Elections are not always safe, as Williamson Countians certainly have found out in the past few years.

In 2018, the May Republican primary contained a result that, honestly, seems just too hard to believe.  Three candidates vying for the District 7 County Commissioner position all secured identical vote tallies in election day voting and in early voting.  One received 312 votes on election day and 312 votes in early voting.  A second received 182 votes on election day and 182 votes in early voting.  The winner, Tom Tunnicliffe, received 315 votes on election day and 315 votes in early voting.  Read about it HERE.

Now, what are the odds of that happening?  Our group – Tennessee Voters for Election Integrity — wasn’t active at that point, but no one has ever given a plausible explanation for this highly unusual (even statistically impossible) result.

In 2020, we identified a number of machinery and process issues on which we’ve been working to find answers.  In addition to raising questions about these concerns with the Williamson County Election Commission (WCEC), we’ve also offered best practice recommendations for a large majority of them.

In 2021, in the Franklin Alderman election, six Dominion machines stopped counting votes in three voting centers.  Other issues included machines running an unknown software, a yet-to-be-handed-over chain of custody report for a missing security seal on a scanner tub full of ballots, and an incredibly poor quality of election officer poll reports, which are official election documents. Read the article HERE.  Dominion is gone, but other issues remain.

• Investigating problems, especially via the open records requests, is not easy and takes time.
• Election officials have often turned a deaf ear to our evidence, but we’re working on alternative measures to enact needed security changes in the process.
• The two machine vendors WC has used, Dominion and ES&S, are anything but transparent.
• It’s interesting that the county left ES&S in 2019 because of a myriad of problems, only to return to them and their technology in 2022 as a replacement for Dominion.
• All vendors are trending toward unsecured paper ballots as their answer to ballot concerns.
• We strongly believe the right solution is high-security, hand-marked paper ballots instead of a ballot created, printed, scanned, tabulated and tallied by a single voting machine vendor in our county. Yes, that’s what’s happening.
• Voting centers are highly problematic because of the internet connection required between them. We need to return to precinct voting and greatly reduce the technology in our elections.
• Voter rolls are not clean… but they can be cleaner if greater security recommendations are enacted.

While we’re working to get the WCEC to address these and other problems, here’s what you can do:  Be exceptionally attentive when you vote.

• When you’re making your vote choices on the ballot marking device, study your on-screen choices twice to ensure the screen reflects your choices. Then print your ballot. 
• Take your time. It’s your vote and a critical vote.  Don’t let anyone hurry you.
• When it is printed, closely check over your ballot once more before you take it to the scanner.
• Again, don’t feel rushed. This is a key part of the voting process.
• If your printed ballot is correct, take it to the scanner to be scanned and counted.
• If it’s not, immediately bring it to the attention of a poll worker so they can flag the machine and the mis-printing issue and you can try again to vote for the candidate you like using another machine and ballot.

Taking steps to ensure election integrity in our election is now everyone’s responsibility.

Aligned with Williamson Families, Tennessee Voters for Election Integrity shares with state legislators, election commissions and government officials opportunities that the group has uncovered in their research to plug holes in the county’s and state’s election systems.   And for these leaders to make — and lead — necessary changes in machinery and methods that will strengthen Tennessee’s leadership in election integrity while improving citizen trust and support of our election processes.