Harry Burn was a first-term Republican state representative from McMinn county, the youngest Tennessee state legislator serving in 1920 when women’s suffrage hung in the balance in our state. Back then, only one state was needed to ratify the Nineteenth amendment to the US Constitution, an amendment that would give women the right to vote. Like many legislators at the time, Representative Burn was under extreme pressure from sexist politicians back home to oppose the amendment, to keep women “in their place”. Some even believed that Rep. Burn was a safe bet to vote against suffrage, since he wore a red rose on his lapel, a color then (and now) that represented exclusion and disenfranchisement. But as the pivotal vote approached, the opponents of inclusion did not know that Representative Burn carried in his coat pocket a letter from his widowed mother urging him to vote for ratification. When his name was called, Harry Burn voted “yes”, the single deciding vote that ratified – for our entire nation – the Nineteenth Amendment.

Ben West was the Mayor of Nashville in 1960, when Black college students began a series of lunch-counter sit-ins in segregated department stores that were just among the many pillars of the Jim Crow South. For months, those students had been arrested and hauled off to jail. As a result, the Black community had boycotted Nashville stores and Whites had also stayed away, crippling the downtown Nashville economy. Tensions had risen to the point where the home and church of Reverend Alexander Looby, a civil rights leader, had been bombed, sending him to the hospital. Responding to that violence, thousands of Nashvillians marched to City Hall where Mayor West met them. One young Fisk student, Diane Nash, spoke quietly that day to Mayor West and pleaded with him to use the prestige of his office to end racial segregation. Mayor West’s response was simple and direct: “Yes, young lady, I will do that.” Years later, Ben West said that, at that moment, he had said the only thing that any moral person could say – that he had answered as a God-fearing man, and not as a politician. The next day, the Nashville Banner’s headline said it all “INTEGRATE COUNTERS – MAYOR”. Within a month, all Nashville lunch-counters were integrated and, with that positive role-model in the heart of the South, Jim Crow’s racist days were numbered.

That brings us to Senator Tim Burchett, a Knoxville Republican and the bravest and most patriotic man I know in our fair state today. For the past three years, Tennessee voters have been working hard to correct a serious error in how we conduct our elections here. In 2006, Tennessee wasted over $30 million in federal funds to purchase touch-screen voting machines (also called Direct Record Electronic machines, or DREs), voting machines that are slow, expensive and – worst of all – incapable of being audited or recounted. These machines have been implicated in a plethora of election fraud incidents across our country, and state after state has made the decision to ban these machines in favor of paper ballots. Tennessee was one of those states when we passed the TN Voter Confidence Act last year on a 92-3 vote in our House and a 32-0 vote in our Senate to replace those non-verifiable machines with paper ballots by the 2010 elections.

But when the Republican Party unexpectedly took control of our state legislature in 2008, one of the first things their leaders announced was that they intended to weaken, delay or repeal the Voter Confidence Act. For the past five months, a small band of Tennessee voters has traveled daily to our legislature and has witnessed a highly partisan and divided legislature, with most Democrats in favor of implementing the Voter Confidence Act as intended and most Republicans in favor of our continuing to vote on insecure and untrustworthy DREs. Since Republicans now control our General Assembly (for the first time since Reconstruction), we knew that the prospects for protecting our franchise were in peril.

Yesterday evening, as our Senate debated long and hard about a bill to delay implementation of the Voter Confidence Act until 2012 and to gut the law’s election audit provisions, it was clear that the vote would be close and split along party lines. When the final vote was cast, the tally was 16-14 to delay democracy by postponing the implementation of the Voter Confidence Act until 2012. At first, we were crest-fallen, thinking that we had lost. But then one of us remembered that it takes 17 votes in the Senate for a law to pass, and with only 16 votes, the measure had failed. When we looked up at the vote board, we could see that all Democrats had voted to keep the Voter Confidence Act on-track for 2010 (except one, who had abstained) and all Republicans had voted to delay and weaken democracy. All of them, that is, except one. Senator Tim Burchett, a man who has been steadfast and vocal in his support for free, fair and verifiable elections for the past three years; and whose singular vote last night in opposition to the rest of his party allowed democracy to prevail in our state.

Thank you, Senator Burchett. Your intelligence, courage and sense of honor and fairness are what this country was built on, and what we must have in order for this nation to survive. Like Atticus Finch in “To Kill A Mockingbird”, your singular bravery has helped keep us free. And like the Black citizens who filled the courtroom gallery in that long-ago movie, I will, from this day forward, stand up when you enter a room. Because I will know that I am in the presence of a modern-day patriot, the latest in a long line of American heros who sprang from the hills of our Tennessee when they were needed to help keep our nation strong and safe — and free. Yesterday, you saved our democracy.

