The TACIR “Trust But Verify” report recommends that Tennessee move to voter-verified paper ballots to improve election integrity.
Our efforts to achieve more secure elections in Tennessee moved forward this week when the TN Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) voted unanimously to release the TACIR staff report, Trust But Verify, to the state legislature and the general public.
The TACIR Commissioners were obviously influenced by the outpouring of emails and other messages they received from many of you last week. They told us that hearing from so many people did influence their deliberations. We need that to happen again in the next 2-3 days in order to move safe elections legislation forward.
The joint legislative study committee that is considering a bill to require optical scan voting systems statewide by November, 2008 meets on Tuesday, December 18. The recommendations of this study committee and the actions it recommends to the legislature will go a long way toward determining if our elections will be secure in 2008.
I urge you to go to www.votesafetn.org and follow the suggestions there. Send an email to the legislative study committee members supporting voter-verified paper ballots and mandatory random audits to be put in place before November, 2008. You can write each member separately or write them en masse. Whatever you do, it will make a difference so please send these emails in the next 2-3 days. (Bernie Ellis, pictured at right, urges verifiable ballots during at right during a recent appearance in Clarksville).
If you have a few more minutes, you can also scroll down at the web-site to find contact information for other important state officials, including Governor Phil Bredesen, Secretary of State Riley Darnell and others. Letting them hear from you will help our efforts immensely.
Finally, if you’re not from Tennessee but know that, if our country is to survive, all of us have a stake in how votes are cast and counted in every other state, please take a few minutes to write our Governor Phil Bredesen to tell him to please let our votes count in Tennessee. His email address is Phil.Bredesen@state.tn.us
