Several months after the passage of the Voter Confidence Act, Secretary of State Tre Hargett offered his explanation today as to why his office is seeking a change in the law so the law does not apply to the 2010 elections.
In response to questions from NIT last week, the Secretary of State’s office said one alternative solution would be for “the General Assembly to lower the security and reliability standards for the equipment,” but the Sec. of State’s office provides no evidence they are seeking this solution.
Today’s press release clearly shows the only option the office has and will pursue is lobbying the legislature to delay the existing law until after the 2010 elections. The same day last week’s Q&A was released, State Election Coordinator Mark Goins was in Memphis with Sec. of State Hargett asking county election officials to urge their lawmakers to re-write the law.
“I fully support the goal of the Voter Confidence Act, which passed both houses of the General Assembly with broad bipartisan support,” Hargett said. “However, after researching the law, I believe it is unlikely that counties will be able to implement it before the November 2010 elections. In fact, the act as it was adopted creates a Catch-22 for county governments. Whether counties acquire new equipment or not, they will still not be in compliance with the act.”
The act requires all of Tennessee’s 95 counties to use optical scan voting machines and paper ballots no later than the November 2010 elections. However, the mandated equipment isn’t available for sale anywhere in the United States.
“The act is very specific,” Hargett said. “It requires counties to use only certified equipment that meets the security and reliability standards adopted by the federal Election Assistance Commission in 2005. Currently, there are no vendors certified to sell equipment meeting these standards. And because the commission’s certification process typically takes about 18 to 24 months, I’m not confident that a vendor could complete that process in time to have equipment in place for the November 2010 elections.”
Hargett supported a bill in the General Assembly’s recently completed legislative session that would have delayed implementation of the act until 2012. That bill passed the state House of Representatives with broad bipartisan support, but fell one vote short of passage in the Senate.
“I was supportive of the delay because I want to see the act properly implemented,” Hargett said. “The required equipment simply isn’t on the market yet. And I’m hesitant to suggest to county election officials that they begin using equipment that is less secure and less reliable than the act requires.”
NIT
News
OK, so here’s the deal. The TN Voter Confidence Act is not too wordy (see it in its entirety here: http://www.michie.com/tennessee/lpext.dll/tncode/65e/1200?fn=document-frame.htm&f=templates&2.0#) and it is also not “very specific.
It certainly does not say that counties must use “only certified equipment that meets the security and reliability standards adopted by the federal Election Assistance Commission in 2005.”
In fact, I can’t find the year 2005 listed anywhere in the Act.
Mr. Hargett and State Election Coordinator Goins spent January to June coming up with excuse after excuse for not implementing the Voter Confidence Act and finally landed on this one to use to send a press release because they believed it was the only excuse that would stick.
Now what will they do?
You betcha we’re not buying it.
When Secretary of State Hargett says that it will be “impossible” for him to implement the Voter Confidence Act by 2010, the truth is that the only thing that seems impossible in Tennessee these days is to get our secretary of state to respect the law. (As Nashville Is Talking readers know, the Voter Confidence Act is not the only law that Hargett doesn’t respect. He doesn’t have much respect for the TBI either.)
The 2005 Election Assistance Commission (EAC) national voting machine standards are the same as the 2002 EAC standards in the main. The only differences between them deal primarily with accessibility issues for disabled voters, not with basic vote-counting or security procedures. Besides, these EAC standards are completely voluntary standards — there is no federal requirement that any state follow these voluntary standards.
More important, SoS Hargett does not tell us that NONE of the equipment now in use in Tennessee has been certified to either the 2002 or 2005 EAC standards. So if his principal concern was meeting some voluntary national standards before he could run an election, Hargett would have to do away with all of our existing voting equipment right now.
That is not the issue. Tre Hargett is less concerned about Tennesseans voting on equipment that is not certified to some national voluntary standards just as long as the uncertified equipment he would force us to vote on remains untrustworthy and unverifiable.
His principal goal seems to be to prevent us (at all costs) from voting on paper ballots counted by optical scan equipment, a voting system that will meet the Tennessee standard established by the Voter Confidence Act — the only meaningful standard in this state today.
Put another way: The Tennessee standard - paper ballots counted by optical scan machines, followed by hand-counted audits in randomly selected precincts to check the accuracy of the optical scan equipment - is a standard that our General Assembly affirmed not once but twice. It is the only standard that matters today. Everything else is smoke-and-mirrors from a secretary of state who, for some reason, don’t want elections that we can trust and verify. Every Tennessee voter, regardless of political party, should ask him “Why?”
Besides, implementing the Voter Confidence Act will allow our elections to run faster and more smoothly. It will also save our counties between $10-$14 million per year, primarily because we will be able to eliminate up to 70% of the voting equipment that we now use to run our elections. That means 70% less equipment storage and transportation costs; 70% less per-machine annual software licensing and software upgrading fees; and 70% less per-machine maintenance, programming and testing costs. The General Assembly’s own Fiscal Review staff admitted to the Senate Finance committee during their hearing on the bill to delay the TVCA that they had not taken these savings into account, nor even bothered to review any of the bogus “extra costs” figures submitted by counties that Hargett harped on incessantly, and unsuccessfully, during the last session of the legislature.
These costs are very significant. For example, when Maury County switched from the paper ballot/opscan system that they used before HAVA to DREs, their annual election-related costs went up an astounding 374%. In these tough economic times, no county can afford to waste money, much less waste it on DRE systems that are 10-15 times slower than voting on paper ballots/opscan systems AND whose votes are incapable of being recounted.
We would respectfully suggest that secretary of state Hargett spend less time writing press releases and more time doing his job. His press release is just more smoke-and-mirrors from a secretary of state who doesn’t seem to be able to respect the law.
Bernie Ellis, Organizer
Gathering To Save OUR Democracy
[...] Secretary of State calls Voter Confidence Act a ‘catch-22′ [...]
[...] Mancini simply wants to see proof of voting accuracy with electronic voting machines. Last year, the Tennessee State Legislature passed almost unanimously a law signed by Gov. Phil Bredesen requiring the 2010 elections across the state use paper ballots. The Secretary of State’s office has already indicated they will not abide by that law. [...]
[...] July, the Department of State called the new a law a “catch 22″ and began claiming it would be impossible to abide by the new law. “I fully support the goal of [...]
This is an amazing entry. Thank you very much for the supreme post provided! I was looking for this entry for a long time, but I wasn
[...] of State Tre Hargett raised legal concerns over the law that were later dismissed in [...]