Now with a critical presidential election looming, UNCOUNTED will take the leap from grassroots organizing tool to mainstream wake-up call with a timely convergence of events that will expose its message to wider audience.

First, premium movie service provider Starz will present the world television premiere of UNCOUNTED on Starz Edge, Monday, August 25 at 10:30 p.m. (et/pt), and Starz Cinema on Thursday, August 28 at 10:00 P.M.

“As this is one of the most important elections in our nation’s history, premiering this thought-provoking documentary is not only timely, but necessary viewing.”

– Nancy Silverstone, Vice President of Program Acquisitions at Starz Entertainment.

Next, the distribution company, Disinformation, will release the documentary to retail outlets, including Amazon.com and Netflix, on Tuesday, August 26.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Washington, DC rally protesting 2004 Ohio presidential election results (Photo: EON - Ecological Options Network)

“Disinformation has become known as the home of the political documentary and we’ve screened many films about voting but didn’t find any that were compelling enough to attract and influence a wide audience. UNCOUNTED totally changed my perception of how effective a film about our dysfunctional election system could be. Our goal is to expose UNCOUNTED to as many Americans as possible before the presidential election so that the people can demand – and get – fair and honest elections.”

– Gary Baddeley, CEO of The Disinformation Company

UNCOUNTED also travels to the epicenter of the country’s political activity to screen at the prestigious American Film Institute Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, on Tuesday, September 9, at 7:00 PM. The AFI screening will feature a post-film panel discussion moderated by veteran broadcast journalist Bob Edwards, host of XMPR Satellite Radio’s “The Bob Edwards Show.” Panel members will include, Mimi Kennedy, Board Chair for Progressive Democrats of America, Rev. DeForest Soaries, former Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and others.

UNCOUNTED will continue to spread its message until the November election with screenings and panel discussions all over the country, including a stop in Los Angeles, San Diego and Mission Valley. The LA panel discussion will feature Earnhardt, journalist Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com, Diebold-whistleblower Steve Heller, and Heller’s lawyer, Blair Berk. The San Diego panel will feature Earnhardt and Friedman.

Filmmaker David Earnhardt with Rep. John Conyers, who chaired the House Judiciary Committee investigation into 2004 election irregularities (Photo: Earnhardt Pirkle, Inc.)

The movie has also made inroads into the international community, selling DVDs through the web site and screening in more than 20 countries. Clarksville Online, the only press to cover the world premiere of UNCOUNTED in Nashville last year, teamed up with the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Clarksville to sponsor a screening of UNCOUNTED in December, 2007.

“The response internationally to UNCOUNTED has been better than expected,” said Cassie Yde, president, Television Syndication Company, “We’ve come to find out that other countries are vitally interested in our elections and the election process. UNCOUNTED is a great complement to election programming.”

“Our country has a long and varied history of stolen elections, systematic disenfranchisement, and manufactured election irregularities. Yet most of us still accept on faith the integrity of the election process. I hope that watching UNCOUNTED so close to the presidential election will expose our film and this critical issue to a whole new audience, shake to the core preconceived beliefs, and encourage immediate action before it’s too late.”

–David Earnhardt

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

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.

These changes were required in every state for the 2006 federal election. Millions of tax dollars were allocated and dispersed to the states to upgrade and buy new equipment that would incorporate these requirements.

Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines are touch screen machines with no paper ballot. In Tennessee manufacturers of electronic voting systems including Diebold (a Diebold Voting Machine is shown above right), ES&S, Hart, and Microvote, eagerly marketed their Direct Recording Electronic machines to county election officials, although most of these manufacturers also produce optical scan voting systems. Optical scan systems are less costly, more efficient, and most importantly use paper ballots, marked by each voter, then optically scanned to record and count the vote.

