By Brad Friedman on 10/24/2014, 2:39pm PT  

Just after this morning's official start of our regular biennial coverage of votes flipping on 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems around the country, this report comes in right on cue from the great state of Tennessee...

"I honestly sort of slapped my head and said, 'Why me? Why did this happen to me?'" said Bernie Ellis, of Santa Fe.

Ellis said he voted "no" on Amendment One Thursday. Before he submitted his ballot, he noticed a problem.

"Sometime between when I cast my vote and when I got to the review page, the machine had changed my vote to a 'yes,'" Ellis said.

Beverley Turner, of Columbia, experienced the same issue last Friday when she tried voting "no" on the same position.

Both Ellis and Turner voted at the Maury County Election Commission.
...
Tennessee's 95 counties use touch screen election machines.

Amendment 1 is a TN ballot measure that would amend the state constitution to allow the legislature to "to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother."

Ellis, who explains what happens in the video posted below, happens to be a long-time election integrity advocate in Tennessee. He was very instrumental in helping the state legislature pass, nearly unanimously, the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (TVCA), a 2008 law to move to all of their 95 counties to paper ballots. Shamefully, after TN Republicans took over the legislature later that year (via the statewide touch-screen voting system, in a year when the GOP got trounced literally everywhere else in the country), they fought and then eventually repealed the reform which would have done away with the state's 100% unverifiable e-voting system.

The Republican fervor to continue the use of such unverifiable voting systems in the state may have been best reflected by a comment offered directly to us in 2007 at a meeting of the Davidson County (Nashville) election commission. After Tennessee election integrity documentarians David and Patricia Earnhardt (filmmakers of the award-winning Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, which both Ellis and I happen to appear in) reported seeing their own votes flip on touch-screen systems in Davidson County during Early Voting for the 2008 Presidential Election there, we explained:

In 2007 we had the displeasure of attending a meeting of the Davidson County, TN, Election Commission ourselves. While the Democrats on the committee were in the majority, the three hapless Democratic members were run roughshod over by the two Republicans who virtually ran the entire meeting themselves.

The Republican who seemed to be in charge of things, Commissioner Lynn Greer, while the actual Chair Eddie Bryan did almost nothing, actually told us after the meeting --- and after we'd spoken during it, to warn about the troubles they would have with their touch-screen systems --- that "paper ballots are the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on America."

It seemed as though he actually believed those words as they came out of his mouth.

Greer later became Chair of the county's Election Commission after Republicans took over the state legislature that year for the first time since Reconstruction.

For much more on the issue of touch-screen vote-flipping, what you need to be concerned about, what you don't need to be concerned about, and what you can do about all of it, please see our earlier detailed story today on votes now reportedly flipping Democratic to Republican on Diebold touch-screens in Texas and flipping Republican to Democratic on Sequoia touch-screens in Illinois.

The systems reportedly flipping votes in Maury County, TN are the infamous iVotronics made by ES&S, the nation's largest voting machine manufacturer and the one with, perhaps, the longest and most spectacular history of election failures in the U.S.

* * *

Here's the video report on the Maury County vote flips from WSMV...

* * *
Please help support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system --- now in our ELEVENTH YEAR! --- as available from no other media outlet in the nation...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION
ONE-TIME DONATION


Choose monthly amount...


(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
Share article...
                 

Article Categories: Election Irregularities, Election Reform, Tennessee, Rights And Freedoms, Touch-Screen DREs/BMDs, Election 2014