Bernie Ellis, Organizer
Gathering To Save Our Democracy

Please take 30 minutes to voice your support to replace our non-verifiable touch-screen voting machines in Tennessee with paper ballot-based voting systems in time for the November election. To help you do that, I am sending you the latest call to action from Gathering To Save Our Democracy (www.votesafetn.org), and I am appending on that action call a few more steps you can take if you believe as strongly as I do that free, fair and verifiable elections matter in this country.

No matter your political persuasion, please email some or all of the Tennessee leaders whose email links are provided below. Tell them you support anything they can do to move the TN Voter Confidence Act (HB 1256; SB 1363) forward to immediate passage. (If you copy-and-paste the grouped email addresses into the address line of your message and
“blind-copy” all the recipients, you need only write one message to reach each entire group.)

Now I must finish planting the first tomatoes and preparing for a drive to Knoxville this afternoon. Tomorrow, when my Garden is enjoying a 70% chance of rain here in the holler, I will join a few of you again to watch and discuss “UNCOUNTED: The New Math of American Elections”, this time with the TN Federation of Democratic Women, U. Tennessee faculty and students and others.

If you live in Tennessee, your voice has to be heard NOW for free, fair and verifiable elections. If you live elsewhere, let TN’s leaders know that secure elections here matter where you live too.

Currently, the bill is in the House Budget Subcommittee, where the Chairman wants to keep it until the end of April, at least. There is no reason for the bill to remain in subcommittee waiting for the state budget to pass—all the money we need is already available—federal money. But time is short—we don’t want to wait that long to get the ball rolling. We need your help again!

What you can do right now: E-mail the House Budget Subcommittee members and ask them to act now, and pass the bill (H.B. 1256), so it will go to the full Finance Committee. If any of the members is your Representative, please mention that, and include your address.

House Budget Subcommittee members:

rep.harry..tn.us,

rep.joe..tn.us,

rep.lois..tn.us,

rep.craig..tn.us,

rep.mike..tn.us,

rep.steve..tn.us,

rep.gary..tn.us,

rep.doug..tn.us,

rep.randy..tn.us,

rep.dennis..tn.us,

rep.johnny..tn.us

Senators:

Senate Finance Committee members:

sen.randy..tn.us,

sen.douglas..tn.us,

sen.tim..tn.us,

sen.diane..tn.us,

sen.raymond..tn.us,

sen.joe..tn.us,

sen.rosalind..tn.us,

sen.jim..tn.us,

sen.mark..tn.us,

sen.bo..tn.us,

sen.john..tn.us

VoteSafeTN and Gathering to Save Our Democracy are making a final push to support this measure, and are encouraging Tennessee voters to the same by doing the following:

• Email members of the House and Senate State and Local Government committees. Tell them we still have the time to make the changes necessary to scrap unsafe, unverifiable, insecure and problem-prone DREs in Tennessee for opscan voting systems or hand-counted ballots in time for the November 2008 election.

• Email or call your own state House and Senate representatives, even if they are not on the above committees. Tell them to support HB 1256 to take effect for November 2008. Let them know that you strongly support paper ballots that can be hand-counted or read electronically and then manually audited or recounted. Ask them to speak up for free, fair and verifiable elections – to let our votes count in ‘08.

• Email, or call our Governor, as well as House and Senate leaders. Tell them that securing our elections by November 2008 is something that must be done. Governor Bredesen, House Speaker Naifeh and Senate Speaker Ramsey need to know that 35 other states have already figured out – voting on insecure equipment is no longer acceptable. Ask them to please use their power and influence to help us make the necessary change away from paperless DREs and to opscans or hand-counted ballots. Tell them we have the time. All we need is the will.

• Email or call our Secretary of State Riley Darnell and State Election Coordinator Brook Thompson. These are our two public officials directly responsible for implementing this critical change from paperless, unverifiable, insecure elections, to optical scan paper ballots. Let them know that as a voter, this upcoming national election in November 2008 is too important to leave to chance… Or worse. They claim they can’t fix this problem until 2010. Let them know that this is not acceptable.

This grassroots movement calling for verifiable ballots has made important strides recently but needs to keep the momentum building through Tuesday’s vote. It is certainly not too late to restore election integrity in Tennessee.

We can’t afford another insecure election in our state. Not when the solution is achievable NOW.

Editor’s Note: This notice was submitted by Thelma Kidd of VoteSafeTN, an activist group working to ensure the implementation of verifiable voting records in the state of Tennessee.

