A.U.D.I.T. AZ

Friends, do you want your vote to count in Pima County as you intend it? Then come and show support for Attorneys Bill Risner and Ralph E. Ellinwood:

2011-12-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

The fight for election integrity goes on.

Monday, December 12^th 2011 - 11:00 AM

Judge Kyle Bryson’s Courtroom

Fifth Floor, Pima Superior Court: 110 W. Congress

Since 2006 we’ve won 3 major cases[1] so far revealing how the process in Pima County works despite the county spending over a million dollars to block public records access. We filed this case several years ago to actually fix the problems found in the public records cases. More on this case here: “When A Court Is Presented With Evidence That Election Results May Have Been Tampered With, Does The Court Have Equitable Jurisdiction To Fashion Prospective Relief To Protect The Purity Of Future Election Results?”[2]

This particular case went into a coma over two years ago when Judge Harrington said that he couldn't order fixes to the election process no matter how obvious or severe the problems are.[3], [4] Well now the appeals and state SUPREME court said “not so fast” – we do have a right to ask a court to reform a broken election system regardless of what loopholes remain in state law. And that means GAME ON, before a new local judge.

In this first hearing before the new judge, we’re asking for something fairly simple: we want our money back on the 2 years of ballot storage fees racked up during our SUCCESSFUL APPEAL. In other words, the county used bad arguments to get us tossed, the previous judge tossed us out, and that cost $2,000 a year just to keep the most critical evidence (the damn ballots!) out of the shredder. That’s $4k we should now be able to spend on depositions and the like. We could use it – but more importantly, this “opening issue” for the new judge will tell us a lot about where his head and biases are. PLEASE, we need a big presence to show that this is a critical case and “we the people” are paying attention and we expect the judge to do the same.

Longer term, we're going to prove that election databases have been destroyed, election laws have been violated, our votes have been hacked and the voting systems we use are a tragic mess from both a technical and procedural standpoint. We're going to ask the court to order reforms that could serve as a model for the whole country when it come to the dangers of electronic voting.

Resolution on Election Integrity by Bill Risner and passed by AZ State Democratic Party[5]:

By our estimate the Pima County Board of Supervisors has spent more than $1.3 million on BS defenses fighting “We the People” over core issues relating to the foundation of our democracy. And if you’re reading this and saying “well, what about the hand count done by the Arizona Attorney General Goddard?” please read Significant Discrepancies in Comparison of RTA hand count Results by AZ AG,[6] a report by Ellen Theisen of Voters Unite.org.

I ask you, when does the cover-up become another crime?

John Brakey, co-founder of AUDIT-AZ (Americans United for Democracy, Integrity, and Transparency in Elections, Arizona) My sites with Arizona Election Integrity News www.audit-az.blogspot.com and SEEKING JUSTICE www.seekingjusticeauditaz.blogspot.com and http://www.fatallyflawedthemovie.com Tucson, AZ, 85706 Phone 520-578-5678 cell 520 339 2696 – Email is AUDITAZ@cox.net

[1] We’ve won 3 major cases and have saved this one from the dumpster via appeals – this one that's back on is actually “case 3” of the four.

[2] When A Court Is Presented With Evidence: http://seekingjusticeauditaz.blogspot.com/2010/04/when-court-is-presented-with-evidence_12.html

[3] August 8, 2010 When It Comes To Election Integrity In Arizona There’s Nothing Like Having An “Elephant in the Room” Or At Least A "Big Donkey". : http://audit-az.blogspot.com/2010/08/when-it-comes-to-election-integrity-in.html

[4] Attorney Bill Risner Reaffirms the Need for the Courts to Provide Prospective Relief

http://audit-az.blogspot.com/2009/08/attorney-bill-risner-reaffirms-need-for.html

[5] Resolution on Election Integrity by Bill Risner and passed by AZ State Democratic Party: http://www.velvetrevolution.us/electionstrikeforce/ArizonaDemResolution2010.pdf

[6] Significant Discrepancies in RTA hand count: http://www.votersunite.org/info/SignificantDiscrepanciesInComparisonOfRTAResults.pdf

Pima County Elections In Court: Investigation And Reforms

2011-05-16T22:27:00.000-07:00

We are now taking donations to fund the most important piece of election-related litigation going on today: a chance to both expose what's gone wrong AND move forward with court-ordered reforms. In the previous public records case we won, big - and that's how we know the extent of the problems that need correcting. In the current case trying to do the reforms we lost round one, won in appeals, won yet again at the Arizona Supreme Court, which means that the preliminaries are done. The AZ Supremes have spoken, and what they say is "game on". Like Warron Zevon said, "Send lawyers, guns and money; the sh%$ has hit the fan." We've got the lawyers and guns covered (not that the latter should be needed!) BUT we need the money to maximize this incredible opportunity: an election lawsuit that for once can't get bounced on a technicality because we've nailed THAT down tight!

