Last week, my vote flipped on a TN DRE. Three media spins later, I respond. [View all]

[Fly by night]

Last week, I told all y'all about my Tug-of -war with my black box over Amendment 1, which would ban abortions here. Since the outstanding TV news spot on WSMV ran, there have been three print media articles, all of which misrepresented or minimized the story and none of which included interviews with the voters whose votes flipped. After a particularly inept piece ran in the Nashville Tennessean, this was my response.
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To the editor:

In a recent article on early voting, several paragraphs were devoted to the report of two Maury county voters and one Davidson county voter having their votes flipped on Amendment 1 by the ES&S Ivotronic voting machines. You included comments from four election officials, all of whom misrepresented and minimized these reports. You did not, however, interview the voters.

I am one of those voters. What happened to me was simple enough. When I voted in Maury county, I initially checked "no" on both Amendments 1 and 2, which were on the same page of my ballot. Before leaving that page, I double-checked my votes. They were both bright red "no"s.

When I completed my other selections, I clicked the "Review" button to look (ostensibly) at my choices. All choices were correctly indicated EXCEPT my vote on Amendment 1. The machine had changed my vote to "yes".

I immediately followed the instructions to change my Amendment 1 vote back to "no". The second time through the review process, my choice was correct and so I cast my ballot, though with even more uncertainty than usual as to whether my votes were counted, and counted correctly.

It is true, as the election officials stated, that, in the end, my vote appeared as I wanted it to. They say that's all that matters. I say that the "no to yes to no" tug-of-war on Amendment 1 between me and my voting machine also matters, and it matters a lot. After all, if I had simply chosen to cast my vote without reviewing it, my ballot would not have reflected my intended vote. Simple as that.

To know why this voting machine "glitch" has occurred in at least two counties on the same machines, it is imperative that the software be examined to explain how these vote switches occurred. The voting machines themselves should have been set aside until they could be examined (by someone other than the person who programmed them) to explain the vote flip. Unfortunately, no one (including election officials) is allowed to examine the voting machine software in Tennessee and no one bothered to do a thorough forensic check of the machines.

We are left instead with more defense of the indefensible (unverifiable voting machines) by our election officials. The voters? They are ignored or blamed.

As long as we vote on unverifiable voting equipment owned and programmed by corporations without meaningful oversight, our fears are warranted. And as for me and two other voters (at least), our fears have been realized. Right in front of us in the voting booth.

As one friend (with 30+ years in the NSA level cyberworld) said about my experience: "No way that was an accident, Bernie. A zero is not a one."

I can't prove he's right, and Tennessee election officials can't prove he's wrong. That bothers me mightily. Them, apparently, not so much.

I want our elections to be run accident-free. (Paper ballots counted by high school honor society members would work for me). Our current Tennessee state and local election officials want to keep us trusting voting machines that are so error-prone and fraud-friendly that they are now banned in 34 other states.

What possible reason could there be, other than the obvious one, for that?

How did your voting machine vote on Amendment 1? Can you be sure?

Fly by night
Old Natchez Trace Road
Fly , TN