Author: John Vergos

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Opinion Viewpoint

Back to Paper Ballots

CREDIT: Razihusin | Dreamstime.com

What scares me the most about Russia’s intrusion into our election process are the reports that they may have had access to our voter rolls, voting booths, and voting results. This hacking into our computer voting mechanisms has been a concern of many for quite some time.

This country made a decision years ago to computerize our voting system. It’s not because it is more accurate. It’s certainly not quicker, and it’s definitely not more efficient. In the last three election cycles in Memphis, we waited until long after 10 p.m. for any results, and it was after midnight before we knew who won. It’s a scary mess.

Razihusin | Dreamstime.com

Before I was elected to two terms on the Memphis City Council, I unsuccessfully ran in 1977 for the same seat. The voting mechanism was not computerized. It was the old system, where voters went into a voting booth, pulled the switch to close the curtain, flipped the voting levers, then pulled the red switch to record the vote.

At 7 p.m., when the polls closed, the voting officials pulled the lever at the back of the booth and the final totals were spit out on a paper tally, much like a cash register tape. All the totals from the machines in each precinct were added together and the final results were phoned in by the precinct chairman to Election Central. Candidates were allowed to have a poll watcher witness the total being tabulated and phone them in to their candidate’s headquarters. The candidates knew whether they had won or lost by 7:30 p.m.

It was quick, efficient, honest, and had credibility.

Where are we today? Computerization has not made it quicker, nor more efficient, and we are now learning there is a real potential for dishonesty by hacking the vote. Most importantly, the system lacks credibility. Because of the possibility of hacking, confidence in the system is being destroyed. And once the people lose faith in the credibility of their voting system, democracy goes by the wayside.

This is not a partisan issue. Concerns about the lack of credibility in the system have been expressed by both parties. Never before have we heard the phrase “rigged election” expressed so often in campaigns.

Not only does credibility go, we are spending a fortune on these high-powered, inefficient, Rube Goldberg machines, when more reliable results can be achieved much quicker, far cheaper, and with the utmost credibility by the former system.

Yes, it’s time we go back to the old lever machines or, better yet, paper ballots. If a precinct has 3,000 votes with 12 precinct workers, the votes could be counted and verified in 30 minutes. There would also be a paper trail, should questions arise.

France uses a paper ballot system. In that country’s recent national elections, the votes were tallied and the result was known before midnight. Similarly, Canada uses only paper ballots for its national and provincial elections — ballots that afford each party the opportunity to inspect the counting.

Americans believe we’ve become so sophisticated with our computerization, polling, and exit polling, but all this really does is allow the media to project a winner five minutes before one of its competitors. The credibility and sanctity of the ballot far outweighs the importance of this media silliness.

It’s now time for the public to actively urge our Election Commission and state and federal legislators to immediately pass legislation mandating a return to the simplest, most efficient, most honest, and cheapest means to vote. And that’s the paper ballot and our former voting machines.

We know hackers can steal credit card information by walking by a user of an ATM. Do we believe the voting system that’s in place is not as vulnerable?

Our democracy is too precious to put it in the hands of politically motivated parties, rival nations, or angry computer hackers and geeks.

John Vergos served two terms on the Memphis City Council and has been active in Memphis and Shelby County politics for decades.

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Opinion Viewpoint

The MPO File

If you ever want to see $40 million of taxpayers’ money spent in a month, with no discussion, you need to go to a meeting of the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO).

Who’s the MPO, you might ask? It’s an organization created by the federal government to coordinate all federal transportation dollars in this region. These are generally matched with state and local funds. Its purpose is to make sure roads in this locale match up with roads in Arkansas and Mississippi. You wouldn’t want Third Street to be a couple of miles off-center on its entry into Tunica. That makes sense.

But who makes up this board, where and when does it meet, and what does it really do?

It consists of the mayors in this region — of cities and hamlets, big and small. All the city engineers are in attendance. There’s a representative of MATA. It meets once a month at Hudson Hall, an off-the-beaten-path location in the Central Train Station, and it has many sub-committees that meet God knows where and when.

As a newly appointed member of the MATA board this year, I had the occasion to attend a meeting last week. I have a real concern that this community is about to squander hundreds of millions of stimulus and transportation dollars with no coordination. 

MATA is spending millions on new buses, consultants, and new high-tech GPS, radio, and security devices. These could be necessary, but unless they fit into an overall transportation scheme, it all could be a huge waste.

It’s my opinion that before we start spending these dollars on new roads, we should take care of our crumbling infrastructure. It’s like having a home with a crumbling foundation, a leaky roof, and no heating and air-conditioning, but instead of fixing it, setting out to build a new wing.

At the last meeting, I watched the group pass an array of expensive projects calling for traffic coordinating signals for Houston Levee Road, new roads through Shelby Farms, all kinds of I-269 stuff — and every bit of it with no discussion. It was that way all through the 36-item agenda.

