« The “F” word: Give it a rest! | Home | The road home: A journey of memory, hope »

NYT to blast e-voting; TACIR urges verifiable votes in Tennessee

By Christine Anne Piesyk | January 5, 2008 |

“A long way from where we started…”

With those words activist Bernie Ellis, a staunch advocate for traceable, verifiable voting records, cited a BRAD BLOG report announcing the publication of a major New York Times article on the issues surrounding electronic voting.

According to The BRAD BLOG, the NYT article includes a graphic of an exploding voting booth and a warning that your vote may be “lost, destroyed, miscounted, wrongly attributed or hacked.” The story is reportedly titled “The Bugs in the Machine.” The story claims that electronic voting machines may create far greater problems than hanging chads and cites a ten percent failure of electronic voting machines. http://www.bradblog.com

Just over a month ago, Ellis appeared at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship for a screening of the David Earnhardt film, UnCounted, which offered a scathing indictment of electronic voting machines and the  disenfranchising of entire blocks of voters.

The film premiered in Nashville in November and was virtually ignored by mass media with the exception of Clarksville Online. The second Tennessee screening of this film was held in Clarksville and sponsored in part by Clarksville Online.

Since then, Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) has issued a statement urging a paper trail of votes statewide.

Today the Associated Press reported that only two of Tennessee’s 95 counties maintain a paper trail of ballots and urged all 95 counties to adopt the practice of backing e-voting with a paper trail. Tennessee is one of only 12 states that do not require some form of verifiable voting documentation.

As Tennessee voters head to the polls for a February 5 Presidential Primary, all eyes will be scrutinizing the voters, the machines, and the tallies. The TACIR report, which will be completed this month, calls for verifiable voter records within a “reasonable” period of time. “Reasonable” is as yet undefined, but proponents of a paper trail urge that it be completed before the 2008 election.

About Christine Anne Piesyk

With 40 years behind me (Huh? What? How did that happen?) as a journalist, feature writer, investigative reporter, editor, and film/theater/arts critic, I brought my liberal New England activism to Tennessee several years ago. having completed a midlife undergraduate degree in community organizing and women's studies, and an MA in Interdisciplinary Arts. I am currently an MFA student at Goddard College. I served on Future Search Commissions for two colleges and an issue-specific commission for the City of Northampton, MA, and did minor undergraduate work in studies in urban planning and community development. I am a community volunteer and a member of FreeThinkers for Peace and Civil Liberties. I am a certified storm spotter. In my spare time (define spare time please?) I am a voracious reader, obsessive movie buff, classical music junkie; I also and design and make sci-fi/fantasy and renaissance costumes. I have an unquenchable interest in just about everything. I see life as an ongoing opportunity for learning and adventure, with the best things still to come. All posts by Christine Anne Piesyk as presented on Clarksville Online are copyright ©2006, 2007 to the author.

Email: womanspeak@yahoo.com

Sections: Issues
Topics: Bernie Ellis, Brad Blog, David Earnhardt, Election 2008, electronic voting, New York Times, TACIR, UnCounted, Voting

One Response to “NYT to blast e-voting; TACIR urges verifiable votes in Tennessee”

1. Scott Beasley Says:
   January 6th, 2008 at 8:17 pm

   I would like to see some kind of procees that we could implement where one could verify who they voted for and that their vote counted.

Comments

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Feeds

• Full
• Comments