DONATION PAGE: https://www.wepay.com/donate/AZCARE

NOTE: if you want to kick in a larger amount and have it directed through a recognized 501(c)3 for tax deductability, drop me a line at 1.jim.march@gmail.com

How This Happened - The Incredible Back-Story:

Beginning in 2004 a group of Pima County citizens of multiple political parties began to understand that the voting systems we use are fundamentally flawed. These systems lack the ability to be properly audited, they’re capable of mis-counting all on their own and they are riddled with security flaws allowing election agency insiders to play “kingmakers”. By early 2006 a particular bond measure went so obviously astray that further investigation was clearly warranted. That led to a public records brawl in court lasting years and produced an entire documentary, “Fatally Flawed”: http://blip.tv/file/4320635

Among the serious legal and security violations specific to Pima County was proof that the county elections officers and staff had been “peeking” into “who is winning and losing” days or in some cases over a week prior to election day. This was improper at best and illegal as hell if those early results "leaked". In a different 2006 election (Sept. primaries) we could see from the voting system logs that an illegal “peek” into the results occurred approximately three hours before a badly slanted “robocall” hit 5,000+ voters in the most closely contested race. We cannot prove that the “peek” resulted in a “poke”, but that is the absolute appearance.

The next phase of the court actions in Pima County is get court-mandated improvements to the election process and with any luck, personnel changes. In the opening phase of the current case calling for reforms, the judge washed his hands of it two years ago saying that he had no ability to order reforms and closed our case. This despite Pima County admitting that the security of their Diebold-based voting system is “fatally flawed” in open court in the previous public records case. The AZ Supreme Court just overruled the trial court, saying that courts can control election processes and behaviors – less than a month ago. So we’re back before a Pima County judge, probably a different one which means it’s “game on” as far as discovery goes. We now have a chance to both prove outright fraud happened, and get court-mandated reforms such as graphic scanning of paper ballots allowing “we the people” to do truly effective oversight for the first time in AZ since the first voting machines showed up in the 1960s.

We call this lawsuit a “two-fer” because we have a tremendous opportunity to investigate existing fraud and clean it up – in a single court action that can be heard by a jury. And the Arizona Supreme Court just ruled that the trial court has the jurisdiction to do so – this is not going to be bounced on a technicality! Here's the appelate court decision that the AZ Supremes just upheld: http://www.apltwo.ct.state.az.us/Decisions/CV20100001Memo.pdf

Here’s a partial list of the the points already established as fact in the public records fight (the previous major round of litigation in Pima County's election wars):

1) On election night in the screwball bond election of May 2006, that night the lead election tech was caught referring to an MS-Access advanced programmer’s manual – interesting because MS-Access has long been banned as an election “tool”.

2) Also on that election night, the election director refused to put a “snapshot” of the election results into the sheriff’s hands and contrary to normal practice, did no backups at all of the results for the first three days, election night and two thereafter. We have no “snapshots” of the state of the election those days. Normal practice is to take a "snapshot" of the state of the central tabulator data at the end of each day's processing.

3) This election of May 2006 (the “RTA bond”) was one of the elections where election staff “peeked” at who was winning and losing – same as they did in every election from 2004 until we finally caught them at it in December of 2006.

4) The RTA official vote tallies from the databases we obtained in public records don’t match the official precinct-level tallies.

5) Some of the RTA race precincts had their memory cards uploaded multiple times – in some cases up to six, per the databases obtained in public records.

6) The database also shows furious activity by election officials shortly after party observers left after being told activity was closing for the night. This burst of activity includes many of the precinct memory card reloads and possibly the discarding of precinct results tapes (paper "cash register type" strips printed by the precinct voting machines on election night) that don't match the reloaded memory card totals.

7) Approximately 40% of the precinct voting machine paper tallies (the “cash register tape” records) of the machine’s activity on election night before transport back to HQ. The missing tapes were mostly among the “reload precincts” per the database records – in other words, somebody appears to have been doctoring results on the cards, uploading to see if the doctoring worked, trying again where necessary and tossing any original paper that didn’t match the alterations.

8) Conveniently, the county had spent $500 on a memory card reader originally meant as part of a system for measuring moisture in corn fields(!). This device known as a “cropscanner” allows manual editing of the contents of a precinct memory card via a standard personal computer(!!!). Blackboxvoting.org had done a security bulletin in mid-2005 on that thing, and Pima County bought their own almost immediately – leaving it laying around the office with no security or tracking of it’s use.

