Tag: Linda PHillips

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Showdown Monday on Voting Machines

From left: Steve Mulroy, Eddie Jones, Erika Sugarmon, Sarah Wilkerson Freeman. (Photo by Jackson Baker)

Proponents of hand-marked paper ballots held a press conference Friday on the eve of Monday’s Shelby County Commission meeting, where a vote is scheduled to approve or reject a rival system employing ballot-marking devices.

The ballot-marking devices are being insisted on by a majority on the Shelby County Election Commission, which pleads that timeliness demands a favorable vote. If the County Commission provides one, the county would spend $5.8 million on new machines supplied by Election Systems & Software, LLC (ES&S) and, says the Election Commission, the ballot-marking devices would be ready in time for the August county election. 

Opposing such a vote at Friday’s press conference (held at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church) were two active County Commissioners, one former County Commissioner, one County Commissioner-elect, and a member of the Democratic Party’s state committee.

Steve Mulroy, a County Commissioner from 2006 to 2014 and currently a candidate for District Attorney General, characterized the issue to be voted on Monday as follows:  “We are getting ready …to quite possibly decide what election and voting system we’re going to use for the next 20 years. There is a chance that we’ll be making the wrong decision that we will be spending $6 million on an overpriced, glitch-vulnerable, hackable, less secure voting system that will erode further the public’s already low confidence in the integrity of our elections, when there is a much more secure, less expensive, low-tech solution, easily available, that the County Commission has already repeatedly said by resolution they’re in favor of.”

He added that if the ballot-marking machines are approved, “rather than using a 10-cent pen to mark the ballot, we have to use a $5,000 ballot marking device which is touchscreen and computerized and which election experts say can be hacked or is prone to glitches. So we are paying $4 million more for a less secure system. We are here today because the Election Commission has taken yet another run at trying to force the County Commission to fund this overpriced, less secure system.”

As Mulroy indicated, the County Commission has voted repeatedly to use hand-marked paper ballots for the badly needed new machines rather than the ES&S devices. Concurring with Mulroy’s statements and speaking remotely by phone, Commissioner Van Turner said, “The commission has spoken to this issue … I will again be supporting having paper ballots be the primary voting mode in Shelby County.” 

Commissioner Eddie Jones, calling the Election Commission’s action an example of Election Coordinator Linda Phillips’ “Jedi mind tricks,” said of the Election Commission majority, “These are appointed people trying to step beyond their legal authority and go beyond us.”

Although Mulroy had noted, correctly, that the County Commission is majority-Democratic and the Election Commission majority- Republican, County Commissioner-elect Erika Sugarmon declared, “This is a non-partisan issue. Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians have been going to the commissions. We’ve been going to the Election Commission, and the Shelby County Commission, voicing our concerns, and stating our desire to have hand-marked paper ballots. We want hand-marked paper ballots like they have in Knox County.” Sugarmon added, “Ballot-marking devices also are a way to suppress the voters rights. For example, in disadvantaged, marginalized, minoritized, and working class communities, they  cause long lines.”

Sarah Wilkerson Freeman, a member of the Democratic state committee, said the Election Commission’s attempt to force an approval of ballot-marking devices was “troubling, very, very troubling, because it is voters who put the County Commission in, and they have repeatedly said ‘no’ to these proposals from the Election Commission. And what is going on is that the administrator is dragging her heels and dragging our heels until the whole system becomes increasingly broken and broken and broken.”

Mulroy said that the County Commission, on Monday, could not only reject the Election Commission’s desire for ballot-marking devices, it could go ahead and vote for hand-marked paper ballots.  “The state of the law is we have a [Chancery] Court ruling that has not been overturned, [and] the County Commission can go forward, if it wants to. The Election Commission has appealed the Chancery ruling, but the pendency of the appeal does not prevent the county commission from going forward.”

He recommended “that people call their county commissioners between now and Monday, tell them that want to spend less money and be more secure.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Politics 2020: COVID-19 and a Shaggy-Dog Presidential Election

Politics so often is a matter of timing and deadlines. Such-and-such a date for announcing a candidacy. Such-and-such a date for filing. There’s a withdrawal deadline. A schedule of fundraisers, campaign kickoffs, and headquarters openings. The start of early voting, election day itself. And if all goes well, a time and date for one’s inauguration and/or public swearing-in.

All that regularity and the established calendar of publicly shared functions were skewed big-time in the shaggy-dog story of 2020 — a year in which pestilence stalked the land and drove everyone apart from one another, and the biggest race of all, that for the presidency, was made anti-climactic by the refusal of the loser to admit to the plain and obvious results.

Still and all, some things got accomplished — the most significant of which was the American voters’ decisive rejection of the Trump presidency, a reality-TV show characterized by its total denial of reality, never more so than in an unending election aftermath in which the unfrocked leader, naked as a jaybird, cried foul and continued to clamor for the cloak of high office long after it made any sense to do so.

Indeed, one of the unresolved mysteries at year’s end was the question of whether on January 20th of the new year, Donald Trump will voluntarily take his leave or have to be frog-marched out of  the White House. In any case, Democrat Joe Biden will be inaugurated, and with him, hopefully, an era of comparative sense and empathy.

Another matter yet to be resolved was that of which party would control the U.S. Senate, a question that won’t be answered until January 5th via the outcome of two runoff elections in the state of Georgia, a state that went blue in the presidential election and seems destined to become the kind of political bellwether that Tennessee itself used to be when the tide of power would shift back and forth between Republicans and Democrats.

The Volunteer State itself has become so predictably right-wing and Republican that not only could no ranking Democrat be found to oppose Trump’s hand-picked Senate candidate, former Ambassador and state official Bill Hagerty, but the exemplars of GOP-dominated state government — legislative, executive, and, in the case of the state Attorney General, quasi-judicial — all willingly followed the Trump line, even to the extent of blessing his rebellion against the outcome of a Constitutional election.

Once again, despite spirited challenges by Democrats in legislative races, several of them right here in Shelby County, the Republicans held onto their super-majority in the General Assembly. At the congressional level, both local U.S. Representatives, Democrat Steve Cohen in the 9th District and Republican David Kustoff in the 8th, held serve against what were basically nominal challenges. Cohen and his congressional counterpart in Nashville, Jim Cooper, were the only Democrats to maintain a position of political prominence statewide.