The Clarksville Public Library will be the setting for a free screening of the film UNCOUNTED on Saturday, February 2, at 3 p.m. in the large conference room. UNCOUNTED was produced and directed by Nashville’s own David Earnhardt, and made its world premiere in that city last November to a standing room only crowd.

Click here to view the embedded video.

UNCOUNTED is an explosive documentary that shows how the election fraud that changed the outcome of the 2004 election led to even greater fraud in 2006 – and now looms as an unbridled threat to the outcome of the 2008 election.

“The notion of stolen elections is something we assign to Third World countries but not this beacon of freedom and democracy that we like to view ourselves as.” ~Bernie Ellis, Election integrity activist

Three million votes lost nationwide, these are just a sampling of the issues that unfold in Earnhardt’s stunning documentary UNCOUNTED:

Exit Poll Discrepancies in 2004

“Nearly all the experts are in agreement that the exit polls could not have been so far off that they gave such distorted results. It’s far more rational that the voting process was compromised.” ~Rep. John Conyers, Chair, House Judiciary Committee

“Jim Crow” Voter Suppression in the 21st Century

“The targeting of people of color is very political and very computerized.”~Harvey Wasserman, journalist & author

Undervoting

“When you see 42%, 70% and 80% undervotes in a precinct in this election, you know that’s not real. There’s something desperately not right.”~Marybeth Kuznik, Pennsylvania poll worker Electronic Voting

“With all these [electronic] machines, you can alter the outcome of a national election in a way that is just unprecedented in terms of its reach and the power to really play around.”~Andrew Gumbel, Journalist & author, “Steal This Vote”

This event is sponsored by Amanda Whitley, as a “concerned citizen”, with assistance from Clarksville Online volunteers.

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.

This “action kit” will get you started (or moving faster) to register your concerns with our state leaders.

Here are three things YOU CAN DO NOW to help up ramp up the discussion for voter-verified paper ballots and mandatory random audits here in Tennessee. Now here are three things you can do to help us gain serious momentum:

Action Task 1. Contact the members of the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR).(They meet on December 12, so please contact them right away.) Tell them that you want them to endorse the TACIR staff report, “Trust But Verify”. You also recommend to the legislature that we move rapidly away from paperless touch-screen voting in Tennessee and toward optical scan voting systems that start and end with a voter-completed paper ballot. You also endorse the need for mandatory random audits of those paper ballots to ensure that the opscan systems also count our votes completely and accurately. Here is a sample letter:

Dear TACIR Commissioners,

I am writing to thank you, through your participation in TACIR, for your serious review and assessment of the threats, costs and other issues that paperless touch-screen voting has presented to maintaining the integrity of our elections here in Tennessee. You have heard much testimony and would doubtless hear more if there were time available for citizens to do so once again. However, the time for a decision is now upon us and we hope that TACIR will accomplish the following on December 12:

1. Accept and endorse the TACIR staff report, “Trust But Verify”, as an excellent summary of the many compelling reasons why we must act to restore integrity to our voting process.
2. Act as the influential body that you are to recommend that the Tennessee legislature consider, debate and adopt (as soon as possible) legislation which will support and assist the orderly adoption of voting systems that use or produce voter-verified paper ballots in Tennessee, to be counted on more secure and verifiable voting equipment (specifically, optical scan or similar voting systems) than we have recently installed.
3. Recommend that the state of Tennessee assist counties in the transformation to more secure and verifiable voting systems as soon as possible by working to provide both state funds, redirected HAVA funds (of which we still have between $15-20 million) and other means to reduce the economic impact of these state-mandated efforts to restore integrity in our voting process might have on those county governments.
4. Encourage the Legislative Study Committee assigned to review the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (HB 1256, Moore; SB 1363, Haynes) on December 18 to recommend that this legislation go forward as quickly as possible and that it be considered, debated and adopted by the full Legislature when it re-convenes in January.

Once again, thank you for the time and attention you have given to the issue of election integrity — and specifically more verifiable voting systems — through your work on the TACIR Board. We sincerely hope that you will support some affirming action by TACIR at the December 12 meeting that will hasten needed election reform in our state.

Thank you for your public service. Here’s hoping we can rescue our franchise and save our democracy here in Tennessee before it is too late.

