Senate Sponsor Joe Haynes had sought to have the bill reported out at this week’s meeting, but agreed to wait –- but only a short time -- to allow other legislators to write additional amendments to SB1363. This is the bill that Gathering to Save Our Democracy/Common Cause TN has supported and worked for over the past 2 years. If passed it would mandate voter verifiable paper ballots, routine post-election audits, and tighten security and testing for all electronic voting systems. While this procedural step may seem insignificant, it marks forward motion for the bill.

A MILLION THANKS TO EVERYONE who organized lists of friends, asked them to contact the committee members and other state leaders and got SO MANY of our voices heard in a short time. It made a HUGE difference. We all should be very gratified that the messages mattered.

The committee is tentatively set to meet again 1/10/08. Please put this date on your calendar as the next opportunity you will have to tell our state legislators we must have our votes count. We will send out an email alert in early January confirming the date, time etc.

The December 18th meeting was the first for the Legislative Study Committee on the Voter Confidence Act since last April. It was well attended by committee members (8 of 12 present) and a robust audience composed of our friends from many places-- labor unions, liberal radio, other lobbyists on our side -- as well as our growing Gathering To Save Our Democracy (GTSOD) activist group.

The meeting focused first on the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) study report recommendations on improving electronic voting. This report had been accepted at the 12/12 meeting of TACIR; the recommendations could help significantly to shape legislation that we support. A major unexpected disappointment were the comments by Dr. Harry Green, the TACIR Executive Director. He has been (personally) very strongly in favor of voter-verified paper ballots (vvpb), as is the TACIR report. But today he shifted gears, saying it is too late to change our voting equipment by Nov, 2008, but many other problems such as insufficient poll workers should be dealt with now.

A second focus, also heavily debated at the TACIR meeting, was how the state is addressing the uses of a balance of approximately $35 million of remaining HAVA (Help America Vote Act) funds held by the state. Secretary of State Riley Darnell and State Election Coordinator Brook Thompson fielded a flurry of questions, and informed the committee that they will seek guidance from the Election Assistance Commission regarding allowable uses of this money that is set aside, earning interest.

Additional questions to these officials dealt with whether optical scan voting could be put into place by the Nov 08 election. They re-iterated their message that " a change to optical scan voting systems cannot be done by Nov 08"; and that the state will try to lease machines for the counties that need more DREs --using an estimated $1-2 million of HAVA money. In a startling comment by Sec Darnell, he claimed that the problem in FL in the 2000 election was “not a problem of machines...it was a ballot design problem, a problem of personnel...also 06 in Sarasota...it was the same thing...this is the only problem: ballot design. We have never had a problem in TN, but we need to satisfy some peoples' concerns.." .None of the legislators challenged this claim that flies in the face of copious documentation of complex voting technology related problems in those elections.

The meeting also included testimony from two election integrity advocates. Lynn Willams, former Davidson County Council member, represented the League of Women Voters of TN; and Vonda McDaniels spoke for the United Steel Workers Union and “on behalf of families and working people of Tennessee ”. They both made strong (though brief) statements and the committee members were very attentive during their presentations.

Overall, the legislative study committee seemed attentive and more engaged than in the past. They asked many questions, including how post-election audits are done in TN and in other states (an important question) and how a vvpb-based voting system would work. Questions of implementation timing arose repeatedly but no one asked for evidence from the SoS to support why he thinks tine is too short.

We need to keep working hard. We remain hopeful that our efforts will bring paper ballots to our state in 2008. We’ll keep asking our leaders to “please let our votes count”.

We look forward to your help in spreading the word!