At all levels of government in 2020, the specter of COVID-19 made its presence felt, accounting for bursts of financial largesse and sporadic action. Governor Bill Lee monitored the pandemic but proved loath to establish much beyond minimal voluntary safety mandates. The legislature responded to the emergency with a lengthy recess of several months (one which set aside resolution of several controversial matters) and resumed in mid-summer to convert a $200 million infrastructure allotment into a COVID emergency fund. Memphis and Shelby County both profited but had to fight for their share. Both governments also benefited from the federal CARES act and established a joint task force. County government in particular weighed in on anti-COVID efforts via consistent Health Department directives, and at year’s end, amid a new spike in cases, county Mayor Lee Harris and Bartlett Mayor Keith McDonald were leading the drive for a statewide mask mandate.

Efforts to upgrade local election machinery foundered during 2020 due to fundamental disagreements between activists seeking the transparency of paper-ballot voting systems and county election administrator Linda Phillips, who, backed by an Election Commission majority, preferred ballot-marking devices. Meanwhile, vigorous legal efforts by local plaintiffs had broadened the availability of mail-in balloting, providing a way station of sorts toward change in voting procedures.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Dispute Over Election Machines Remains Unsettled

CREDIT: JB

The tug-of-war between Shelby County Election Administrator Linda Phillips and the adherents of paper-ballot voting over the purchase of new election machines continues apace.

The most recent development, detailed in a November 18th Flyer article, involved the administrator’s purchase of three new ballot-marking devices for the ongoing runoff elections in Collierville.

The machines are manufactured by the ES&S Company and are of a type previously preferred by a 4-1 vote of the Shelby County Election Commission but rejected for funding by the Shelby County Commision, which, in the interests of transparency, had established its own preference for handmarked paper-ballot devices in several prior votes.

The funding source for the three machines had been — publicly, at least — something of a mystery. According to SCEC sources, the machines were paid for by the office of the Secretary of State in Nashville

The purchase of the machines had been revealed last week in a formal SCEC press release, which contended that there had been no alternative to acquiring them, inasmuch as the old machines used by Collierville in the city’s first round of elections earlier this month were tied up, pending certification this week of the November 3rd results.

JB

Election Commissioner Bennie Smith

Early voting for Collierville’s mandatory runoff period had meanwhile been scheduled to begin on Wednesday of last week.

Controversies remain: One of the reasons for the  county commission’s rejection of the SCEC’s preference for the ES&S machines (which had been selected over two other bidders) had to do with the commission’s aforementioned preference for devices enabling the use of paper ballots.
But another reason had been the county commission’s objection to additional costs for accessories added by the administrator’s office to the bids received from ES&S and two rival bidders.

At its meeting of October 23rd, the SCEC board voted to re-submit its request for county commission funding of the ES&S machines, minus the objected-to accessories. That expenditure would be something like $3.9 million, as against the sum of $5,815,405 requested beforehand.

But, said Brent Taylor and Frank Uhlhorn, two members of the three-member SCEC Republican majority, this “skinny” version of the prior request would not include money for accessories needed to facilitate the option of paper-ballot voting for those who wanted it. As part of its selection process, the SCEC board had previously voted to provide the option, and its deletion now further imperils the prospects of county commission approval.

In the meantime, Election Commission Democratic member Bennie Smith has cried foul about the commission’s promised provision for paper-ballot voting during the Collierville runoffs.

Smith and members of his family are residents of Collierville and recently went to vote in one of the three available voting locations, trusting, said Smith, to this statement in the SCEC press release: “There will be a ballot-on-demand printer capable of printing ballots on-demand for those who want to use hand marked paper ballots. If a voter would prefer to vote on paper, that ballot will be printed on the spot.”

Instead of being offered that option, though, Smith said he and his family members were not informed of its availability and were able to vote by paper ballot only upon having to insist on it.

Complaining about this to Phillips, Smith received an email containing the following statement: “We aren’t offering the paper ballot option because at this moment it isn’t an option going forward. This was discussed in the October 23rd SCEC meeting; when the decision was made to go forward with the skinny resolution, it also eliminated the paper ballot option since the accessories included the BOD printers necessary to offer that option in Early Voting.”

The circumstances behind this standoff are either complicated or simple, depending one one’s perspective, but the bottom line is that the twain are nowhere close to meeting just yet.

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Politics Politics Feature

Election Commission “End-Run”: Phillips Announces Purchase of ES&S Machines for Collierville Election

It may be too late in the election year for an October surprise (i.e., some unexpected development that stands the pending political situation on its head), but the calendar clearly allows for a November surprise, and, courtesy of the Shelby County Election Commission, we have one.

Linda Phillips

The SCEC, having been foiled last month in its efforts to get County Commission funding for new ballot-marking election devices from the ES&S Company, has done what one critic calls “an end-run” around the commission, buying three of the ES&S devices using its own funds.

In declining to purchase the ES&S ballot-marking devices, the County Commission had made its preferences clear in that it favored devices equipped for hand-marked paper ballots.

In a matter-of-fact press release issued Monday, the Election Commission administrator’s office attempted to make the case that it had no choice but to purchase the new machines, inasmuch as the old machines used by Collierville in the city’s first round of elections earlier this month were tied up, pending certification on November 23rd of the November 3rd results.

Collierville requires runoff elections in cases where candidates don’t receive majorities originally, and two seats on the city’s Board of Aldermen will have to be resolved that way, with early voting for the runoffs beginning on Wednesday of this week.

“We simply had no choice but to purchase three of the machines to get us through Collierville’s early voting period,” Election Administrator Linda Phillips said in the news release, pointing out that the Election Commission had previously voted 4-1 in favor of the ES&S ballot-marking devices before encountering resistance from the County Commission.

The SCEC press release goes on to say that “[b]y Election Day for the runoff, which will be held December 8th, the older machines voters have been using for years, will be available.”

And further: “The ballot-marking devices selected by the commissioners are used in conjunction with scanners that are also capable of scanning voter-marked paper ballots. There will be a ballot-on-demand printer capable of printing ballots on demand for those who want to use hand-marked paper ballots.

“If a voter would prefer to vote on paper that ballot will be printed on the spot.”

Steve Mulroy, a University of Memphis law professor and former county commissioner, is a prominent local advocate of the paper-marked-ballot system of voting, and he expressed skepticism about the election administrator’s decision to purchase the three new machines and her rationale for doing do, which he termed an “excuse.”