(Your signature)

Here are all the available TACIR Commission emails we have. You can “cut-and-paste” this list of email addresses into your email address spot and email all of them at once. (It might be nice to “bcc” all of them so the email seems more individually directed.) :

• senator.rosalind..tn.us
• senator.james..tn.us
• senator.mark..tn.us
• senator.jim..tn.us
• rep.jason..tn.us
• rep.gary..tn.us
• rep.randy..tn.us
• rep.larry..tn.us
• senator.randy..tn.us
• rep.craig..tn.us
• john..us
• paula..us
• drew..us
• Rose..us

Action Task 2: Contact the members of the Legislative Study Committee who will review the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act on December 18. Ask them to support repairing our election process by requiring voter-verified paper ballots and mandatory random audits here in Tennessee as soon as possibly, preferably 2008. Here’s a sample letter I just sent:

Dear TN Voter Confidence Act Study Committee Members:

I am writing to thank you in advance for your serious review and assessment of the threats, costs and other issues that paperless touch-screen voting has presented to restoring the integrity of our elections here in Tennessee. We hope you will use the information you receive and review on December 18 to recommend immediate action to restore the integrity of our franchiase here in Tennessee. The time for a decision is now if we are to protect our votes before November, 2008. Please do the following things:

(copy itemized list from above letter)

Thank you for your public service. You can rescue our franchise. We can’t afford another insecure election.

(your signature)

————–
These are the Legislative Study Committee members for the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act. “Cut-and-paste” them into the address box of an email and write them all at once.

• rep.joe..tn.us
• rep.gary..tn.us
• rep.john..tn.us
• rep.jimmy..tn.us
• rep.joe..tn.us
• rep.larry..tn.us
• rep.susan..tn.us
• senator.joe..tn.us
• senator.roy..tn.us
• senator.mark..tn.us
• senator.tim..tn.us
• senator.jamie..tn.us

Action Task 3: Contact other Tennessee officials NOW to ask them to pay attention to this issue and to act themselves, if necessary, to insure that these reforms are enacted. Here’s a preliminary list of state officials that we should be contacting in some way. I hope each of you will email your thoughts directly to some or all of these officials. In addition, you might want to mail copies of UNCOUNTED or the postcards recommending that it be watched to these same offices. I think the post-cards in particular can generate attention to these issues within these state offices.

We are asking all of these officials to do the following:

1. To please give serious consideration to the number of threats which our elections face and to consider what they can do to restore election integrity in our state
2. To do whatever they can do in their official capacity to help us replace the current non-verifiable voting systems used in most Tennessee counties (touch-screen and push-button voting machines) with verifiable voting systems that incorporate paper ballots (for example, the optical scan voting systems)
3. To encourage others in positions of responsibility for our elections to expedite the changes necessary to make our elections more secure and verifiable before the November, 2008 elections or as soon as possible, by whatever means available.

Bottom line

It’s not too late to restore election integrity in Tennessee, but we must act NOW. We can’t afford another insecure election in our state. Not when the solution is achievable NOW.

Please consider emailing and/or writing these officials directly. If you would like some post-cards which use the UNCOUNTED poster as the front and allows you to write your own message on the back, get in touch with me and we’ll get some of those cards to you. You can email me or call 931/682-2864.

Governor’s Office

Governor Phil Bredesen: phil..us
First Lady Andrea Conte: andrea..us

Governor’s Office
TN State Capital
Nashville, TN 37243-0001

TN Attorney General

Robert E. Cooper, Jr.
P.O. Box 20207
Nashville, TN 37202-0207

Department of Finance & Administration

Commissioner Dave Goetz
312 8th Ave., North, 16th Floor
Nashville, TN 37243

Administration: J. Michael Morrow mike..us
Public Info: Lola Potter lola..us

Secretary of State

Riley Darnell: riley..us
312 8th Ave. North, 8th Floor
Nashville, TN 37243

Elections and State Election Commission

Brook Thompson: brook..us
312 8th Ave., North, 9th floor
Nashville, TN 37243

Department of Economic and Community Development

Commissioner Matt Kisber: matt..us
Asst. Commissioner Paula Davis: paula..us
312 8th Ave. North, 11th floor
Nashville, TN 37243

Department of Veterans Affairs

Commissioner John Keys TN..us
215 8th Ave. North
Nashville, TN 37243

Bernie Ellis introduces “UnCounted”

Producers describe UnCounted as “an explosive documentary that shows how the election fraud that changed the outcome of the 2004 election led to even greater fraud in 2006 — and now looms as an unbridled threat to the outcome of the 2008 election. This controversial film examines…how easy it is to change election outcomes and undermine election integrity…”

“There is still time to return to a verifiable system [such as paper ballots] for the 2008 presidential election,” Ellis said. Ellis, (at left with producer Patricia Earnhardt), is featured in this film. He noted that when issues arose with the e-machines in Maryland, the Republican governor of that state dumped the machines in favor of paper ballots in just seven weeks to guarantee the “integrity” of the election.

