Clarksville, TN Online » Uncounted The Movie

It’s anybody’s guess: Will e-voting machines accurately tally votes?

Christine Anne Piesyk — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:00:32 +0000

The race is officially on for the Democrats with the nomination of Barack Obama and his chosen running mate, Joe Biden. The Republican presidential nominee follows in a week.

New election. New candidates.

Same black box voting, same electronic morass masquerading as a true vote in the 2004 presidential election in many parts of the country. In what is a growing nationwide trend, Clarksville will be returning to paper ballets, according to the city’s Election Commission, but it won’t happen in time for the November 2008 Presidential election. It could have, but apparently the impetus for change, for truth in voting, was not strong enough in Montgomery County or in the state to get this job done pre-November 2008, even though the discussion of this change began in earnest last January.

Here is a clip from the film UNCOUNTED: the New Math of American Elections, by Nashville’sown David Earnhardt.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Election fraud evidence in UNCOUNTED: The Movie, to be shown at Public Library

Debbie Boen — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 23:00:27 +0000

UNCOUNTED is a wakeup call to all Americans. Beyond increasing public awareness, the film inspires greater citizen involvement in fixing a broken electoral system. As we approach the decisive election of 2008, UNCOUNTED will change how you feel about the way votes are counted in America.

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.

Voters: Demand a verifiable voting process

Bernie Ellis — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:00:23 +0000

It’s not too late to take action on the issue of electronic voting machines and demand a “verifiable vote” through paper trail and/or auditing. Activist Bernie Ellis (right), who is featured in the film UnCounted:The Movie and who addressed a Clarksville audience on Friday, today offers a fledgling “action kit” for worried voters who want to register their concerns with state leaders. These words from Mr. Ellis:

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.) :

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.

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:

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
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)
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

Fifty states face voting machine lawsuits; “Uncounted” documents DRE issues

Christine Anne Piesyk — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:13:09 +0000

Business as usual will not be the norm over the next 48 hours as Secretaries of State in all fifty states will each receive subpoenas in the National Clean Election lawsuit, according to an announcement made Monday night by activist Bernie Ellis at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville. There is still time, Ellis said, to require a paper trail for the 2008 election.

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.