A plan to require paper ballots in next year’s elections is on the verge of being repealed, the latest in a series of actions taken by Republicans in the state legislature to rewrite Tennessee election laws. State representatives are trying to reverse most of a 2008 law that called for the replacement of electronic voting…
Members of the Sumner County Commission recently voted to send a proposal to state legislators to either repeal or fund a bill currently being considered that mandates the use of paper ballots in local elections. “We just purchased new machines that are electronic, and if they mandate paper ballots we’ll have to go to a…
After a Senate panel heard testimony on April 14 from a handful of election watchdogs critical of the state’s system of electronic voting machines, a rather testy exchange took place in the hallway. “You guys have a tough job,” said USC computer scientist Duncan Buell to Chris Whitmire, the spokesman for the South Carolina State Election…
There’ll be no last hurrah for Pierce County’s optical-scanner voting machines. No red-white-and-blue farewell to the last traditional polling places in Washington. No one-last-chance for 85-year-old Erika Cranmer of Lakewood to exercise the democracy she cherishes so by helping conduct an election at her neighborhood polling place; nor for 90-year-old Morry Kenton of Gig Harbor to make…
Mandating photo identification for voting is just one part of a reshaping of Tennessee election laws by the Legislature’s Republican majority that also includes resolution of a three-year dispute over installing new voting machines statewide. In a compromise last week, Republicans backed off of bills to repeal outright the Voter Confidence Act of 2008, which…
It’s no secret that opposing political parties frequently disagree. But when it comes to voting machines currently used in their state, South Carolina Democrats and Republicans unite in demand for improvement. Distrust in the use of electronic voting machines is noted in the 2011 resolutions of both state parties. Both call for changes to include…
The state of Tennessee is supposed to move to using only paper ballots by the time voters head to the polls in 2012. But some lawmakers are looking to stop that, saying that communities just can’t afford to make the switch. The Tennessee Voter Confidence Act has already been delayed once, but it could be…
There were no comments while Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett presented a brief overview of his job — until he began talking about elections. After his speech Thursday in front of the Kiwanis Club of Cleveland, a member said the voting machines used in Tennessee do not have a recorded paper trail and could…