UnCounted details the long lines, missing machines, inaccuracies in tabulating votes, and the ways voting machines can be tampered with to affect tallies. The film documents long voting lines, missing and failed machines, and other occurrences in the 2000, 2004 and 2006 elections. It examines the relationship between companies such as Diebold, manufacturer of voting machines that serve millions of American voters, and elected officials including election commissions and federal and state officers whose decisions affect how Americans will cast their votes.

In Nashville, David Earnhardt said “buying a Krispy Kreme donut was better documented than our vote.” Our most vital right as as Americans is our right to vote, and that right is being eroded by the manipulation and malfunctioning of electronic voting machines, and there is no paper trail, no way to verify how votes were cast or tabulated.

Patricia Earnhardt (above right with display of UnCounted DVDs) introduced the film, noting that the Clarksville screening was only the second time this film has been shown in the state of Tennessee, though it has been screened in 39 other states and several other countries since its worldwide premiere in Nashville in November at the Belcourt Theater. That premiere played to a standing room only crowd, just as last night’s screening played to a full house. At both events, the film generated heavy comments and considerable questions in the post-film debate. Earnhardt also noted the absence of interest by mainstream media in this film, noting that Clarksville Online was the only media to cover the world premiere of Uncounted in Nashville.

For a state that tipped the scales on women’s suffrage and was pivotal in civil rights, Tennessee stands “eighth from bottom” on a list of states when it comes to election integrity, Ellis (at right) said. “[Election officials] say it is too late to change how we vote in this state. It is not. If Maryland can do it in seven weeks, we can too.”

Ellis noted that pivotal votes on the voting process are coming up on December 18 and urged this audience to contact their legislators and election commissioners to demand verifiable voting. Ellis is also creating a lending library of UnCounted DVDs that will be available at no cost to groups who want to screen this film.

Friday’s event was hosted by the Unitarian fellowship and sponsored by the FreeThinkers for Peace and Civil Liberties and Clarksville Online.

FreeThinkers founder Debbie Boen was “excited” over the turnout, voicing satisfaction that so many people are interested in the voting process and concerned about issues of voting and electronic machines. “This kind of turnout just fuels us, recharges us and makes us want to do more.”

Boen (at left) brought her sculpture, Bob, to the event, attaching a “trust me” sign about voting to this figure, which has been displayed in numerous art venues throughout Clarksville.

Clarksville Online Publisher Bill Larson, equally pleased with the success of the program, said that Clarksville sponsorship of this event, which was offered admission-free as a community service by all sponsoring groups, is just the first of a number of community programs Larson would endorse in the coming year. “This is part of what we give back to the community.”

Ellis wrapped up the event with recommended contacts and suggested actions for those interested in voicing their opinion about electronic voting.

Ellis urged anyone who wants to know more or wants to communicate with legislators on the issue to email him ( "> ) for an action packet and/or visit the web-site: www.votesafetn.org . More information is also available at ">.

Here is a preview of UnCounted: The Movie –

Click here to view the embedded video.

Additional photos from the Clarksville premiere of UnCounted:

A crowd gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship for the Clarksville screening of David Earnhardt’s film, UnCounted

Bernie Ellis (left) makes a point on e-voting

Many viewers lingered after the film to comment on the e-voting issue and question Ellis on the finer points in the film

Chris Lugo, candidate for U.S. Senate, who attended the Nashville premiere and the Clarksville screening, discusses the electronic voting issue

FreeThinkers founder Debbie Boen makes a point on e-voting

Photos by David Shelton and Christine Anne Piesyk

Activist Bernie Ellis, who is featured in this film, will facilitate a panel discussion on electronic voting following the film.

Earnhardt was also originally scheduled to attend this session and field questions, but a traffic accident on Thursday that injured family members precludes his attending this event.

The program is sponsored by the Unitarian Universalists, the Freethinkers for Peace and Civil Liberties, and Clarksville Online. Refreshments will be served and the public is welcomed to the first public showing in Clarksville of this important film.

“The lawsuit aims to establish that all computer systems (or other systems) which hide the ballots from the people for even a short period of time before the count is accomplished and the results are posted – are unconstitutional…The lawsuit argues persuasively … that the use of computer and machine election systems violate each citizen’s right to vote, as defined at least twice by the Supreme Court of the United States. ”

– Jim Condit Jr., NetworkAmerica.

The reason for the push to have paper verified elections is evident in the recently released documentary, UNCOUNTED, by David Earnhardt. The film will make its Clarksville debut Dec. 7 at 7 p.m. the Unitarian Universalist fellowship on Highway 41A South. The event is free.

