Please feel free to copy this letter or write your own to State Senators and Representatives.  This issue is of paramount importance!

Dear Legislators and Governor Bredesen,,

I write to remind you that there is no legitimate cause for delay in
providing me and my fellow voters with verifiable ballots. As the
legislative session nears its close, I urge you and your colleagues to
work together to implement the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act.

The Tennessee Voter Confidence Act requires that by 2010 all votes be
cast on paper ballots marked by the voter, and it requires hand-counted
tabulation audits of computer vote tallies.  

Tennessee has the federal funds on hand to purchase paper ballot
scanners and accessible ballot markers for every county. If paper ballot
voting is delayed and there is an issue in the 2010 elections that
cannot be resolved because there is no way to check the accuracy of
electronic vote tallies, the decision to delay will be catastrophic.

No other state with the funds to provide voter-verifiable paper records
is backing away from the promise of trustworthy elections.  In Kentucky,
Secretary of State Trey Greyson has in the last year urged counties to
adopt paper ballot voting systems, and over 50 counties have done so.
The state of Maryland, financially strapped like all states, still
decided this year to moved forward with the purchase of paper ballot
scanners for use in the 2010 elections. Tennessee has the funds; it is
time to finish the job the Assembly began last year in passing the Voter
Confidence Act.

In all, almost three fourths of the states have taken action to verify
the vote. Tennessee voters should not be among a shrinking minority of
Americans forced to depend upon insecure and unverifiable voting
systems. Almost 60% of America's voters cast their votes by marking
paper ballots, and that number will increase in the 2010 elections.
From Alabama to California, from Massachusetts to Oklahoma, paper ballot
voting systems have proven their reliability.

You need look no further than our neighboring state of Virginia to
remind yourself of how important it is to follow through on the promise
of the Voter Confidence Act.  Earlier this year in Fairfax County,
Virginia, a county Board of Supervisors election was conducted on
paperless electronic machines, and in one precinct, there were
discrepancies of hundreds of votes that still remain unexplained. A
county election official was left to say to the Virginia press:

"Nothing like this has ever happened before. We don't know if the
machines malfunctioned or if we did something wrong."

That is not a situation Tennessee should find itself in come 2010.

Hand-counted audits are no less important to election integrity than
paper ballots, a statement backed by computer scientists from government
laboratories such as Lawrence Livermore, from leading universities such
as Rice, the University of Iowa, and Stanford, and from private sector
firms that lead the field of computer security. 22 states and the
District of Columbia conducted random hand audits of the 2008 elections,
and more will do so in 2010 -- including Tennessee if you do not weaken
our law. 

This week, please ensure that I am able to vote in a manner that allows
real verification. Please follow through on the commitments of the
Tennessee Voter Confidence Act.