Mulroy observed: “Note they also said that they would have a ballot-on-demand printer available during early voting, so that anyone who wanted to just vote by a hand-marked paper ballot could do so.

“Given that, why could they not just go with the ballot-on-demand printer for early voting? They were already going to have one. That would’ve sufficed by itself. It would cost less money. It would not require using the SCEC slush fund to buy voting machines that the local funding body has by resolution rejected three times — in January, April, and October.

“The answer,” said Mulroy, “may be that they are determined to sneak in their ballot-marking devices by hook or by crook.”

He said the purchase was “a clever attempt to do an end-run around the County Commission’s authority, starting a process of doing BMDs by dribs and drabs, to the point that they will be able to say to you later on, ‘Hey, we already have a number of these things anyway. You might as well just go ahead and approve what we originally suggested, because otherwise these machines won’t be compatible.'”

Suggesting there were other alternatives available, Mulroy said, “I’m also wondering just how large a slush fund SCEC has that it can buy multiple pieces of expensive equipment without going through the normal funding process?”

Members of the County Commission are sure to have similar questions in mind and will no doubt be ready to express them when the commission meets in committee sessions on Wednesday.

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Politics Politics Feature

How the Votes are Breaking: Flyer Arranges for a Statistical Breakdown; Last-Minute Legal Shenanigans.

Shelby County Election Administrator Linda Phillips drew some heated comments this week for her failure to provide category-by-category breakdowns of the statistics for early voting to this point in the county general election and federal-state primaries that culminate on August 6th.

But Bennie Smith, one of three Democratic members of the Shelby County Election Commission and a data analyst for FedEx by trade, has done his own homework on the raw numbers (which is all Phillips provided) and emerged with the demographic specifics of the voting.

Analyzing the election data, Smith found that, as of July 25th, roughly 35,900 eligible voters had cast ballots, with approximately 23,100 of them being Democrats and 12,500 being Republicans. Females outnumbered males among the voters, 22,100 to 13,900. Voters’ ages skewed heavily to those over 50, whose numbers totaled 28,800. This tendency included all voting groups, regardless of party, gender, or ethnic category.

The racial breakdown of those voting was 15,600 African-American, 12,200 white, and 8,100 “others.” Among the early-voting sites skewing most heavily Democratic were Anointed Temple of Praise (94.83 percent Democratic); Abundant Grace (97.51 percent); Greater Middle Baptist Church (94.30 percent); Mt. Zion Baptist Church (97.64 percent); and Solomon Temple Church (6.55 percent).

Sites with proportionately greater Republican voting included Harmony Church of Bartlett (75.17 percent); Collierville Church of Christ (81.62 percent); The Refuge Church (79.17 percent); Compassion Church (70.53 percent); and Arlington Safe Room (74.37 percent). (Stay tuned to memphisflyer.com for updates and additional data.)

We have made a point, these last few election seasons, of using the term “bogus ballot” to denote a species of advertisement sheets and/or four-page mail-outs that contain the names and pictures of political candidates who have paid some local entrepreneur for the privilege of appearing on them — often in overtly devious ways that suggest, falsely, that the Democratic Party is behind the endorsements.

Two of the entrepreneurs — Greg Grant and M. LaTroy Williams — are at it again this election season, even after being enjoined by a court last year to cease and desist, and have  been freshly warned by special judge Bill Acree that they proceed at their own peril.

Jake Brown and Bruce Kramer, the attorneys for the plaintiffs who during the 2019 city election sought and got the injunction against the balloteers, have taken the pay-for-play mischief-makers to court once again. At a status conference on Monday, presiding Judge Bill Acree, who is on loan from the Jackson circuit, advised the principals that he intended to set a date for a post-election hearing on the matter and let it be known that criminal penalties were an option for continued violation of his original injunction.

Nothing suggests the excesses of these two proprietors so clearly as does the streamer line that Williams appended to the top of his most recent “ballot.” It says, in bold capital letters: “JUDGE ORDERED M. LATORY [sic] ALEXANDRIA-WILLIAMS ON BALLOT AS DEMOCRAT NO ‘JIM CROW.’”

Not only is that claim wholly untrue regarding the congressional office Williams (or Alexandria-Williams as he now signs himself) was seeking until an April meeting of the state Democratic executive committee declared him invalid. It is a uniquely skewed falsehood in that the man manages to misspell his own name, which is “LaTroy,” not “LaTory.”

Anyone who cares to confirm that Williams’ name is not on the August 6th Democratic primary ballot for any office at all need only consult the website of the Shelby County Election Commission (shelbyvote.com). Yet on his own self-published “ballot” (more properly regarded, perhaps, as an advertisement sheet for the favored — or paying — candidates) there is a mugshot of Williams as a candidate for Congress alongside a mug of his son Marion Alexandria-Williams Jr., an actual candidate for the Democratic nomination for state Senate District 30.

The Williams ballot is labeled as the product of the “Shelby County Democratic Club” — with the first three of those words displayed prominently on the sheet and the climactic word “club” in relatively small letters underneath. The effect is to suggest the status of an official organ of the Shelby County Democratic Party — the very kind of claim that led the actual Shelby County Democratic Party, along with the Shelby County Young Democrats and John Marek, a 2019 candidate for the City Council, to file suit last year against Williams, his “club,” and his ballot.

In a sad and ironic twist, no sitting Shelby County judge was willing to hear the case. They had all either paid at some point to be listed on such a ballot, or they had no wish to embarrass their judicial colleagues. Or, in many cases, for both reasons.

Ultimately, a hearing was conducted before Judge Acree. A day or so before the election, Acree issued a temporary injunction against further distribution of “endorsement” ballots proceed by both Williams and Grant. The time-span of the injunction was indefinite and is still in effect, according to attorneys Brown and Kramer —  a point repeated by Acree on Monday.

In the interval between last year’s injunction and the release of new “ballots” by Grant and Williams, Brown and Kramer had moved — for reasons “unrelated to the case,” says Brown —  to withdraw from involvement. It was then, he says, that both Grant and Williams, “evidently deciding that all bets were off,” acted independently of each other and moved to issue new ballots for the current election, both ballots still implying a fictitious relationship with the official Democratic Party — Williams on behalf of the aforementioned Shelby County Democratic Club; Grant via the “Greater Memphis Democratic Club.”

