by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Republicans seem determined to destroy any credibility they may have regarding elections.

The chairman of the Hanover County Republican Committee recently presented a resolution to the Hanover County Board of Supervisors that requires counting all ballots in an election by hand rather than through the use of electronic counting machines. The resolution also calls upon the Commonwealth’s Attorney to request an opinion from the Virginia Attorney General regarding the constitutionality of the use of electronic counting machines.

The committee bases its claim that the use of voting machines is unconstitutional on language in the Virginia constitution that states that votes may not be counted in secret. Apparently, the committee feels that, because one cannot see what is happening inside the machine when a ballot is inserted, the machine is counting the ballot in secret. That argument ignores the provision of the law that requires each machine to be tested before the election and allows a party representative to be present at the testing.

Underlying the constitutional question is the claim that a “voter should be able to feel confident that the vote is going to count, and we don’t have that anymore.”

Under the current process of administering elections, (1) any voting machine used by a locality must have been approved by the state Dept. of Elections; (2) each voting machine must be tested to ensure that it is working properly and set to O before being used in any election; (3) the voting machines are not connected to the internet;  (4) the actual ballots are retained in case there is any question; (5) the chief election officer must account for every ballot issued to his precinct; (6) the machines produce paper tapes showing the vote count for each candidate or question on the ballot and those tapes are preserved; and (7) a representative of each political party is allowed to observe each step of the process.

I would like someone to explain to me why they feel that they have more confidence in election officers hand-counting thousands of paper ballots after they had been at the polls since 5:00 that morning than they have in the current process using voting machines.