Saturday, September 16, 2006
Secretary of State and Pima Supervisors harming election integrity
This letter went out to the Democratic Party PCs. We need to get the Pima Republicans, Libertarians, independents and Greens involved too:
Dear PCs:
We were told by the Pima Supervisors on Monday that they could not allow hand-count audits of the primary election because Jan Brewer had forbidden it and their lawyers told them they could not now go forward in violation of Jan Brewer’s ban. We urged them to go ahead with informal hand-count audits of the primary as an exercise to confirm the validity of the machine counts and as a training exercise to learn how to make the hand-counts in November run more smoothly. Despite our pleas they still voted 4-1 not to do hand-counts. Only Richard Elias voted no. After the meeting, two Supervisors told us they were afraid of the chaos that might ensue if the hand-counts differed from the machine counts.
We have now learned that Maricopa County has been doing the informal hand-count audits that we urged the Pima Supervisors to authorize, putting the lie to their claim that Jan Brewer wouldn’t let them do such hand-count audits. We want to alert as many people as possible to this situation and encourage everyone to contact both the news media and the Board of Supervisors to try to force a change to this duplicitous policy.
Time is very important. Once the election is certified, we can still do hand-count audits as a training exercise but it will be too late to affect the outcome of any problematic races. Please contact everyone you can and urge them to also send letters to the editor and contact their public officials.
We were told by the Pima Supervisors on Monday that they could not allow hand-count audits of the primary election because Jan Brewer had forbidden it and their lawyers told them they could not now go forward in violation of Jan Brewer’s ban. We urged them to go ahead with informal hand-count audits of the primary as an exercise to confirm the validity of the machine counts and as a training exercise to learn how to make the hand-counts in November run more smoothly. Despite our pleas they still voted 4-1 not to do hand-counts. Only Richard Elias voted no. After the meeting, two Supervisors told us they were afraid of the chaos that might ensue if the hand-counts differed from the machine counts.
We have now learned that Maricopa County has been doing the informal hand-count audits that we urged the Pima Supervisors to authorize, putting the lie to their claim that Jan Brewer wouldn’t let them do such hand-count audits. We want to alert as many people as possible to this situation and encourage everyone to contact both the news media and the Board of Supervisors to try to force a change to this duplicitous policy.
Time is very important. Once the election is certified, we can still do hand-count audits as a training exercise but it will be too late to affect the outcome of any problematic races. Please contact everyone you can and urge them to also send letters to the editor and contact their public officials.
We were told by the Pima Supervisors on Monday that they could not allow hand-count audits of the primary election because Jan Brewer had forbidden it and their lawyers told them they could not now go forward in violation of Jan Brewer’s ban. We urged them to go ahead with informal hand-count audits of the primary as an exercise to confirm the validity of the machine counts and as a training exercise to learn how to make the hand-counts in November run more smoothly. Despite our pleas they still voted 4-1 not to do hand-counts. Only Richard Elias voted no. After the meeting, two Supervisors told us they were afraid of the chaos that might ensue if the hand-counts differed from the machine counts.
We have now learned that Maricopa County has been doing the informal hand-count audits that we urged the Pima Supervisors to authorize, putting the lie to their claim that Jan Brewer wouldn’t let them do such hand-count audits. We want to alert as many people as possible to this situation and encourage everyone to contact both the news media and the Board of Supervisors to try to force a change to this duplicitous policy.
Time is very important. Once the election is certified, we can still do hand-count audits as a training exercise but it will be too late to affect the outcome of any problematic races. Please contact everyone you can and urge them to also send letters to the editor and contact their public officials.
If you are available next week to participate in a hand-count audit (if the Board of Supervisors changes their policy -- not likely before Monday), please send an email to pollworkers at cox dot net.
I urge everyone to get involved urgently and demonstrate that we will not be denied the integrity of our elections, whatever Ms. Brewer may want.
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posted by AuditAZ staff
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