Both are shell organizations, says Brown. Grant’s ballot at least had a disclaimer in fine print “that the ‘Greater Memphis Democratic Club’ operates ‘independently of the Shelby County Democratic Party and its affiliates.’” Grant’s chief coup, if one wants to call it that, was to secure the inclusion on his ballot as an “endorsee” of former Shelby County Democratic chairman Corey Strong,  now a candidate in the Democratic primary for the 9th District congressional seat. A mere two years ago, in 2018, Strong, in his chairman’s role, had attacked that year’s Grant ballot for implying official Democratic connections and said it was “nothing more than a paid advertisement.”

At any rate, lawyers Brown and Kramer discarded their withdrawal motions (Brown: “We were frankly pissed off”) and re-involved themselves, asking Judge Acree to impose both civil and criminal sanctions against the two ballot entrepreneurs for “willful disregard” of the judge’s injunction. Monday’s status conference on the matter, held electronically, was the immediate result. And clearly more efforts to redress the matter lie in the future.

Rarely, in fact, have legal remedies played so large a role in the conduct and oversight of an election as they have this year. It will be recalled that it required another suit on behalf of a group of Memphians  in the Up with the Vote 901 organization as well as the ACLU to enable universal eligibility for absentee mail-in voting in this year of a coronavirus pandemic.

University of Memphis law professor and former County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, assisted by Brown and with parallel efforts from ACLU attorneys, easily persuaded Nashville Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle back in June to issue her order on behalf of universal mail-in eligibility.

In her ruling, Chancellor Lyle not only discounted objections from the Secretary of State’s office but noted that the Tennessee constitution is “more explicit than the federal Constitution” in guaranteeing the right to vote and that the state’s “restrictive interpretation and application of Tennessee’s voting by mail law” constituted “an unreasonable burden on the fundamental right to vote.”

Lyle has periodically had to issue new directives enforcing her order as either state government or local election offices (including the Shelby County administrator’s) have tried to delay or sandbag it.

Recently Secretary of State Tre Hargett testified remotely to the U.S. Senate Rules and Administration Committee on the state’s attitude on the matter. Hargett was asked why the state has fought efforts to loosen absentee voting requirements amid the COVID-19  pandemic.

“Under Tennessee law, fear of contracting the coronavirus is not an excuse [to vote by mail],”  Hargett replied.

“Well, that’s pitiful,” said Senator Angus King (Ind-Maine).

And, as indicated earlier, the office of Shelby Election Administrator Phillips has faced accusations of going slow in response to the mail-in order.

At a recent meeting of the Shelby County Commission, lawyer Mulroy was among those noting that Phillips had allowed a pile-up of mail-in ballot requests by treating state Election Coordinator Mark Goins’ ultimate demand for immediate compliance with mail-in ballot requests as merely “advisory.” He had earlier pointed out that notices mailed by Phillips’ office to Shelby County voters omitted the required reference to COVID-19 as an acceptable reason for absentee voting.

The result was a new consent order from Lyle reinforcing the mandate to be explicit in that regard.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Election Commission: No New Voting Equipment for This Year

Considering all the delays that have occurred in the drawn-out and contentious process of acquiring a new election system for Shelby County, this will not be the most surprising news: There will be no new devices — whether of the ballot-marking sort or of the hand-marked variety — for any county elections this year.

Word from the Election Commission is that, for several reasons, the federal/state primaries and the county general election scheduled for August will be performed on the county’s existing and outmoded machinery, and the same goes for the November election.

One of the reasons for the postponement, according to an EC source familiar with the thinking in the office of Election Administrator Linda Phillips, is uncertainty, at least in her mind, over the availability of funds allocated by the Shelby County Commission. Funding for a new election system was allocated last year by the county commission for the purchase of a new election system in the current fiscal year, but the money has not yet been appropriated.

Jackson Baker

Election Commissioner Linda Phillips

Phillips is said to believe that the funding process for new machines has been shifted to the coming fiscal year, 2020-21, but county commissioners involved in the ongoing process of determining the new budget said that was not the case. The administrator has told election commission members that no voting on any new system will occur until 2022 but that the state has committed to providing new scanners to accommodate the demands of increased mail-in voting this year.

There is still an element of suspense regarding the nature of the new election system, whenever it comes to be. The election commission recently accepted Phillips’ recommendation for the purchase of new ballot-marking devices from the ESS company, but considerable support still exists for hand-marked ballots, both in the community at large and on the majority-Democratic Shelby County Commission, which has the prerogative to appropriate the funding — and, arguably, to designate the type of machinery.

In any case, County Mayor Lee Harris has signed the necessary “intent-to-award” letter to allow the purchasing process to proceed. It remains to be seen when the county commission can cut through the current snags regarding budget calculations to address the matter.

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Politics Politics Feature

Numbed by the Numbers: County Commission Struggles to Agree on Budget

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Separate attempts to produce a budget for Shelby County failed to produce anything resembling a consensus on a marathon meeting day of the County Commission on Monday. Commission Chairman Mark Billingsley said he intends to call a special meeting for next week to see if the process can be expedited.
Jackson Baker

Commission Chairman Mark Billingsley

Billingsley told his fellow commissioners the called meeting would likely be necessary in the interests of reaching agreement on a budget, with the new fiscal year just around the corner on July 1st.

The Memorial Day holiday next week forces an adjustment of the normal schedule, which would mandate a day of committee meetings during the week, preparatory to the next regular commission meeting the week after. The holiday forces the entire sequence to occur a week later, with committee meetings scheduled for June 3rd and the next regular public meeting to be on June 8th.

Hence the need for a called meeting, especially since Monday’s meetings — a special called budget meeting, starting at 11 a.m., followed by the regular Commission meeting at 3 p.m — became embroiled in complications that were still unsnarled when the commission adjourned at nearly midnight.

“We’re getting into another day,” said budget chair Eddie Jones wearily, with the clock moving toward the witching hour and one of the Webinar meeting’s participants, an administration staffer participating from home and having to alternate her contributions with soothing words for a restless two-year-old. “That sounds wonderful,” was the wistful comment of Commissioner Mick Wright on this audible reminder of a domestic life beyond numbers-crunching.

Various formulas have been adduced for dealing with a looming budget deficit that had looked to be as large as $10 million even before the effects of the coronavirus crisis pushed things even further into fiscal crisis.