Uncounted proposes that the election fraud that changed the outcome of the 2004 election led to even greater fraud in 2006 – and now looms as an unbridled threat to the outcome of the 2008 election. This controversial film examines in factual, logical, and startling terms how easy it is to change election outcomes and undermine election integrity across the U.S. Noted computer programmers, statisticians, journalists, and experienced election officials provide proof.

The film also reviews extensive cases of mechanical errors, lost votes, voters turned away from polls, incomplete ballots and the installation of uncertified software into voting machines reported from across the nation.

“I cannot think of anything more important than to save the core of our democracy — the vote!” — David Earnhardt

Clarksville is hosting a premiere showing of UNCOUNTED, the movie. It is an explosive documentary that aims to change how we feel about the way votes are counted in America. After the film, there will be questions and answers with filmmaker David Earnhardt and Bernie Ellis.

Bernie Ellis started the group, Gathering to Save our Democracy, in 2005 with the purpose of making elections verifiable. Without a paper trail, computer voting machines have no way of being checked. The movie offers testimony by computer programmer, Clinton Curtis, who was employed to write an undetectable voting machine hacking program. It provides reasonable doubt as to the protection of our electronic votes.

“I heard Bernie Ellis talk in 2005 and I wouldn’t miss this opportunity to hear him again”, says Jim Palmer of Clarksville.

Unitarian Universalist and Clarksville Freethinker Beth Robinson says about this issue, “Denying people the right to vote is something that has to be battled all the time”. Beth is one of the people bringing this premiere to Clarksville.

The show is hosted by Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, ClarksvilleOnLine and the Clarksville Freethinkers, this movie premier with Questions and Answers will be held at 3053 Highway 41A South (Madison South, 1.9 miles past Wal Mart) in Clarksville. The event is free. DVD’s will be available for purchase . Call (931) 920-5390 for info.

Uncounted is a new documentary that explores the issues surrounding electronic voting and is a strong statement in support of a “paper trail” documenting how Americans cast their votes.

The film tackles the issue of voting machine error/failure, the need for a paper trail of votes, the political and business ties between government officials and manufacturers of these DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting machines, and the ease of tampering with such machines and “flipping” votes that are electronically counted.

“I cannot think of anything more important than to save the core of our democracy — the vote! — David Earnhardt (at right)

The film also reviewed extensive cases of mechanical errors, lost votes, voters turned away from polls, incomplete ballots and the installation of uncertified software into voting machine reported from across the nation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uncounted made its national debut earlier this month in Nashville, when it was also announced that Secretaries of State in all fifty states were being subjected to a lawsuit that calls for a mandatory paper trail of votes.

The lawsuit is aimed at prohibiting the use of all types of vote counting machines, and requiring hand-counting of all primary and general election ballots in full view of the public.The lawsuit has raised significant constitutional questions challenging the generally accepted practices of state election officials of relying on “black box” voting machines to record and count the votes at each polling station, and allow tallying of votes by election officials outside the view of the general public. In many cases, states have officially authorized voting “systems” that leave virtually no paper trail from which to audit the vote. (excerpt from We The People)

Ellis (left), in a statement made in Nashville, said that regardless of what voters are being told, “there is still time to pass legislation that would mandate voter verifiable paper ballots in 2008.” The Tennessee Voter Confidence Act of 2007 [Senate Bill 1363/House Bill 1256], sponsored by Senator Joe Haynes and Rep. Gary Moore, mandates a paper trail.

“Today in Tennessee, 93 of our 95 counties use nonverifiable, paperless touch-screen voting machines . In 2006, over one in every six Tennessee counties reported problems with this equipment. Our state is not alone, but (sadly) it is now one of the worst states for voting security and accountability in this nation.” — Bernie Ellis

The lawsuit seeks an Order from the Court prohibiting the use of all voting machines and to force election officials to instead utilize paper ballots and to count and total all votes by hand, always in full view of the public. Plaintiffs from all fifty states have signed on to the lawsuit.

Earnhardt and Ellis will host a discussion of electronic voting following the film. The event is sponsored by the Unitarian Universalists, Clarksville Online and the FreeThinkers for Peace and Civil Liberties. Admission is free, but bring your own popcorn. Copies of the DVD will be available at this presentation. For more information, call 931-920-5390.

