The Tennessee General Assembly passed bi-partisan legislation (HB1256) last year requiring voter verifiable optical scan ballots for elections in all Tennessee counties and for new systems to be in place no later than the 2010 elections. The Governor signed it into law on June 5th (Public Chapter 1108).

According to the bill's fiscal note, the cost for new machines would be a one-time expense of approx. $25 million.

At that time, the most recent U.S. Election Assistance Commission report showed that Tennessee has approx. $31.4 million in unused federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funds available for the upgrade.

Now Republicans legislators and the newly appointed GOP state election coordinator are backpedaling.

They say it will cost the state too much money. As noted previously, there was more than enough unused federal funding available for the upgrade.

They say there are no federally certified machines available. Florida passed a similar law in 2007 and had optical scan ballots in place for nearly every voter in the 2008 elections.

In fact, according to Pew Research, other states using optical scan ballots exclusively include Alabama, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Rhode Island. Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma have optical scan ballots and vote by phone.

Tennessee Republicans would have you believe that all of these states are in violation of federal election certification standards.

Optical scan systems are available from a variety of manufacturers. Hart Intercivic, whose ESlate systems are used in Knox and thirty other counties, has a precinct optical scan system that meets Tennessee's Voter Confidence Act requirements. Presumably it is compatible with the back-end election management and tabulation systems already in place.

The bottom line is that Tennessee Republicans all of a sudden do not want voters to be able to verify that their vote is counted in the 2010 elections. They also do not want a a human readable paper ballot to be the official vote of record in case of a recount. Why do you suppose that is?

UPDATE: The "federally certified" requirement was snuck into the final bill at some point and I completely missed it. The original bill just said machines had to be certified by the state. The federal program is new and just getting underway. State participation is voluntary. This could all be fixed by changing the bill back to its original requirement.

RELATED:

• TennViews: TACIR report on Tennessee elections and voting systems

• TennViews: Verifiable voting: It's the law!

• Liberadio(!): Urge Tennessee’s Legislators to Keep the Voter Confidence Act Intact

• Liberadio(!): Tennessee Republicans Play the Electronic Voting Machine Hokey Pokey