In mid-April, County Mayor Lee Harris had proposed a $1.4 billion “lean and balanced” budget, with $13.6 million in specified cuts offset by a $16.50 raise in the county’s motor vehicle registration tax, a.k.a. the wheel tax. A majority of commissioners could not be found to agree, and alternative budget proposals, all with different versions of austerity, have since been floated, one by Commissioner Brandon Morrison, another by budget chair Jones, working more or less in tandem with vice chair Edmund Ford.

Among the issues raised by Monday’s day-long discussion was that of whether, as county Chief Financial Officer Mathilde Crosby contended, the proposals offered by Jones and Ford focused overmuch on cuts in administrative departments, thereby paralleling what has been something of a running feud between Harris and Ford based, as more than a few observers see it, as a potential long-term political rivalry between the two.

Crosby also offered criticism that the Jones-Ford proposals for budget-cutting ignored distinctions between the county’s general fund and various dedicated funds for mandated functions.

Another potential issue is that of the county tax rate, currently pegged at $4.05 per $100 of assessed value. Commissioner Reginald Milton, for one, believes that the rate is set artificially low because of simple mathematical error and that this factor is bound to doom the county to endless future variations of the current budget scramble until the rate is recalculated. The current rate has so far been reaffirmed in two of the three readings required for passage.

The budget issue is predominating over other matters, though the commission did reach an agreement Monday on what had been a controversial proposal by Commissioner Tami Sawyer for an ordinance requiring, on penalty of $50 fine, that residents and visitors wear protective face masks in public areas. Sawyer recast her proposal in the form of a resolution requesting such a requirement by the Health Department but providing for no fine. The resolution passed 8-5 on a party-line vote, with the Commission’s Democrats voting for and the Republicans voting against.

Another matter of consequence that awaits the commission is the matter of new voting machines for Shelby County. The commission has twice voted a preference that the county invest in a system of hand-marked paper ballots in time for the August county general election and federal-state primaries, but the Shelby County Election Commission has approved the recommendation of Election Administrator Linda Phillips that new ballot-marking machines from the ES&S Company be purchased instead.

With the elections approaching, the need for a decision soon increases. The process requires that Harris sign an order authorizing the purchase of a new system, after which the commission must vote for its funding. At issue is whether the commission will approve the Phillips/SCEC request or act according to its own preference for the hand-marked system.

A sizable and well-organized group of local activists is pushing for the latter option, on grounds, among others, that a system of hand-marked ballots would be cheaper, more transparent, and less vulnerable to hacking.

Other, related aspects of the controversy include allegations from the activist ranks of potential conflicts of interest involving Phillips and family members and a concern that purchase of the ES&S machines would involve an implicit need to purchase a new voter-registration system from the same company.

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Opinion Viewpoint

A Scorer’s Notes on the Voting Machine Process

I write software and work with big databases. A few years ago, I became very interested in election fairness and security. As a personal project, a few friends and I got together to study our electoral system through the data that defines it. Because of this involvement, I was asked to be one of the nine people who evaluated and scored the proposals for new Shelby County voting systems. The evaluation was a fair process, and the vendor that I believe the Election Commission chose is the one that I ranked highest on objective criteria.

I went into the process with varying levels of concern about each of the vendors based on derogatory reports I’d read, from election security advocate Jennifer Cohn and others, but ultimately I based my decision entirely on my understanding of the systems that I saw demonstrated and that I was able to examine over three days in February.

All of the systems we evaluated were acceptable, but not one of them was perfect. Any one of them would do the job for Shelby County, and each one had some advantages and some disadvantages over the others. We could all wish for some fourth alternative that combines the best features, but that doesn’t exist. Every software purchase decision is a compromise. Any of the systems proposed here is a big improvement over the current machines.

After the vendor demos, I studied the proposals and my notes and tried to balance the competing advantages and disadvantages. Ultimately, my score was based on the aspects of the system that I understand the best. I agonized over the decision. I was late turning in my scorecard. I hope that I made the right choices.

I was the only member of the group who is a practicing software developer. Two other evaluators, from Shelby County IT, work in networking and system administration. While I have some knowledge of voter registration databases and the data aspects of elections, I’ve never been a poll worker and my only experience with the polling place operations is as a voter. I based my score on my understanding of the functional and design qualities of the software components (and not on the portability of the carts or the cost of the paper, for example).

One question I asked each vendor was “If Shelby County chooses your system, will you make the source code available for code review and audit?” Each vendor answered by saying no previous customers had ever asked to review their source code. (That concerned me — this kind of diligence is appropriate for this essential election component.) Each vendor then went off to call someone and came back with a variation of “Yes, but you have to sign an NDA” or “Yes, but you will have to visit our office to see it.” The vendor I scored highest overall was also the most willing to allow a code review. I hope that the final contract will require that, and I would be delighted to join a team of developers from Shelby County to conduct that review

Each vendor submitted two options: one for Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) and one for hand-marked paper ballots. The BMDs work similarly to the voting machines we have now, but they produce a sheet of paper printed with the voter’s choices. The voter then inserts the sheet into a scanner. It is scanned and falls into a locked bin. With the other option, hand-marked ballots, a printer produces a paper version of each voter’s ballot. The voter fills it out and inserts it in the scanner. If there are no stray marks, if the bubbles are all filled in neatly and the voter didn’t mistakenly vote for two candidates in the same race, then the scanner accepts it. If there are errors, the scanner kicks it out and the voter has to get a fresh ballot and destroy the old one.

The BMD option would eliminate the problem of mismarked ballots and lead to fewer errors. I think that’s why Linda Phillips prefers it. Jennifer Cohn has argued that BMDs introduce security risks because, while the voters’ choices are printed in text on the ballots they mark, the scanners actually read bar codes that encode the choices and are also printed on the ballots. I don’t think this is a problem. The paper ballots still show the choices in text and that can be audited and used in recounts. Either option will work and can be verified.

I prefer hand-marked ballots by a small margin. The problem of mismarked ballots can be mitigated with clear instructions and voter education, and the process is more transparent to the public. It’s not enough to have an honest system — it needs to be transparently honest. While I disagree with Linda Phillips’ preference for BMDs, I respect her arguments. In my experiences with her, she’s been intelligent, effective, and honest.

The evaluation phase of this purchase decision that I participated in was fair and thorough, but the secrecy of the process has been a problem. Controversy and lack of trust in the system can discourage people from participating. The new system should be good, and I hope many new voters will use it. Everyone should vote.

