[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 4]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 4963]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   REMEMBERING MR. ATHAN GIBBS, INNOVATOR AND COMMITTED ADVOCATE OF 
                DEMOCRACY, ON THE OCCASION OF HIS DEATH

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JIM COOPER

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 23, 2004

  Mr. COOPER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the life of Mr. 
Athan Gibbs, of Nashville, Tennessee. Mr. Gibbs was a patriot, a 
pastor, and a visionary entrepreneur who took it upon himself to 
restore Americans' faith in the democratic process after the 
disheartening controversy we experienced in November of 2000. Democracy 
lost one of its chief champions with Mr. Gibbs' unexpected death on the 
morning of Sunday, March 14, and on behalf of Congressman Rush Holt and 
other colleagues, I send his family our heartfelt sympathy for their 
loss and deepest gratitude for his life.
  A Memphis native who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Gibbs 
experienced first hand the struggle for equality at the voting booth. 
Four decades later, these seminal experiences informed his observations 
of the 2000 Florida election controversy, and drove him to invent a 
technology that would ensure the fair exercise of democracy--the first 
electronic voting system with a ``paper trail'' to allow voters to 
verify that their votes were appropriately logged and counted.
  Athan Gibbs' TruVote system was a timely invention, and the product 
of a unique career. As a student of both business and theology, Mr. 
Gibbs entered public service in 1970 as a financial analyst with the 
Tennessee Public Service Commission. But while he pursued this public 
service career and later his own tax business, he served double duty as 
a pastor, most recently at the Mount Zion Baptist Church. In the words 
of a friend, The Reverend Enoch Fuzz, ``Athan was consumed by a desire 
for justice, equality and freedom for all people.''
  Mr. Gibbs' desire for justice and equality was matched only by his 
tenacious drive to realize these goals. After reading studies 
quantifying the unequal treatment of African-American votes in the 2000 
Florida election, he saw an opportunity to put his accounting skills to 
work in pursuing his overall democratic goals. In 2001, he founded 
TruVote in order to prevent disenfranchisement and restore faith in the 
democratic system. His invention caught on quickly and earned the 
backing of state and local officials, the World Conference of Mayors, 
and Microsoft. Last spring, my colleague Mr. Holt introduced H.R. 2239, 
a bill requiring that voting systems provide a verifiable paper 
receipt, just as Mr. Gibbs had envisioned and invented two years 
previously. This bill now has bipartisan backing from 128 cosponsors.
  While the nation and the democratic world lost a dedicated patriot 
and talented innovator when it prematurely lost Athan Gibbs, his vision 
and mission live on through his family and colleagues who pledge to 
carry on his work. On behalf of the fifth district of Tennessee as well 
as my colleagues in Congress, I send my deepest condolences to Athan 
Gibbs' family and loved ones, and celebrate the life of this remarkable 
American.

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