Tre Hargett Really Wants To Make The Voter Confidence Act Work
Posted on July 7, 2009 at 2:32 pmBut he’s probably not going to be able to. From a press release:
Secretary of State Tre Hargett said today that although the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act is an important piece of legislation, implementing it by November 2010 will be difficult, if not impossible.
“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.”
Hargett still believes that a delay, while not an ideal option, represents the best course of action under the circumstances.
“The act could be amended to weaken the security and reliability standards so currently available equipment could be used, but that doesn’t seem like a very good solution to me,” Hargett said. “Why force counties to use equipment that will soon be outdated? It’s just a matter of time before one or more vendors complete the certification process. Why not hold out for equipment that meets the highest standards available?”
To help prepare for implementation, Hargett said he and his staff at the state Division of Elections have been educating county election officials about the act’s requirements and training them on the proper procedures for conducting elections using paper ballots. The Division of Elections has also secured funding available through the federal Help America Vote Act to cover the counties’ expenses for the election machines when they become available.
“I really want to make this work,” Hargett said. “But I can’t provide counties with equipment that doesn’t exist.”
UPDATE: Election integrity activist Bernie Ellis responds:
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 is impossible in Tennessee these days seems to be to get our secretary of state to respect the law.
The 2005 EAC standards are 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, he 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 we vote on is also 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. Why is that, exactly?
Put another way: The Tennessee standard — paper ballots and hand-counted audits — is a standard that our General Assembly has affirmed not once, but twice, and it is the only standard that matters today. Everything else is just smoke-and-mirrors from a secretary of state who, for some reason, don’t want elections in Tennessee that we can trust and verify.
SEE ALSO: Liberadio(!)
Comments
22 Responses to “Tre Hargett Really Wants To Make The Voter Confidence Act Work”
Hey Tre,
You’ve got 18 months. I’m sure it can happen.
What if he can’t…which is, like, a real possibility that the equipment simply won’t exist. Is it not better public policy to work with what technology is available rather than what is not?
I think everyone can agree that we need to have fair, verifiable elections…but we shouldn’t break the financial backs of counties and mandate use of equipment that isn’t even available.
Just a few thoughts…
Um, he’s not looking real hard, I’d bet. The last thing he wants is voter verification for 2010, when the control of the state for the next decade is at stake.
I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’…
Instead of repealing or delaying, i’m sure the TVCA could be amended to allow for certification to 2002 standards.
Further, 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 standards (which is what the EAC standards are–voluntary), he would invalidate all of our existing equipment.
(ht: Bernie Ellis and Gathering to Save Our Democracy, who’ve been extremely vigilant of the misinformation campaign being waged by the office of the Secretary of State.)
I’m sure that Tre can “get-r-done” if he applies himself. What’s with all this we can’t, we can’t, we can’t….maybe we need someone with a “can-do” attitude.
[...] reliability standards adopted by the federal Election Assistance Commission in 2005” from the neighbors (Hiya, AC! Can I borrow a cup of sugar, [...]
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?
To FCDem: Implementing the Voter Confidence Act will save our counties between $10-$14 million per year, primarily because we will be able to eliminate up to 70% of the voting equipment we will need 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 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 the SoS harped on incessantly until we blew the cover on that bush-wa.
These costs are very significant. When my county (Maury) switched from the paper ballot/opscan system that we had before HAVA to DREs, our 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 audited or recounted.
Just more smoke-and-mirrors from a secretary of state who doesn’t seem to be able to respect the law.
I am writing my Rep and asking them not to vote for this loser again.
Mt rep is Cassada and I just emailed him, this guy is a freak show. Why in the hell did the party out him here.
If liberals were truly concerned about election integrity, they would shut down ACORN and then support photo ID to vote and proof of citizenship to vote/register to vote. They would also stop voting for dead people. All of this is documentable. Every fradulent vote cancels out a legitimate vote.
Yes, Gavin, the Democrats in our legislature have consistently voted against securing our elections process.
Gavin and Donna, It’d be nice for you to address the subject of this post rather than attempting to redefine the discussion by attacking your opponent, but since that’s not going to happen in my lifetime, I’ll bite…
What you’re talking about is election fraud and not voter fraud. There’s a difference. Election fraud is committed by those in positions of power - election officials, administrators, workers - like the election officials in Memphis in the Ophelia Ford case who tried to game the system by casting votes in other people’s names. The workers were charged with election fraud. No voter was charged with voter fraud i.e. registering to vote in someone elses name and then attempting to vote using the falsified card.
And bad ACORN employees can register all the Mickey Mouses they want but you can’t tell me that a) an election administrator would process the voter registration application or b) someone dressed as a Disney character would be allowed to vote if he showed up at the polls.
We already have proof of ID and citizenship laws on the books with very steep penalties attached and yet no one has been prosecuted for “voter fraud” in a very, very long time.
Mary, election-official fraud and voter fraud are just flip sides of the same coin. So why do you oppose verification of eligibility to vote, provided provisional ballots can be cast? It’s nuts to lock the back door when the front door is wide open.
I don’t oppose “verification of eligibility.” We already have it.
Give me one example of a prosecuted case of voter fraud.
And why are you still ignoring the actual content of this post?
Do you believe the machines we use to vote on now give us secure and verifiable elections?
What is actually well-documented is the potential for election fraud using these machines (touch-screen and other electronic voting machines without a paper ballot to record voter intent and act as the ballot of record in case of a recount or audit), not the cases of voter fraud that you are touting.
Mary, no, we don’t have such verification. We do not have verification of proof of citizenship when we register to vote in Tennessee, and we do not have to show government-issued photo ID at the polls.
As for voter faud, I tuned in to this issue a bit more because of my involvement in immigration control — the election Bob Dornan lost in California in which there were such allegations grabbed our interest, of course. In that case, I think the conclusion was decided that noncitizens did unlawfully vote in that election but not enough of them to cost him that election that Loretta Sanchez won.
In the following link, you can follow references to assorted newspaper investigations into voter fraud. And there are more articles you can find.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=23731
And by the way, passing state laws to verify eligibility to vote would affect only state and, I guess, local elections. Would not apply to federal elections, which would remain lax.
The Ofilia Ford election comes directly to mind….
If non-citizens voted in the Cali election they would have been prosecuted. Why weren’t they?
I see no prosecutions cited.
Also - what about the machines we use now?
And to You Know - the Senator Ford case was election fraud - poll workers and election officials who conspired to vote using false info. Voters were not involved in the fraud.
I’m with you and Bernie on the machines, Mary.