Why is Delaying Fair Elections a Top Priority for Ron Ramsey?

Guber Candidate Ron Ramsey takes aim at fair elections.

Last week, Lt. Governor and gubernatorial candidate Ron Ramsey appeared with Republican Secretary of State Tre Hargett and at an event in Kingsport and told business leaders that not only wouldn’t they follow the law and implement the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (TVCA), but delaying it would be a legislative priority during the next session of the Tennessee General Assembly.

Clearly, GOP leadership does not want the voters in Tennessee to have confidence in their elections.

They also clearly want to suppress voter turnout.

I wrote earlier of all the ways in which the Tennessee GOP can suppress the vote (voter roll purging, creating partisan election administrations, baseless accusations of voter fraud, etc.) and why they feel it necessary to do so (“…our leverage in elections…goes up as the voting populace goes down…,” Moral Majority founder Paul Weyrich).

Keeping the 100% unverifiable touch-screen electronic voting machines in Tennessee is simply another tool in their arsenal of voter suppression tactics.

Using electronic voting machines as a tool of voter suppression can be accomplished in two ways:

1) It takes much longer to vote on a touch-screen electronic voting machine than on paper ballot, thereby creating long lines that discourage participation. Only one voter can vote on a machines at one time, but 10, 20, 30, etc. voters can all vote on paper ballots at the same time.

2) The allocation of voting machines, which is controlled by county election commissions (all 95 county election commissions are now controlled by a Republican majority), can be manipulated so that voting precincts in certain areas are allocated too few voting machines, thereby creating long lines which, you got it, discourages voter participation.

Don’t let Tre Hargett and Ron Ramsey tell you that “it’s about the money.” The state has over 35 million dollars in reserve from the federal government that can only be spent on the purchase of new voting equipment.

And don’t let them tell you that there are no machines available to purchase that could count the paper ballots required by the new law. 49 states and two Tennessee counties have already used these types of machines in election after election without incident.

Delaying the TVCA and keeping the touch-screen electronic voting machines we use now is undoubtedly another voter suppression tactic to add to their arsenal