General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The reality about "vote flipping" machines in NC and elsewhere [View all]Fly by night
(5,265 posts)Kelvin ( I can't remember your real name), this is Bernie Ellis. Perhaps you don't remember me (since you didn't attend our conference though I invited you personally) but I am the person who organized the National Election Reform Conference in 2005 that was attended by reps from 30 states and from which more than a half dozen documentaries were made. I am the person who led the fight to pass the TN Voter Confidence Act to ban DREs, a bill that passed in 2008 with all but two legislators voting for it BUT ONLY because we agreed to conduct "just one more" election on the fraud-friendly equipment.
That year, in an otherwise blue tidal wave, every open seat in our legislature from Memphis to Mountain City went to Rs (giving control of our legislature to them), an outcome that is still called by political scientists the most unexplainable outcome of that election cycle. Two days later, the Rs announced their three top legislative priorities -- the first one being to repeal the TVCA (that all but two of them voted for). It took them three years to do so with the group I founded, Gathering to Save our Democracy, fighting them all the way, but they did it.
If elections can be held on paper ballots read by opscans, they can be held on paper ballots counted by hand. As for overhandling those ballots being a problem, it would be easy enough for voters to receive a paper ballot packet with each race on a separate piece of paper color-coded to make it easy for the voters to separate them before depositing them in the correct plexiglass box for that race. Even with separate pieces of paper for each race, printing paper ballots would still be cheaper than paying the lease/service charges for DREs.
I have heard your arguments many times from the farces of evil in this state. (???) And as for convincing "them" (our illicit legislature) to go along, the last thing they would do is destroy their mandate which exists deep in the bowels of the black boxes. My audience is the voters. And right now in TN, there are a whole lot of women who were stunned by the outcome of Amendment 1 (to ban abortions) when only 23% of voters supported it in pre-(s)election surveys. That support included only 32% of Rs, 21% of Is and 15% of Ds.
All vote flips are not caused by problems with calibration. And any US election is worth whatever amount of effort it takes to make it free, fair and verifiable.
Peace out. Now back to the Garden.