Problems with DREs

DREs are essentially notebook computers programmed to display ballot images, record and count voter choices, and store this information on removable memory cards. Like any computer, the DREs can get a virus, be incorrectly programmed, or malfunction, either through innocent mishap or malicious intent. It is important to remember that when problems occur with the DREs, there is no independent record of each vote, so no meaningful recount or audit is possible.

Thousands of problems with electronic voting systems have arisen in dozens of states, including votes “flipped”, votes not counted, and malfunctioning memory cards. While most problems have been machine malfunctions from programming errors or poll worker inexperience, some less savory problems have occurred, including in 2006 in Memphis, where evidence revealed tampering had occurred in the central vote tabulator. It is clear that DREs are vulnerable to errors, malfunctions and tampering. As a result, it’s impossible to safeguard votes on such equipment.

In early 2005, I organized Save Our Democracy, a grassroots group that has continuously learned about voting issues and equipment. In 2006 SOD formed a coalition with Common Cause TN. The group’s members have also worked with county and state election commissions, legislators, the state coordinator of elections and other citizen groups to encourage county commissions to purchase optical scan voting systems, NOT DRE’s.

Finally in 2006, 93 of the 95 Tennessee counties chose DRE systems. Only Pickett county bought an optical scan system, while Hamilton County converted to optical scan voting nine years ago.

The current reality in the US and Tennessee

In 35 states, all votes are cast on voter verifiable paper ballots. Only five states still use DREs exclusively. Tennessee lags behind, with only two counties safeguarding their elections. We must have legislation that mandates paper ballots.

What’s the answer? The simple fix is making sure all voters vote on electronic voting systems that start with a paper ballot that they mark. Throw out the DREs and replace them with optical scan voting systems. Election officials will tell us there is not time to switch to optical scan machines before the November 2008 election. In 2006,however, the counties ordered and installed completely new equipment in seven months, so there is time to make the change to optical scan systems by November.

What’s happening in the Tennessee Legislature?

In 2005, Rep. Susan Lynn and Sen. Bill Bryson introduced the first bill to mandate paper ballots. In the 2006 legislative session, we worked closely with Rep. Gary Moore and Senator Joe Haynes to craft a comprehensive bill, The Voter Confidence Act that would mandate paper ballots, post election audits, and high level security for the voting systems. After the 2006 election, legislators began to appreciate the problems with the DREs: 12 bills were introduced in 2007 that would increase voter security. All of these bills, including The Voter Confidence Act SB 1363 HB 1256, are currently being reviewed by a joint Senate-House Study Committee that will report its recommendations to the General Assembly by Feb. 2008. The next meeting will be Dec. 18.

A second examination revealing the flaws and dangers of electronic voting issues is also underway. The TN Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations -TACIR – is conducting a sweeping examination of voting and election issues. Their two interim reports, written by the staff and issued in June and September, 2007, urge the state to move to optical scan voting systems as soon as possible.

Sign up at www.votesafetn.org to receive our email alerts.

Reprinted from Gathering to Save Our Democracy (11.12.07)

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.

Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) says in her August newsletter that “the liberal majority of Congress will not deliver these promised goals: curb government spending, secure our nation’s borders, and institute the most ethical Congress in U.S. history.”

Congresswoman Blackburn is right to blow the whistle on these urgent matters!

We desperately need to curb government spending.  Our government charges the taxpaying citizens of the United States a daily fee of $200 million dollars to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq, while corporations such as Halliburton are getting rich off both the war, oil production and the average American.

We need to secure our nation’s borders!  It’s not just a matter of illegal immigration, or the threat that can sail through porous ports and land in our airports nationwide.

We need to stop corporations from outsourcing their work to sweat shops in other countries. Wal-Mart alone is putting all of its potential competitors and smaller local companies out of business by offering the lowest prices while paying its employees poverty level wages with no benefits.

We need to elect and install the most ethical Congress in U.S. history.  All those elected and appointed folks who do not follow, uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America need to go. It’s our job to vote them out of office.