Doug Sims moved to Memphis in the fourth grade. He works remotely as a software engineer for a large media company. In non-pandemic years he plays Ultimate Frisbee.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Welcome to the Machine: Fight Over Voting System Raises Issues of Integrity and Nepotism

Are the citizens of Memphis and Shelby County — troubled with decades of problematic and even botched election results — really about to acquire a new, improved means of expressing their will in the forthcoming August and November election rounds?

That question may be answered this week, as the Shelby County Commission decides whether to accept or overrule the judgment last week of Election Administrator Linda Phillips and the Shelby County Election Commission (SCEC) — apparently in favor of ballot-marking devices marketed by the ES&S Company, a monolith of the election-machine industry. The name of the chosen manufacturer was not explicitly revealed last week — “Company 1,” was how it was called in discussion — but several references by Phillips to the “thermal paper” uniquely employed by ES&S for production of machine receipts, were something of a giveaway.

Jackson Baker

Election Administrator Linda Phillips

The Shelby County Commission, which has the responsibility of paying for the machines (or not), had voted twice previously in favor of hand-marked ballots instead, on several grounds, including cost, transparency, and invulnerability to ballot-hacking. And an aroused contingent of local activists, abetted by a network of nationally known election adepts, is prepared to insist on that choice.

Theoretically, the SCEC voted last Thursday to accept something of a compromise resolution from Election Commision member Brent Taylor, one of the three Republicans on the five-member body. Taylor accepted Phillips’ recommendation on behalf of ballot-marking devices but proposed that voters in each precinct be offered, much in the manner of the grocer’s “paper or plastic” choice, the alternative of a hand-marked ballot. That was seemingly enough to win over Democrat Anthony Tate. But not Bennie Smith, the other Democrat and an election-security professional who is one of the sparkplugs of the case for hand-marked paper ballots.

The bottom line is that, despite last week’s 4-1 vote by the Shelby County Election Commission in approval of ballot-marking devices — again, presumably those manufactured by ES&S — the battle isn’t over yet. Hardcore proponents of hand-marked paper ballots, who have been highly motivated and organized from the beginning, are looking ahead to the prospect that the Shelby County Commission, whose duty it is to pay for and transact any purchase of voting-machine equipment, might override the stated choice of the Election Administrator and SCEC.

The county commission has put itself on record twice as wishing to purchase a system employing hand-marked paper ballots as the most cost-effective, transparent, and unhackable way to carry out an election. As the specter of COVID-19 began to make itself felt, the paper ballot adherents have also emphasized the lesser likelihood of viral infection via a paper ballot used singly than for metal used over and over by a sequence of individuals.

Jackson Baker

Commissioner Van Turner

One of the more dedicated believers in the paper ballot concept is Democratic County Commissioner Van Turner, who some weeks ago at a commission meeting was involved in a verbal exchange with Election Administrator Phillips, who was adamantly insisting on her preference for ballot-marking devices.

“We can vote down the funding,” Turner pointed out.

“We can sue you,” Phillips retorted.

Legal Aspects

Though conflict-of-interest and disclosure issues are involved in the dispute, the heart of the matter may well be fundamentally different ideas about the right to vote. Though both sides in the current controversy make claims that the system they advocate will save money and achieve accurate results, the question is deeper and more essential than that.

There may, in fact, be something more than an incidental correlation between the method we choose to cast our ballots and the degree to which the franchise is made available to the maximum number of people. As one instance of that, the partisans of hand-marked paper ballots tend to favor the maximum use of voting by mail for anticipated absenteeism and other reasons, especially in a time of enduring fears regarding the COVID-19 virus. One such advocate is Steve Mulroy, law professor at the University of Memphis and a former member of the Shelby County Commission and one of the leaders of the local activists seeking hand-marked paper ballots.

Jackson Baker

U of M law professor Steve Mulroy

Mulroy first came to public attention more than a decade ago when he was an early advocate locally of a paper trail for the purpose of double-checking, if need be, the votes cast in an election. The concept is now accepted virtually everywhere, and the idea of scanners to provide such a paper record of ballots cast is now built into both of the rival systems being considered for Shelby County’s new voting process.

Even as Mulroy is joining with others to urge the county commission to expand its fiduciary intent and resources for the purchase of a hand-marked ballot system, he has filed suit in Chancery Court in Nashville against relevant public officials of the state of Tennessee — Governor Bill Lee, Secretary of State Tre Hargett, state Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins, and state Attorney General Herb Slatery — seeking relief for several named individuals and organizations from state regulations impeding or prohibiting their wish to vote absentee by mail in the face of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Court is where the voting machine case could end up, too. The partisans of hand-marked paper ballots are hopeful that the seven Democratic members of the county commission who have voted twice to endorse the purchase of such a system will stick to their guns and vote to overrule the Election Commission’s official recommendation. Such a vote could happen at the county commission’s next regular public meeting, on May 18th. Or it could come earlier via a special called meeting.

In the event such a vote does occur, it is probable that the issue would be contested legally. A first step would be Chancery Court locally, where, as County Commissioner Turner, a proponent of hand-marked ballots, sees it, the odds would favor his side. “After that, who knows?” said Turner, who foresees a round — maybe several — of appellate testing, as well as a possible action supporting ballot-marking devices by a reconvened state legislature with its Republican super-majority. “However it goes, I’m with it to the end,” vowed Turner, who said he thought the other six Democratic commissioners favoring hand-marked ballots would persevere as well. (It should be noted that the party-line aspect of the current controversy owes much to a public letter from GOP state Senator Brian Kelsey addressed to the three Republican SCEC members insisting on their support for ballot-marking devices.)

Administrator Phillips is very much a true believer for her side. She has made numerous public statements disparaging paper ballots and extolling ballot-marking devices, and, even as her original RFP (request for proposal) went out to potential vendors, she had an op-ed published on behalf of such machines. And she has made frequent public statements alleging that voter error is a rampant feature of paper ballots and, even more sensationally, told a county commission meeting recently that voter fraud occurred “100 percent” in the realm of paper ballots.

Mulroy, who has authored numerous serious papers and a book on the kaleidoscope of issues relating to voting, promptly debunked Phillips’ assertions, producing evidence that such paper-ballot fraud is hard to authenticate anywhere and has been non-existent in Tennessee. Further, Mulroy cited studies demonstrating that the rate of voter error was no higher in paper voting or in absentee ballot counts than in touch-screen voting. Significantly, he used research performed by the conservative Heritage Foundation to buttress his conclusions in both cases.

