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| Picture credit: Philadelphia Inquirer |
New Jersey has the 5th least secure voting system in the country. Given the massive loss of confidence in US elections following the last election, the $60 to $80 million it would take to replace our e-machines with voting machines that produce a paper trail is essential. Let's not give conspiracy theorists or election hackers a foothold in questioning or tampering with our elections in New Jersey.
HISTORY
N.J. was going to have paper-based voting machines more than a decade ago. Will it happen by 2020? - from The Philadelphia Inquirer from March 10, 2019.
"New Jersey was once at the vanguard of voting security. In the mid-2000s, it became an issue thanks to a major lawsuit from voters. The state Legislature in 2005 passed a law requiring that machines allow voters to verify paper ballots by 2008, then required audits of those paper trails. It even set aside $20 million in funding to retrofit machines to print records."
"Instead, the governor took back the money as the recession struck; lawmakers suspended the requirement to buy new machines; no funding has materialized since."
"Now, as the 2020 elections draw ever nearer, a handful of counties are replacing their machines, some of them two decades old. Others will continue to rely on current systems, waiting for federal or state funding before undertaking the costly, time-consuming upgrade to protect citizens’ votes."
PRESENT-DAY
N.J. among nation’s worst in making sure elections are secure. Why haven’t we fixed that?
Updated May 15, 2021; Posted May 15, 2021 - by Jonathan D. Salant | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
"After President Donald Trump and his Republican allies singled out Georgia and Arizona in falsely claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, both states recounted their votes and found no significant problems."
"That’s not so easy to do in New Jersey after each election. It’s one of just six states that do not require a paper trail that allows election officials to check that voting machines were not hacked and the results not tampered with." <snip>
"While New Jersey could do an audit last year because so many ballots were cast by mail, that was a one-shot deal due to the coronavirus pandemic. Going forward, the Garden State will remain an outlier unless the state comes up with the estimated $60 million to $80 million needed to replace county voting machines."
“That’s totally the problem,” said Eileen Kean, a Monmouth County elections commissioner. It’s really a very, very expensive undertaking. Voting experts said that a paper trail will do more for election security than all of the voting restrictions being enacted by Republican state legislatures, including both Georgia and Arizona."
FUNDING DEMOCRACY IN NJ
How can we fund $80 million for secure voting in NJ? The NJ annual budget is about $60 billion dollars. Funding a safe and verifiable voting process would cost 0.0013% of the annual budget. It isn't a question of not having enough money, it is a question of priorities. There are lots of no-sweat choices we can make. For example, we can pay for safe elections through a one-time dip into property tax rebate revenue.
According to the 2021/22 NJ budget, the appropriations for general revenues and property tax relief are up 9.6%, or $2.873 billion. About $1.2 billion is budgeted for property tax relief. Just 6.7% of that money could be used to buy verifiable voting machines. That would still leave $1.12 billion for property tax relief next year.
And while we are at it, the distribution of the one-time $80 million debit could be progressively shared to make this tax rebate fairer.
There is a "... divergence in spending on programs offering targeted help to those who need it most and on tax breaks for homeowners no matter their income is largely a function of separate policies that have been put in place over the years for each relief program. But the current trend for divvying up the more than $1.2 billion in annual funding for the relief programs comes as Murphy, a first-term Democrat, regularly talks about enacting fiscal policies that will make New Jersey “stronger and fairer.” - New Jersey Spotlight - Sept 6, 2020
If you believe that securing our elections during this national threat to American democracy should be a much higher priority, then:
1. Share this FB post widely among your friends and with the FB groups to which you belong.
2. Write or call your state representatives and ask them to support Vincent Mazzeo's bill, A291) that would require counties to replace their voting machines and buy machines that produce a paper trail.
3. CONTACT Gov. Murphy's office and demand that he makes it a priority to secure the vote in New Jersey https://www.nj.gov/governor/contact/all/
OR CALL or write the Governor's office directly:
Governor Phil Murphy's Office
225 W State St, Trenton, NJ 08625
(609) 292-6000
Thanks.