Today, though there is no longer a single state where Bush enjoys majority support and his foreign policy failures abound, Bush still claims to have created a robust economy. Let’s look at some comparisons:

• Seven years ago, you could buy a Canadian dollar for $.59 — now it costs you $1.07.
• Then, you could buy a Euro for $.97 — now it costs you $1.43.
• Then, you could pickup a gallon of milk for $2.87 — now the price has risen to around $4.18.
• Then, a gallon of regular gas cost $1.44 — now it’s over $3.00 (and rising fast).
• Then we had a balanced budget and a surplus. Since then, Bush has raised the national debt ceiling five times and we are now drowning in red ink.
• Then, home foreclosures were at record lows — now they’re at record highs.
• Then a barrel of oil was $36 — now it’s $97.
• Today, 15% fewer Americans have health care than did back then.
• Then we were at peace — now our brave young women and men are dying in two wars (and Cheney’s itchy trigger finger is aiming for a third.) We have money now for body bags and Blackwater but no money to fund health care for poor children.
• Then, the dollar was the world’s preferred currency — now other countries can’t dump their dollars fast enough.

This is an economic boom? This is peace and prosperity?

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: “Are we better off today than we were seven years ago?” Not hardly. Being good at stealing elections hasn’t translated into any other skill necessary for and worthy of our great nation.

Bush’s illegitimate nightmare cannot end soon enough.

Editors Note: Price of Milk added by Clarksville Online Editorial Staff, and not the author. Year 2000 price of milk based off of chart included in http://www.ams.usda.gov/dyfmos/mib/rtlprc_rpt_2000.pdf.

The announcement was made in a panel discussion following the sold out Nashville premiere of the David Earnhardt film, Uncounted [The Movie], which ended with a standing ovation for its writer/director. The documentary film addressed the issue of voting machine error/failure, the need for a paper trail of votes, the political and business ties between government officials and manufacturers of these DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting machines, and the ease of tampering with such machines and “flipping” votes that are electronically counted.

“I cannot think of anything more important than to save the core of our democracy — the vote! — David Earnhardt

The film also reviewed extensive cases of mechanical errors, lost votes, voters turned away from polls, incomplete ballots and the installation of uncertified software into voting machine reported from across the nation.

“The lawsuit aims to establish that all computer systems (or other systems) which hide the ballots from the people for even a short period of time before the count is accomplished and the results are posted – are unconstitutional…

“The lawsuit argues persuasively … that the use of computer and machine election systems violate each  citizen’s right to vote, as defined at least twice by the Supreme Court of the United States. ”

– Jim Condit Jr., NetworkAmerica.

The lawsuit is aimed at prohibiting the use of all types of vote counting machines, and requiring hand-counting of all primary and general election ballots in full view of the public. The lawsuit has raised significant constitutional questions challenging the generally accepted practices of state election officials of relying on “black box” voting machines to record and count the votes at each polling station, and allow tallying of votes by election officials outside the view of the general public. In many cases, states have officially authorized voting “systems” that leave virtually no paper trail from which to audit the vote. [We The People Foundation].

Ellis said that regardless of what voters are being told, there is still time to pass legislation that would mandate voter verifiable paper ballots in 2008. The Tennessee Voter Confidence Act of 2007 [Senate Bill 1363/House Bill 1256], sponsored by Senator Joe Haynes and Rep. Gary Moore, mandates a paper trail.

“Today in Tennessee, 93 of our 95 counties use nonverifiable, paperless touch-screen voting machines . In 2006, over one in every six Tennessee counties reported problems with this equipment. Our state is not alone, but (sadly) it is now one of the worst states for voting security and accountability in this nation.” — Bernie Ellis

What began as lawsuits in ten keys states including Iowa, Ohio, New York and Florida has burgeoned into a nationwide effort. Earnhardt’s film, which was ignored by corporate media during this world premiere, exposes the vulnerability in current technology of voting machines, or at least, the lack of oversight in acquiring and using them without hacking, flipping or under/overcounting votes, and other problems. Earnhardt asked why, when it is so easy to get a printed receipt from anything from an ATM machine to the drive-through register at a Krispy Kreme, it should be so difficult to get a verifiable voting machine receipt.

The lawsuit seeks an Order from the Court prohibiting the use of all voting machines and to force election officials to instead utilize paper ballots and to count and total all votes by hand, always in full view of the public. Plaintiffs from all fifty states have signed on to the lawsuit.

In the question and answer period following the screening, an Iraq veteran said he had pledged to protect his country “from all enemies foreign and domestic” and viewed the issues of voting machines as a domestic threat to voters across the country.

UNCOUNTED exposes how Americans were cheated during the 2004 and 2006 elections – and how “enraged” voters have turned their anger into citizen activism – to safeguard the vote. Eyewitness accounts from whistleblowers are backed up by election experts in revealing how Jim Crow tactics, electronic voting machine security breaches, vote count manipulation, and illegal behavior by a major voting machine manufacturer all threaten the very core of our democracy – the vote. Democrats, Republicans, business leaders, elected officials, and rank and file voters are all part of a growing movement in America to correct an election system gone bad.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This new documentary by Nashville filmmaker David Earnhardt (left) focuses on the vulnerability of electronic voting machines, now being used in all but two Tennessee counties, as well as the numbers of people who were disenfranchised during recent elections.