Taken in total, there's a strong appearance of hand editing of precinct results on election night and for the next couple of days:

* MS-Access was available to edit the central tabulator records.

* The "Cropscanner" could edit the precinct records.

* Paper results that might not match hand editing are missing.

* Various snapshots of the state of the data across time were not made.

* The system was worked on after observers were sent home.

* This same type of transportation bond measure had failed three times previously and was expected to fail again. Two billion dollars was at stake, supported by the homebuilders. This entire project was really part of the support structure for the housing bubble that imploded just a bit of a year later. (Naturally, they're still spending the money...)

This evidence and much more in Pima County is literally as bad as it gets in terms of an untrustworthy election. The management and staff in Pima County have not been changed in any significant way since this fiasco of May 2006. And due to a variety of weird circumstances that would take too long to go into, the original paper ballots still exist and we believe will show the final evidence of hand manipulation. Examining those is a top priority but it must be done carefully and under proper forensic controls. And that will take cold hard cash and a lot of hard work.
Posted by Jim March

North Carolina Republicans File Lawsuit Against Electronic Voting Machine Failures

2010-10-29T15:42:00.015-07:00

The Brad Blog has just broken a story over the lawsuit the North Carolina Republican Party has filed against the State Board of Elections over the use and failures of the electronic touch screen voting machines. Amongst the allegations is the votes being cast for Republican candidates are being flipped to Democratic candidates instead. The Daily Comet also reported. Below is an excerpt from The Brad Blog on this breaking story:

"This afternoon, Legal Counsel for the North Carolina Republican State
Executive Committee sent a letter [PDF] to the NC State Board of Elections threatening legal action if their "demands" were not "immediately" met for taking a number of specific actions to mitigate reported touch-screen voting problems describes as "significantly more widespread than the NC GOP initially understood."

The GOP attorney, John E. Branch III writes that the voting system problems should have been addressed prior to the early voting period "and, to the extent they were not, the touch screen systems should have been been banned."

The problems in contention are related to reports of the state's ES&S iVotronic e-voting systems reportedly showing votes as flipping from Republicans to Democrats on the screen. The threat from the state GOP comes on the heels of complaints made last week in two different NC counties, Craven and New Hanover. Those reports were a switch from previous years when voters in dozens of states had reported votes flipping largely from Democratic to Republican. Branch charges that the party has "received word" that similar problems have emerged in "Mecklenburg...Randolph...Cumberland, Wilson, Pender, Forsyth, Lenoir and other
counties," which all similarly use the oft-failed, 100% unverifiable ES&S touch-screen voting machines. The same systems are also used in more than a
dozen other states...

In a sharply worded response [PDF] to Branch's letter late this afternoon, Gary O.
Bartlett, Executive Director of the State Board of Elections charges the GOP
letter was "apparently intended to elevate isolated occurrences with touch screen voting equipment into a crisis of confidence in the integrity of the election." Bartlett downplayed the concerns, as elections officials usually do, describing them as "no different than ones that must be addressed in every election."

North Carolina Election Integrity advocate Joyce McCloy, Director of NC Coalition for Verified Voting and editor of Voting News tells The BRAD BLOG that vote flipping in the state "has historically been from GOP to DEM". She also notes the acrimony between the state Republicans and the Board of Elections, explaining that many of the county BoEs have a Democratic majority and that the state's largest local e-voting vendor, Print Elect, who program the machines in a number of counties, is a "BIG donor to the DEM Governor".

In truth, however, there is no way to know how any touch-screen voting machine actually records a vote during an election. What is shown to voters on both the screen and the so-called "paper trail" printed out along side it (on many such systems) may not reflect the way the votes are actually recorded internally. To that end, there is no way to know that any vote has ever been recorded accurately, as per any voters intent, for any candidate or initiative on any ballot in any actual election using a touch-screen voting machine.

The ES&S iVotronics were indeed certified at the federal level, but by contractors selected and paid for by the vendor themselves and who tested the systems in secrecy. Subsequent independent analysis, by a number of states, have found "serious" flaws in the systems.
A study released by the state of Florida in 2007 found the systems were vulnerable to viral vote-flipping attacks. The state eventually decertified the systems after 18,000 votes were lost all together during a 2006 U.S. House special election decided in favor of the Republican by just 369 votes.

One of the "DEMANDS" listed in the GOP attorney's letter to the State Board of Elections is for an order to be issued requiring poll workers to keep a record of complaints (which Bartlett says they already do), but to include "the identify of the voter, the time the voter voted, the specific voting machine used by the voter, and the nature of the voter's complaint" in such incident reports.

