Yesterday I submitted testimony on four bills before the GAE (General Administration and Elections Committee.) (Read my testimony here)
I was pleased to learn that Secretary of the State, Stephanie Thomas generally agreed with me and that she called out my testimony in hers!
It was clear before I spoke that the Committee understood my main points, so I asked them to read the testimony and spent my three minutes discussing additional thoughts:
- That if Absentee Ballots are made FOIable (I thought they were), we should post them to the Internet to save citizens from filing FOI requests and officials from processing them.
- That my surveys show that our voting machines are NOT failing at an increased rate, and that this might be the worst time in history to replace them. (Because newer VVSG 2.0 machines will be available soon, making anything we buy today obsoleted soon as well.
- Emphasizing that if they General Assembly had listened to me in 2013 then we could have avoided many of the problems, some that still remain with Election Day Registration – and that many of the same issues can occur with Early Voting and Same Day Registration, if they ignore similar suggestions in today’s testimony
