A bill introduced in late December by a member of Tennessee’s House of Representatives would mandate that only paper ballots can be used for voting.
House Bill 1662 would mandate. “the use of paper ballots instead of voting machines, and would require such ballots to have a non-visible, non-producible security feature such as a watermark, fluorescence, or digital hologram changed from election to election to prevent fraudulent duplication,” and would also allow poll watchers to video record proceedings at polling locations, according to a Monday press release.
Rep. Bruce Griffey (R-District 75) introduced the bill.
“The purpose of this bill is to start the discussion in the Tennessee Legislature on how to provide Tennesseans greater confidence and transparency in their elections and election systems,” Griffey told The Tennessee Star. “To me, the way to accomplish this goal, from the 1000 foot overview level, is to require, by law, paper ballots (that can be counted by machine or by hand at any later date) and a verifiable paper audit trail. This will allow all Tennessee voters to verify for themselves, if they wish to, how many qualified voters showed up and how those votes were counted at any later date.”
The bill would prohibit the use of voting machines completely.
Griffey continued:
This provides transparency and oversight. If Tennesseans have to rely on a system where everyone votes in secret but our election administrators have to tell us, “Well, the computer calculated the votes, and the computer tells us so and so won” and ordinary Tennesseans have no way to go back and look and verify how the computer calculated that vote tally, we have a problem. All Tennesseans, regardless of party, should have unquestionable confidence in: 1. who is quailed [sic] to vote in Tennessee, 2. who actually showed up to vote and proved their qualification via photo ID, 3. how the votes were counted and 4. the ability to verify election at a later date without having to rely on computer programming. Because, in case you are not aware, the public is not allowed to inspect the “proprietary software” vendors place on the computerized voting machines. This excludesTennesseans from oversight of the vote counting process.
This is what I hope to accomplish with this bill and encourage all my fellow legislators to support this effort. Tennesseans want this without question. So, why would we not do it?
Election integrity is a hot topic as America prepares for the 2022 midterms, as many, including 2020 candidates for federal office, believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent. President Joe Biden amassed a whopping 81.2 million votes, the highest vote total in history by a long shot.
Much of the controversy stemmed from electronic voting machines.
Griffey’s Monday press release said that since votes are recorded electronically, it is “virtually impossible to tell if fraud occurs.”
Several other states, including Georgia and Pennsylvania, are battling to do away voting machines before the midterms.
– – –
Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “paper ballot” by Andrew Ratto CC BY 2.0.