Such a requirement, however, would likely result in the loss of privacy for that voter's secret ballot. That's just one more problem to add to the ever growing list of reasons why, as the GOP's Branch correctly noted, "the touch screen systems should have been been banned." In addition to North Carolina, the ES&S iVotronic is used, according to VerifiedVoting.org's database at polling places in Arkansas, Washington D.C., Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.

• 10/28/10 Letter from NC GOP to NC's State Board of Elections [PDF]• 10/28/10 Response to NC GOP from NC's State Board of Elections [PDF]"
Read the full story at The Brad Blog.

This is interesting news because in the past years, it has mainly been Democratic state or independent organizations that have been raising this concern on the lack of transparency and intergrity of electronic voting machines. It is GREAT news that a Republican organization is finally taking this issue of election fraud seriously. As AuditAZ has stated over and over again, election integrity is not about the Right or Left. It is about right and wrong. No democracy can ensue when votes cannot be counted accurately, transparently, and one vote per person.

Maricopa Judge Favors Misleading Testimony of Election Officials Over Election Law: Rules Partial Victory for Electors

2010-09-22T09:05:00.008-07:00

In a one-day mini trial September 10^th in the old Courthouse in Phoenix, Judge Oberbillig granted only partial victory to individual voters who filed suit August 16 in Maricopa County [Hess vs. Purcell] to compel the Maricopa Elections Recorder and Division of Elections to follow state law expressly written to protect and empower voters.

The biggest win is a reform of how Maricopa County conducts post-election hand audits. Until now they have insisted on picking which precincts to count before telling anybody what the precinct detail results are. This allowed them to game the audit: they could cheat however they want, and then once precincts were picked “un-cheat” those selected precincts. The races would always look right despite rampant alteration of results. The whole thrust of our case (still in progress!) is to deny them the right to cheat that they’ve insisted on. Whether or not they are in fact cheating is not even at issue in court – but the degree to which they’ve insisted on having that ability in this and many other areas (unsigned results tapes, failure to seal away a results tapes copy from their own ready access, telling pollworkers to keep precinct results secret on election night and many more) should cause concern among all voters of all political stripes.

The case was a Mandamus action, which asks a court to “mandate” that government officials follow statutory law. In most states a Mandamus action is designed to be a fast-track process for cases where the issues are relatively obvious. In Arizona, there is no discovery ahead of time, which makes the process fast and inexpensive for all concerned.

The court’s ruling favored misleading testimony given by election officials – failing to realize their interest in closing off the public from an insider-controlled process that maintains the status quo, restricts observation and escapes accountability by insisting that the public just trust the officials. In our opinion, the case was compromised by lack of time for preparation, as well as the judge’s lack of technical understanding that seemed to make him inclined to believe the election officials.

At trial, plaintiffs clearly prevailed several key points and were able to win recognition from the judge that observers should have “unobstructed” viewing of the central tabulator. However, the ruling fell short of full transparency for observers at the central count facility. The complaint alleged that Maricopa Elections office has been violating and ignoring state law for years. These Points “Interlock” To Make A Complete Election Fraud Recipe .

After seven different Arizona election cases that we have been involved in since 2005 and more elsewhere, we’ve seen that almost all judges see the world from the viewpoint of other government officials. They’re a team. The judge and the county recorder are on the same team. Democratic myth has judges interpreting the constitution and making government officials carry out their legal responsibilities. Judges sometimes see it as hassling one of "their guys".

Our job is to know this and rethink why in most of those seven cases we’ve had to go back and file additional motions such as a “Motion to amend finding of fact or law or for a new trial” or “Motion for reconsideration”. Sometimes the system needs a little pushing and prodding, all done by using and clarifying the facts. That’s what we intend to do.

We summarize the explanation of our thinking on points won and lost listed below:

We won the first flurry when the opposition surrendered point eight below. The County basically admitted that they been doing the hand count audits wrong since 2006 by not publicly committing the precinct results as required by law. This is on top of not having polltapes signed as required by law, a point that we won later in the trial.

1) (WON) The judge agreed that the results tape need to be signed by pollworkers at the end of the voting day.

2) (WON PART “A”, LOST “B” AND “C” SO FAR) This point involved observation of the election process itself, esp. at the central tabulator. This point broke down into three issues:

A. We couldn’t see the monitors for the central tabulator system. In one of our biggest wins in this case, the county is required to give us “unobstructed” viewing access to the monitors on computers used for vote tabulation. Somebody’s head in the way specifically doesn’t cut it, at least based on what the judge said in court. This will likely involve a second screen up that observers will be able to see at a normal distance, on a video signal splitter. This is similar to what Pima county has already done and was mandated years ago by the California Secretary of State.