When I spoke up to complain that no one knows about this group, that no City Council members ever attend (although I used to, when I could), nor county commissioners, nor any media, I was told by an MPO member: “John, these projects are all vetted through our legislative bodies with citizens’ input and work their way up the ladder.”

The reality with the MPO is that it’s a roadbuilder’s/developer’s grab bag. Any real citizen input is illusory. 

This is sad and frightening. Hasn’t anyone heard of urban sprawl? We have major core issues in this community. We have a bus system that needs improvement, light rail that’s totally unfunded, crumbling bridges, overpasses and potholes that need immediate attention. This is a city with no growth, merely costly and unproductive population shifts from one part of the county to another.

Item 36 on the agenda of that last meeting was called “Imagine Memphis 2035 Transportation Plan.” I guess this was MPO’s attempt to show how bold and futuristic they are. Well, here’s our future: If we keep spending $50 million a month on unplanned growth, we will have squandered a wonderful opportunity for smart growth and fiscal responsibility.

Members of the MPO will tell you that even though these projects are approved they still have to come before the legislative bodies for ultimate approval. This is true; however, I can tell you from experience, these come as a fait accompli. By the time city and county legislators get them, it’s like trying to stop a moving train. The entire development community has already got their seven votes both ways, and it’s a done deal.

You will also be told if we don’t spend these dollars, they will be reprogrammed and spent elsewhere in Tennessee. That’s always been the threat they’ll use, but I’ve never known it to happen, and if it ever did it would be because local government did not have a fallback plan of its own to adapt the unspent funds and didn’t lobby hard enough.

I’m not saying the MPO is violating the Sunshine Law or intentionally being secretive, but, as a pundit once said, it’s not what’s illegal that should be cause for concern, but what is legal. 

Someone needs to watch these folks.

(Restaurateur John Vergos is a former member of the Memphis City Council and a current member of the MATA Advisory Board.)

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Opinion Viewpoint

Time for a School Takeover

People can talk about crime being the number-one issue. It’s not. Education is. If we can educate our kids, crime goes down, but the present educational system has failed us all. It’s time for a radical change.

The departure of Memphis’ latest school superintendent, Carol Johnson, provides an opportunity to revolutionize Memphis City Schools (MCS). In its present state, it’s nothing but a system that is failing to educate, is fiscally irresponsible, and is a major drag on the general welfare of this community. And the only solution we ever hear from our educators is: Give us more money.

But just consider: The city school budget is already almost twice the budget of the city of Memphis. The operating budget for the 675,000 residents of Memphis is $539 million. This encompasses fire and police protection, roads, garbage collection, parks, sewers, city courts, and much more. By contrast, the operating budget for the Memphis public school system — for 119,000 students seven hours a day, nine months a year — stands at $918 million. The two budgets were roughly equal in the 1990s, but in recent years, the school budget has escalated dramatically — with rapidly diminishing results. Increased funding is not the answer; better management is.

More than a decade ago, we saw Superintendent Gerry House come and go with rave early reviews, only to realize later that her tenure was, to say the least, unsuccessful. Johnson has come and is now going with the same tepid results. Yes, she can extrapolate from the reams of data at her disposal and point to some slight test-score improvement here and some minor success there, but that’s more show than substance. We forget that running the school system is a billion-dollar-a-year business for which a doctorate of education offers little training.

The results of overlooking business credentials can be seen in school projects such as the Mitchell High School auditorium, which escalated from a $1 million auditorium renovation to a $5 million performing-arts center, with no one accountable to explain how it happened. There is a new $20 million child nutritional center that no one knows how to run, whose need is questionable, and which is operating at 20 percent capacity with no positive results for students. Tens of millions have been spent for consulting contracts with no demonstrable purpose other than to provide cover for the lack of business acumen on the part of the superintendent and the school board. I could go on.

It is now the time for all to come to the realization that the Memphis City Schools system is broken and not fixable by means of the present school board/superintendent structure. If MCS were a company, it would be a prime candidate for Chapter 11 reorganization.

As it happens, there is a means at hand to accomplish the reorganization of a school system. Before we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to employ “hiring consultants” to bring in another superintendent with more of the same credentials, it may be time for Governor Phil Bredesen to exert his authority under the No Child Left Behind Act and take over the school system, as he has recently threatened to do.

He needs to do what Mayor Herenton wanted to do, and that’s to fire the school board, which has been riddled with incompetence, conflicts, turf protection, and emotional outbursts, and bring in a new head with a new team to shake this system to its very core, rebuilding it from the ground up — a new school “czar,” to use an overworked term.

This new head could operate outside of the political arena and make those hard decisions that need to be made unfettered by school boards and prior contractual constraints.

We can delude ourselves into thinking that success is just around the corner, but it’s not. Another search team looking for another superintendent with the same old resume for the same old system won’t work. We’ve been down that road before.

It’s time for a radical change, and I believe Governor Bredesen has the guts and ability — and the legal and political wherewithal — to change the system.

Now is the time to act. Memphis restaurateur John Vergos is a former city councilman.