We cannot stand for or afford any more gross violations of our civil liberties. Illegal war, illegal wiretapping, illegal seizure without representation, torture, lying to and using the American people to attain personal war profit — all need to be dealt with severely, with imprisonment and heavy financial penalties as part of that package.

Representatives who would dehumanize, demean and discriminate against citizens of the United States by labeling them and using that label to ignore them need to go. What we need are people who have good judgment and look beneath the surface for the truth.

We need to get on the same page in history. As a country we are in crisis situations that cannot be ignored:

1. Our soldiers are facing a third deployment when they are already psychologically damaged and receiving no treatment. The loss in Iraq is beyond belief. Other countries are completely sour with us and we are not being the humanitarians that we preach. It is such a an overwhelming atrocity that we casued and continue to fuel.
2. We are in a global crisis. Global warming is gradual and the evidence of it is all too clear. There isn’t that much time to reverse the effects of it. It is a serious crisis to know that we continue to use the same sources of energy at great risk to our entire planet. It’s a crisis to think about changing those sources and getting people to go along with it.
3. Our country is in a civil liberties crisis. Our freedom of speech, privacy, right to representation, right to jury, has been pulled out from under us in the name of war. Our ability to trust the government to help us in any crisis is not believable anymore. In the name of the United States of America, we carry out illegal invasions, illegal torture, illegal seizures, killing, rape, looting and unethical lack of concern for other nations, our nation and mankind.
4. The mandated “No Child Left Behind Act” is teaching children to the tests, frustrating them and teachers, creating a crisis in education. Our children, and even our adults spoon fed lies and half-truths by a biased corporately-managed media must learn to ask questions and think for themselves; both skills are quickly becoming lost arts in our society. When children become increasingly restless and unhappy in school, we resort to controlling them with drugs and punishment. Teachers who love to teach are frustrated. Desperate for funds, schools who receive money from the No Child Left Behind Program are obligated to hand over to military recruiters all the information in the files of our children. It’s a positive formula for future armies, but not for us as freethinking American citizens with dissenting opinions. Our right to chose is being revoked.
5. Threat from terror is only stifled as long as Iraq is in a quagmire within itself. I do believe they will hate us forever and we will always need to fear them.
6. Fox news promotes distrust of and intentions to attack Iran. Fox news conditions us. It is not news but propaganda; its proclaimed “no spin zone” is itself perpetual “spin.”
7. Mainstream media has been silent to the atrocities going on in Iraq and in our government. It is only by reading alternative media sites, and browsing international sites such as the BBC, Canadian broadcasting, international newspapers and radio broadcasts do we get alternative points of view and a clear perception of where America stands in the eyes of other nations around the world. It’s not a very pretty picture, and the very charges we level at people like Saddam Hussein, and officials in North Korea and Iran are no different than the perspective other nations have of our leaders. We are not always viewed as saviors or rescuers but as power hungry, money hungry war mongerers. Our status in the world view has fallen into disfavor, particularly in terms of the Iraq War.
8. Health care, the holes in health care services, and in many cases the complete lack of health care, is a crisis eroding the heart and soul of everyday American citizens. What is so difficult about a wealthy industrialized nation offering health care to all? Oh yes, insurance companies, HMO’s, those corporate lobbyists and that wealthy top five percent…
9. America’s voiting machines are not verifiable. Our most important voice is not trustworthy. We cannot guarantee the votes are counted correctly, or that the machines are not tampered with; nor are we being allowed a paper trail of truth.

I believe Marsha Blackburn is saying to us “How can smart people not face glaring truths that are staring them in the face?”

WAKE UP

These are serious times that require urgent action. We are in this together and there is no time for name calling.

More than ever we need representatives, regardless of party affiliation, who will, like Marsha Blackburn says, have the guts to stand up to the bullies in government, speak up for the people, and not bleat out the same rhetoric that is used to distract everyone and keep them from looking too closely at the facts.

