200 years?
Is thereany way to disable those stupid popup “Snapshot” windows. They are always popping up as a move my mouse from point A to B and then they seldom go away, instead just blocking half the page. They really are retarded, whoever invented those things should probably be taken out and shot.
[...] Not everyone is looking forward to Tennessee’s coming switch back to paper ballots: Although the state will pay for the new equipment Collins still considers it to be wasteful in a time when the state needs to tighten the budget.“ [...]
Yes, the new equipment will cost money but the money is already in the Election Commission’s coffers – it’s leftover from the allocation of federal funds designated to Tennesee by the Help America Vote Act.
And yes, they are federal tax dollars but why is spending tax dollars to ensure the integrity of our elections “going backward?” It seems like it could be a lot more fruitful in spreading real democracy than some of the the other ways in which we spend our tax dollars, if you know what I mean.
Collins also may need to see Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections ( http://www.Uncountedthemovie.com) – as well as too numerous to mention newspaper articles and studies on the subject before he deems electronic voting “accurate.”
A lot easier to manage, maybe. But accurate? Not even close.