A Matter of Bona Fides

Adherents of paper ballots have been at pains of late to question the bona fides of Phillips’ professed positions, citing her own relationship — and that of her family members — to companies with whom she has arranged contractual relationships. Inasmuch as her preferred vendor for the new ballot-marking devices she wants for Shelby County is apparently ES&S, it may or may not be relevant that, as her PR assistant Suzanne Thompson acknowledged in a recent communication, one of Phillips’ two sons, presumably Andrew, “worked for ES&S,” adding, “He’s no longer employed there.”

Documentary evidence does establish that Andrew Phillips, along with another Phillips son, Chris, did work at the voting-software company Everyone Counts in 2017, when Shelby County, during Phillips’ first year as election administrator , concluded a $1 million-plus contract with that company, for the purchase and maintenance of voter-registration software. Controversy surrounds the history of that contract, first of all, since not only the two Phillips sons but Phillips herself had been an employee of Everyone Counts. Everyone Counts was, in fact, her immediate past employer at the time she took the job of Shelby County election administrator.

At the time, Everyone Counts seems not to have been regarded as a leader in its field. During the first year of the Shelby County contract, in fact, Everyone Counts suffered financial difficulties and was purchased by a company called Votem, which took over administration of the voter-registration contract. In short order, Votem would divest itself of the Shelby County contract, passing it on to a third company, KnowInk.

Coincidentally or not, Chris Phillips, one of Linda Phillips’ sons, would end up in the service of each of those companies in turn — first Everyone Counts, then Votem, and finally KnowInk, where he remains today. Meanwhile, Shelby County has continued to pay an annual maintenance fee to whoever held the contract, and has purchased KnowInk e-poll books for $175,000 on a sole-source contract.

The issue of family connections is not the only one that has arisen regarding that voter-registration contract, which was Linda Phillips’ first major action in the service of Shelby County. There is some indication that she may have waived the duty of keeping her commission members sufficiently informed about the vendor or the other relevant facts regarding the contract.

Prior to concluding that 2017 contract, Phillips, who had been hired by Shelby County in 2016, went through the motions of asking Marcy Ingram, then the ethics officer in the Shelby County Attorney’s office, a series of questions, including those of whether her own past relationship with Everyone Counts needed to be disclosed and whether her son’s employment at the company should be disclosed as well.

Attorney Ingram’s answers were succinct: “As you are involved in the evaluation of the proposals,” she said, Phillips needed to make disclosure in both cases “to the other evaluators” to avoid “an appearance of impropriety.”

In her query of Ingram, Phillips had offered this assurance: “I’m not going to be making the final decision on what to purchase; that will be the Election Commission decision to recommend the vendor.” [Our italics]

There is no record in the minutes of Shelby County Election Commission meetings or elsewhere to suggest that the commission was in fact invited to pass judgment on the vendor. Norma Lester, an election commissioner at the time, is adamant about that and affirms, too, that there were no disclosures to the election commission of the sort mandated by Ingram. Phillips’ own PR consultant, Suzanne Thompson, explains the letting of the contract thusly:

“For the purchase of the VR equipment, a scoring machine [sic] made up from county IT reps and the election commission each ranked the equipment. Each member rated the system independently. She [Phillips] didn’t make a recommendation for the Voter’s Registration System because it was all up to the folks in purchasing.”

In short, while various IT technocrats may have had a shot at “evaluating” the contract, the Shelby County Election Commission itself seemingly did not. This may or may not be a problem of substance. It is certainly one of optics.

Also in the optics category is another odd circumstance: John Ryder, the veteran Shelby County Election Commission attorney who doubles as a vintage Republican Party eminence, was revealed recently to be sharing office space with the Nashville firm of MNA Government Operations. The head of that firm is Wendell Moore, a longtime Ryder friend, who lobbies for the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce and for ES&S, that major player in the election-machinery field, and the ultimate choice of Linda Phillips and a 4-1 majority of the Election Commission as the contractor of Shelby County’s new voting system.

Once the matter of his office-sharing became public, Ryder argued that his presence in the Nashville office of MNA was due to the fact that his law firm, Harris-Shelton, rented space there and that he had no working relationship with either MNA or its client ES&S. He said further that he had no knowledge of the then-active RFP for Shelby County voting machines nor any of the vendors seeking the county’s business, and therefore he had seen no need to make any disclosures.

Left hanging over the affair in the aftermath, and never quite explained, was photographic evidence that, in two different versions of the glass register in the lobby of the Bank of America building in Nashville, Ryder was listed as an associate of MNA.

Jackson Baker

Election Commission in session

“Slimy Tricks?”

One thing is incontestable: As already indicated, ES&S, which absorbed its main rival, Diebold, some years ago, is a major player in the election-machinery business, a veritable titan. Critics of the company see it as an industry giant squelching would-be competitors and running rampant over contractual and constitutional processes in the jurisdictions where it operates.

Voting rights activist Susan Pynchon, a Floridian who, with local activist Erika Sugarmon, has organized several recent Zoom sessions on the voting-machine issue, has compiled a lengthy list of articles pertaining to the company’s activities nationwide. They run from charges of bribery to criminal negligence to playing fast and loose with contractual obligations to error-prone hardware and undependable software.

As a sort of distillation of all that, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), in a recent Zoom seminar on election security, said that ES&S “uses every slimy trick in the book” to get states to buy “overpriced, insecure voting machines.”

That, of course, is one side of the issue. ES&S has its partisans, too, who see the company as the industry standard, inveighed against as much for its success as for any actual misdeeds. For the record, ES&S markets a hand-marked paper ballot system as well as its line of ballot-marking devices, though it more aggressively pushes the latter. The SCEC’s recent RFP saw three companies competing for Shelby County’s business: ES&S, Dominion Voting Systems, and Hart Voting System.

The Next Step

The next step in the purchase process will see Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris formally acknowledging the receipt of SCEC’s recommendation and signing an order for the Shelby County Commission to arrange a purchase for new machines to be used in August and thereafter. Word is that he will leave it to the county commission to accept the SCEC recommendation or make its own choice. If it does the latter, presumably it would opt to accept the low bid from among the various bids received in response to Linda Phillips’ RFP. And, as indicated, such an action might well be subject to legal action.