Contact Representative Blackburn

I encourage everyone to let Representative Blackburn know how you feel about what is important.

You can contact Ms. Blackburn at the following offices:

Washington DC

Clarksville

Memphis

Franklin

Marsha Blackburn’s Voting Record

For information on Rep. Blackburn’s voting record, visit http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/b001243/

I am currently investigating reports of issues retreiving the votes from the Microvote Infnity machines used for early voting, which once again raises the question: Can we trust paperless voting using electronic machines, and highlighting the need for these machines to produce a voter verified paper audit trail!

Ask yourself this. What happens at the end of the day, if they try to download votes from a heavily used voting machine, and find nothing there? While I hope this is a nightmare that we never have to face, they will not be able to say we were not warned!  Updated below:

I called the election commission office today and Vickie Koelman the Administrator of Elections denied that there is any truth to the rumors that I reported on last night. She said “None at all” in answer to my question if there were any problems or issues as all with either downloading votes from a machine or from the memory cards.

Computers will do what the people who programs it instructs it to do, An unscrupulous programmer or hacker could modify the voting machines or the tabulating software to take your vote, and to give it to another candidate, while still showing a message on the display screen indicating your vote was correctly cast for your choice of candidate.

Something of this nature would be totally undetectable unless you can review each line of the source code or collection of instructions which tell the machine how to work.

I campaigned against the selection of the Microvote Infinity voting machines which Montgomery County eventually purchased for use in the upcoming election. I was seriously concerned about machines accuracy and auditability. I am not totally against electronic voting machine, instead I am very much in favor of having a voter verified paper audit trail.

A voter verified paper audit trail means that when you cast your vote, the machine prints out a receipt which you review for accuracy and then it is placed in locked ballot box and can be audited if there is any doubts about the election. Currently most voting machines do not have this feature or do not have it enabled. While this would not be foolproof, it would give us a way to reconstruct an election which resulted from a faulty voting machine or from an intentional manipulation of the vote totals.

So we said this to our elected officials on the county commission:

if you purchase these machines at least give us the ability to be sure of their accuracy by printing a paper receipt for the voter to review.

They declined.

You might think it is some kind of a conspiracy theory to believe that someone might have an interest in overriding the will of the people of the United States as expressed by their vote? Watch this video and then see if you can still believe that:

-5173816754727816515

These machines have a history of glitches and errors.

In June 2004, the machines we are going to use registered 1500 more ballots than the number of voters who were recorded as voting.

Jasper County, South Carolina. Results of the June 8 election were certified before the county noticed that there were 1500 more ballots counted than the number of voters who signed in to vote. Some 521 people voted in the Ridgeland 1 precinct’s County Council Pocotaligo race, according to the Election Commission’s original election certification on June 10. Some 432 voted in the council’s Hardeeville race at the precinct. And, 548 voted in the precinct for the council’s at-large race. Yet, the precinct’s voter sign-in sheet shows that only 298 people actually voted there.

…”Evidently, it was a (voting) machine error,” Jasper Election Commission Chairman Lawrence Bowers said.

…Election Commission Vice Chairwoman Barbara Pinckney said Friday she doesn’t know where the

1,500 phantom votes came from. “But they didn’t change outcomes or the percentages,” she said. But, in fact, they did in at least one race – the County Council at-large seat between incumbent Gladys Jones and challengers Samuel Gregory and D.P. Lowther.

Ms. Pickney’s claim is further contradicted by a later article:

Although initial election results from the primary earlier this month showed Jones in the lead with 1,661 votes to Gregory’s 1,470, a recount last week had Gregory bettering the incumbent, 1,139 votes to 1,079.

The county Democratic Party called for the recount after a series of mistakes in how the election was run including a log-in book showing a total of 521 votes cast by only 298 voters and, in the Gillisonville precinct, a race in which three candidates all received 111 votes each, was detected.

