“Was Elvis or aliens involved?”  That’s the type of response Shannon Williford said he often heard when he first started wondering aloud if American elections had been manipulated or stolen.  He certainly doesn’t consider himself a conspiracy theorist, and the Nashville musician and music educator seems reluctant to characterize himself an activist by nature.  “I’d rather be living my life, playing music… but if we don’t do something, then who’s gonna?”  That was the question he and a group of similarly concerned Nashvillians asked themselves in the face of evidence that paperless electronic voting machines were undermining the legitimacy of American elections.

In one of my first blog posts here, I reported on this issue.  I won’t re-write that story (feel free togo back and readsome of the specifics), but I’ll paint some of the broad strokes quickly.  The problem with paperless voting machines is that all of their data is digital. There is no paper involved when casting a vote on these machines, so officials can only push the same button and get the same faulty or disputed results if elections are challenged. If problems arise or an election is disputed, you can’t go back and count the ballots, because they don’t exist.  And, believe me, problems have arisen.  They have consisted of machineslosing massive numbers of votes or creating “phantom” voteswhere more votes were tallied than people were registered.  In my prior post, I reported on the voting machine manufacturer, Diebold, whose CEO was a top fundraiser for George W. Bush andstatedbefore the 2004 election, “I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”  Of course, Ohio wasthebattleground state in that election, and basically decided the final winner.

Sometimes the problems with voting machines have simply been innocent technical malfunctions.  However, some point toevidencethat the machines were actually tampered with to produce certain results.  A Princeton professor of computer sciencedemonstrated on Fox Newshow easily and quickly (ten seconds) a machine could be manipulated to create whatever results one desires.  Whether the mistakes are innocent or malicious in nature, the results are unacceptable to people like Shannon Williford.  He feels that this issue eclipses all others and wonders why it has gotten so little attention.  After all, voting is at the very foundation of our democracy.  If our votes don’t count, then all other political engagement is rendered impotent.  Maybe that’s why Williford likes to characterize the problem as “electile dysfunction” (which I shamelessly stole for this post’s title).  With the hope of restoring America’s democratic virility, he and his group of concerned citizens decided to form an organization.  They call themselvesGathering To Save Our Democracy, a name Williford said may seem grandiose, but recalls that the member who proposed it said that’s exactly why he was involved – to save democracy!

None of the people involved had any experience as lobbyists, legislators, or big time activists.  They were grassroots organizers through and through.  Despite their lack of experience, they decided to hold a national convention on the matter of safe elections not knowing if anyone would show up.  The four-day conference was held at Nashville’s Jefferson Street Baptist Church, and, to their surprise, hundreds of people attended from roughly forty states.  Williford said that about five film crews showed up shooting footage for various documentaries.  (I haven’t seen all of the films, but I highly recommend local filmmaker David Earnhardt’sUncounted, which is an excellent exploration of the subject.)  If independent filmmakers hadn’t been there, the event would have largely gone undocumented.  The mainstream media had little interest.  According to Williford, Nashville’s largest daily newspaper, the Tennessean, sent only a single intern to cover the event.  He said the Nashville Scene, Nashville’s best-known weekly alternative paper, didn’t send anyone.  With or without the media, this group of dedicated grassroots activists eventually forced some of the most important people to take note – legislators.

Though it hasn’t come easily or quickly, the group has lobbied the Tennessee legislature for the past three years, and they are on the verge of success.  With no prior experience the members of Gathering to Save Our Democracy educated themselves about voting issues and Tennessee laws.  They organized email and telephone campaigns.  They went to the state capitol time and again to meet with legislators.  Williford recounted members jokingly telling one another they’d been “slimed” after meeting with some politicians who seemed especially unsavory.  “Sometimes you felt like you needed to take a shower after meeting with them,” he said.   Apparently, they managed to wade through the political swamp pretty successfully, and found other politicians they liked and respected. 

The bill they took a large part in crafting, The Voter Confidence Act, has been approved by all of its relevant committees and is expected to pass and be signed into law.  That hasn’t happened as of this writing (it’s scheduled to go for a floor vote this week), but it will be a major surprise if it’s derailed.  The bill writes into law that all Tennessee counties will have to use voter verified paper ballots.  This would probably take the form of optical scan cards, which are not entirely different from the forms used to take standardized tests. Of course, any system can be manipulated, and these are no different.  An audit from the ’06 election showed that in Cleveland, Ohio batches of cards had beenscanned twice.  That proves the value of a paper record, however.  At least there was a paper trail so that the audit could take place. The law also requires random audits of state voting precincts and access to all software used in elections by independent security experts.  That’s the good news.  The only disappointment is that the law will not force these changes until 2010, which means this November’s election (as well as some other local elections) will be conducted on the old, inadequate machines.  Nevertheless, the passing of the Voter Confidence Act will be a significant victory.  The success of Gathering to Save Our Democracy is due to a tireless work ethic, a wealth of patience, dogged persistence, a willingness to educate themselves, and a commitment to work within the system.  As far as I can tell, neither aliens nor Elvis had anything to do with it.