In any case, at some point in the near future, Shelby County stands to be outfitted with new voting devices, hopefully in time for the August election round. Even if human disputation is off the table by then, there might still remain the issue of whether the COVID-19 virus will remain persistent to the point that a truly serious urgency will attach to Mulroy’s aforementioned suit to allow the unimpeded use of “no-excuse-needed” mail-in ballots. For the record, those would be hand-marked.

…

Widely Differing Estimates

Election Administrator Linda Phillips and local activists for hand-marked paper ballots have difficulty agreeing on many things — notably the respective costs to Shelby County of the kind of new voting machines each prefers.

Phillips reckons the immediate purchase costs of new ES&S ballot-marking devices, which she favors, to be $7,160,000, as against $8,150,000 for a hand-marked ballot system. She sees the 14-year extrapolated cost of maintaining the hand-marked system to be $24,785,000, compared to $9,415,000 for ballot-marking devices.

The local advocates of hand-marked ballots, on the other hand, see their system as costing only $3,039,314 up front, with annual maintenance expenses of only $612,564, while they see the ballot-marking machines favored by Phillips to have an initial cost of $8,268,314, with annual expenses thereafter to be $885,203.

Not only different systems, but different vocabularies for figuring costs. No wonder this particular twain can’t meet.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Further Questions About Linda Phillips

As previously indicated in this space, the controversy over selection of new election machinery for the August and November rounds of voting in Shelby County has involved potential conflict-of-interest issues. 

Linda Phillips

One such issue involved the fact that John Ryder, attorney for the Election Commission,
shares office space in Nashville with the lobbying firm MNA Government Relations, headed by his longtime friend Wendell Moore, who represents ES&S, a major election-machinery vendor. (The voting machines currently in use in Shelby County are ES&S manufactures, and a majority of the Election Commission voted last Thursday night to award the company a contract for the new machines to be purchased this year.)

Ryder responded that his law firm, Harris-Shelton, is merely a tenant of MNA and, beyond that rental arrangement, has no direct working relationship with MNA. He said further that he had no involvement with the Election Commission’s decision process on vendors of new machines and did not even know at that point which vendors had bid on an RFP (request for proposal) sent out by Election Administrator Linda Phillips.

The other conflict-of-interest question continues to develop and concerns Administrator Phillips herself.

The first revelation regarding Phillips had to do with the fact that a contract for new voter-registration software approved by her office in 2017, a year after she began her work in Shelby County, was awarded to Everyone Counts, the firm she had worked for in Indiana before taking the Shelby County job. There is no evidence that she disclosed that relationship to the Election Commission, and then-Commissioner Norma Lester is adamant that Phillips did not disclose either that fact or the further one that Phillips had a son then working for Everyone Counts.

Asked about this, EC public relations consultant Suzanne Thompson, passed on the following explanation: “For the purchase of the VR equipment, a scoring machine [sic] made up from county IT reps and the Election commission. Each ranked the equipment …. She [Phillips] didn’t make a recommendation for the Voter’s Registration System because it was all up to the folks in Purchasing.” That Election Commission itself, as Lester indicates, seems not to have been asked to make a judgment about the contract.

Previous to the purchase, Phillips had inquired of Marcy Ingram, then ethics officer in the Shelby County Attorney’s office, whether she had a duty to disclose her previous relationship with Everyone Counts or the fact of her son’s employment with the company.
On the first matter, Ingram responded, “As you are involved in the evaluation of the proposals, you should disclose this former employment relationship to the other evaluators to avoid an appearance of impropriety.” On the second, she advised, “[A}s you are involved in the evaluation of the proposals, you should disclose this familial relationship to the other evaluators prior to exercising any discretion in the matter to avoid an appearance of impropriety.”

In her request to Ingram for an ethics ruling, Phillips had said, “I’m not going to be making the final decision on what to purchase; that will be the Election Commission decision to recommend the vendor.” [Our italics] As indicated, there is no record of any such recommendation from the Election Commission.

After the software contract was awarded to Everyone Counts, that company experienced financial difficulties and was purchased by Votem, which in its turn sold the Shelby County voter-registration contract to KnowInk. Records show that both of Phillips’ sons, Andrew and Chris, were employed by Everyone Counts when the contract was let, and son Chris was employed successively with both Votem and KnowInk, as each obtained the voter-registration contract.  [See below.]
[pdf-1] In maintenance of the contract, the county still pays an annual fee to KnowInk, as it did to Votem. In April 2018, in apparent anticipation that the voter-registration contract would be made over to KnowInk in 2019, Administrator Phillips had purchased KnowInk e-poll books for $175,000 on a sole-source contract.

About the sons’ employment history, PR consultant Thompson had this to say:

“At the time the VR equipment was purchased, one of her two sons was working for KnowInc.

“The other son worked for the ES&S. He’s no longer employed there. He left the company some time ago. The selection the company used to provide software for the voting equipment we currently use was made years ago., long before Linda came to Shelby County. I don’t know this for sure, but that son was probably still in college when that long-gone group of commissioners made the decision on the software for the voting machines we currently use.”

For the sake of clarity a fuller version of the communication from Thompson, relating as it does to matters of public information, is appended below. Deleted from her statement are personal remarks and a discussion of another matter unrelated to the immediate one of public contracts.

The current process of purchasing voting machines, as you know, the Commissioners decide which company to select. Linda makes the recommendation. We don’t even know what they will decide – it’s up to them. Her son works for KnowInc., as a desk tech – a low level position. The company he works for has nothing to do with the voting equipment or software….

The county’s system for the purchase of Voter’s Registration equipment was quite different from the process currently underway. All the decisions go through purchasing. At the time the VR equipment was purchased, one of her two sons was working for KnowInc.

The other son worked for the ES&S. He’s no longer employed there. He left the company some time ago. The selection the company used to provide software for the voting equipment we currently use was made year’s ago., long before Linda came to Shelby County. I don’t know this for sure, but that son was probably still in college when that long-gone group of commissioners made the decision on the software for the voting machines we currently use.

This is all laid out in the attached e-mail. The attachment is a memo that came from the Ethics officer for the Shelby County Attorney, Marcy Ingram, which pre-dates the issuance of the RFP for the Voters Registration system. For the purchase of the VR equipment a scoring machine made up from county IT reps and the Election commission Each ranked the equipment. Each member rated the system independently. That’s about the only similarity in the two system’ purchase – a scoring team.

She didn’t make a recommendation for the Voter’s Registration System because it was all up to the folks in Purchasing.

I thought it was probably best to sit down and write this out for clarity’s sake….

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