VotersUnite! wondered how a recount was done on paperless MicroVote DREs, so we spoke with Cathy Morgan, Jasper County Election Supervisor. Ms. Morgan said that they used the tapes from the machines, since the number of ballots recorded on individual tally tapes matched the number of voters. The problem had occurred when the precinct totals were accumulated in the central tabulation computer. Vote data from a previous election had been not been deleted and those votes were included in the 2004 totals.

Recount shows massive error in Jasper voting. Ridgeland: 1,500 phantom votes were cast in last week’s election. Carolina Morning News. July 19, 2004. By Mark Kreuzwieser.

http://www.lowcountrynow.com/stories/061904/LOCprotests.shtml

Jones defends seat in Jasper squeaker. Beaufort Gazette. June 23, 2004. By Omar Ford, staff writer.

http://www.beaufortgazette.com/local_news/story/3656823p-3258999c.html

In July, 2004 the machines we are going to use were unable to be tabulated and it required a manual extraction. I wonder how you can manually extract votes from a machine which is malfunctioning and still have faith in the reliability of the tally.

Pender County, North Carolina. One of the county’s 74 machines wouldn’t tally the votes. All of Pender County votes electronically, and the county has 74 of these machines. But on Tuesday, one of them didn’t work. “There was a machine that would not tally. We had the precinct workers bring in the machine for that and we had to extract those votes and count them manually,” said Frances Pinion the Pender County Board of Elections Director.

In May 2005 in Sumner County, Tennessee with the machines we are going to use, a machine had an error which resulted in it locking up and the votes on the machine being unable to be properly tabulated on election night. The next day they were recovered after calling in a technician who extracted the votes. The technician and machine were in public view at all times. My question is was the machine in question watched the entire time from the point it malfunctioned to the point where the technician extracted the votes, does this also include throughout the night until the technician arrived?

Sumner County, Tennessee. Paperless Infinity voting machine locked up and failed to release votes. VotersUnite.Org heard from a citizen in Cookeville, Tennessee: A Microvote machine malfunctioned in a city of Portland election in Sumner Co., TN. The reports claims that 110 votes were not able to be retrieved on election night. The next morning changes were made and the 110 votes were supposed recaptured. This type of problem is very typical with the Microvote Infinity unit in the state of Tennessee. VotersUnite! contacted Wayne Pruett, election director in Sumner County, TN. Mr. Pruett said the Microvote Infinity voting machine had locked up around 2:00 on election day and was taken out of service. He called a technician from Indianapolis to come into the office and retrieve the votes. Mr. Pruett said the machine was always in public view in the county office and that the press and other observers were invited to view the retrieval process. He expressed complete confidence in the results.

This year in Grant County Indiana they had issues tabulating the votes which made them restart the counting process and re-enter 771 absentee ballots. I am not sure if this is Microvote related or not. I know the county in question used Microvote machines, however the problem may have been in the machines or in the tabulating software.

Grant County, Indiana Tabulation problems slowed down reporting of results. County Clerk Carolyn Mowery said there was some kind of an overload on their computer, which caused them to restart counting and reenter the 771 absentee ballots they had received. Other “glitches” occurred throughout the county and were minimized by the vendor. There were no major problems with the machines during voting, Mowery said. There were a few glitches here and there, but nothing that held up voting. “(It was) nothing that we couldn’t cure. Just normal things that happened in delivery,” said Charlie Williams, a voting machine mechanic.

A great quote I recently saw was:

When computers fear jail, they’ll be ready for elections. – Paul Lehto, Everett, Washington

This is something we should heed.

Knowing what you now know, can you truthfully say that you have absolute faith in the accuracy and accountability of the vote you cast on these machines. Because we are trusting these machines to be the voice of our Democracy by allowing them to handle the most important function that the citizens of our nation perform, voting.

We need a voter verified paper audit trail. While it may be too late for this years elections, we can enact this into law sometime in the next 2 years, and thus have protected ourselves in time for the 2008 elections!