David began the filming for Uncounted in 2005 at the National Election Reform Conference, an event which brought activists from more than thirty states to Nashville. Over the next two years David traveled the country gathering stories of everyday Americans who witnessed elections being manipulated and stolen.

Uncounted shows people taking action to try and right the wrongs of U.S. elections. The film features a variety of computer, statistical, and election experts who prove how the unethical or accidental manipulation of the vote has changed the outcomes of elections on local, state, and national levels.

Washington, DC rally protesting 2004 Ohio presidential election results Credit: EON – Ecological Options Network, image used with permission

The Belcourt Theater screening will begin at 6:30 PM with a wine and cheese reception celebrating the theatrical premiere of Uncounted. The film will begin at 7PM and will be followed by a half-hour panel discussion featuring the filmmaker and three citizen activists who are informed and concerned about this issue. The admission price for the entire evening is $8. Ticket proceeds will benefit Gathering to Save Our Democracy and Common Cause, two organizations working to insure there is a paper record, verified by the voter, of every vote cast in Tennessee.

Tickets can be purchased at the door or online at the Belcourt Theatre. Copies of the film are on DVD and will be available for purchase at the premiere; if you are unable to attend the premiere, are available online.

We are hoping to have a full house for the premiere — and we are hoping that you will become interested in this vital issue and join us in telling our legislators and election officials that we must have voter-verified paper ballots!

See you at the Belcourt on Monday, November 12. Please pass this on to others who want to make sure that their vote will be counted in 2008!

This announcement was submitted by Bernie Ellis, Founder of Gathering to Save Our Democracy, and Dick Williams, Chairman of Common Cause Tennessee.

Photo Credits: UNCOUNTED filmmaker, David Earnhardt. Photo by Tim Campbell. DVD Cover by Locomotion Creative.

The media attention on his case will greatly increase in the next week. It appears that the (Nashville) Tennessean will make his case a story in their Sunday edition (published on April 21) and then next week, the Nashville Scene will make his case their cover story (on April 25) with a 3,000+ word article. As potentially risky as this considerable media coverage may be, he knows that his case provides an opportunity to inform Tennesseans (and Americans in general) about the harsh penalties associated with being involved with medical marijuana and about the double jeopardy that medical marijuana providers face with both criminal and civil penalties (including the still-unresolved potential loss of his farm).

For these reasons, he has cooperated fully with these local media (and with Robert Koehler, whose column published two weeks ago is now on 60+ Internet sites.) In that regard, the Scene writer, Jeff Woods, wrote to ask him to describe the day of the raid and the feelings that came with it. After he sent Jeff his response, he realized that many of you had not heard this story. So here it is – an encapsulated description of August 28, 2002 – truly the first day of the rest of his life. He would say “enjoy”, but there’s not much here worth celebrating. That is, until the very end. He has grown to love happy endings, and still hopes (with your continued thoughts, prayers and support) that this story will end well.

He hopes to hear from more of you about what his experience, and these “house” diary entries, have meant to you. Bernie will share your comments with each other on the day he is released from the “house”. So please share your thoughts with him, so that he can share them with the other 450+ of you who have been along with him on this ride.

Tennessean article on Bernie’s Situation

Pot grower who may lose farm says his only crime was caring*
By LEON ALLIGOOD
Staff Writer for The Tennessean
Bernie Ellis is an unrepentant soul.

“I remain unashamed of what I was doing,” he said on a recent afternoon, the first warm day since dogwood winter settled on the month of April. He sat on a deck at a West Meade home where he has been employed as a landscaper for several months.
 
When lawmen raided his farm in August 2002, this man of medicine — a professional public health consultant who has worked for anti-substance abuse programs across the country — told officers he was growing marijuana for medical reasons. He also gave it to friends and acquaintances suffering from AIDS, cancer or chronic diseases.

Now, with less than three weeks remaining on his 18-month halfway house sentence, Ellis is anxious to return to the 187 acres he’s owned in the Fly community of northwestern Maury County for the past four decades. But he’s not sure he’ll get the chance.

Federal prosecutors want to take away his farm under laws that let the government seize property used in the commission of a crime. (Click here to read the rest of this article…)

*Originally published in the Tennessean on Sunday, 04/22/07 and a portion has been used here without permission under fair use.