B. We can’t see the cabling in there, and cannot bring our own laptops to probe for illicit use of WiFi or Blue-tooth data connections. And per the judge we still can’t. This was among the worst rulings and one we are strongly inclined to challenge. One of the most frustrating parts: the judge said that observer laptops would be seen by other observers over wireless and be mistaken for “false positives”. He didn’t understand that wireless laptops are normally set up as “receivers” as opposed to “transmitters” and that it’s only “transmitters” (routers or access points) we’d be looking for. The judge made a major technology blunder and introduced it as new evidence. This is despite the fact that a new WiFi network popped up running from a home-grade router after midnight on election night, traceable to within the election offices. The county wouldn’t search it out themselves or allow our observers to do so with their own laptop. Here is the legal issue: we have a legal right to observe the central tabulator system. They’ve put that system on a local area network, but the county is banned from broader connections to the county’s net or the general internet. That local net is part of the central tabulator system and if we can’t observe it, they can do whatever they want behind the scenes...and the scary part is, at least some hard evidence says they are – we saw a new wireless network based at the election processing center pop up after midnight on election eve with no explanation.

C. Per the county, no photography is allowed. The judge is fine with that. We’re not. We may or may not be able to do anything about it - for now.

3) (LOST) We asked the court to outlaw internet connections, and the county claimed there were none. We have a witness who worked for the agencyas an advanced pollworker (“troubleshooter” covering several precincts) in 2008 who examined one of the regional collection station laptops and saw the software on it needed to function with a cellular modem on the Alltel network “Axcess” which in turn is a straight shot to the internet. The county claimed they don’t do that; the judge believed them over our guy.

We suspect that at least in 2008, at least some of the 22 regional memory pack upload sites scattered across the county had poor quality or missing landlines for dial-up modems, so they went cellular as plan B. These regional upload centers are where pollworkers bring memory packs in to be uploaded to the central tabulator instead of driving them to downtown Phoenix.

We still have the opportunity to try and catch ‘em doing this in future elections and come back to this point. (Amusingly, the results upload process in this last primary took a LOT longer (by several hours) than in previous years. We suspect they realized we were looking for cellular modems and didn’t use ‘em, instead carting memory packs downtown in those locations with dysfunctional phone lines. There’s no proof there of course but...it’s interesting.)

4) (LOST) This was the uncertified software/BPS issue. Basically, the judge is taking the former secretary of state’s office’s opinion (Jan Brewer) that everything is hunky dory despite strong evidence otherwise. To be fair, we could have done this better with more time to prepare. We suspect our best bet is to drop this for now and gather more evidence, including trying to get copies of the databases via another state such as California where there are stronger public records laws.

For those just tuning in, here’s what’s going on: Sequoia withheld a major portion of their software from outside scrutiny by the federally approved test labs. That was just wrong, and one of four instances in which we can prove a voting system vendor withheld components from the labs. The lab scrutiny concept is the “fig leaf of sanity” on what is fundamentally insane: counting our vote with privately owned and internally secret software. Nobody in the elections business wants to admit the test lab process is being gamed. To hide the gamesmanship, Sequoia also declared as secret the contents of the election’s key data files by claiming there’s “software” in them, which may or may not be true – if true, for a number of reasons any such “software” would be illegal on it’s face as it cannot be confirmed as authentic and is too easy to modify in the field, breaking the federal certification rules at least twice.

5) (LOST) Maricopa County instructs the pollworkers to hide all details of the vote totals as they close out the polls. The judge was OK with that. This was his most obvious legal blunder. Neighboring Pinal county puts the vote totals on the front entrance of the door. Arizona revised statute 16-551 titled “Early election board; violation; classification” and you clearly mandates that pollworkers call out the vote at the end of the day. Now, there IS a rule calling for secrecy of vote totals until after 8:00pm, but it applies only to the early and mail-in votes – it’s guessed it, it refers to the operation of the early and mail-in voting boards, – NOT the polling place procedures which are still controlled by A.R.S. §§ 16-601. The judge decided to invent a new public policy based on the testimony of Karen Osborne: “don’t confuse the poor voters” with a precinct-vote-only total on election night. What he missed is that this election night report is a security measure – it gives us data from before the vote totals enter a thoroughly riggable electronic system. We WILL challenge this with the facts and law again.

6) (LOST) We challenged their policy of not putting a copy of the results tape (also known as the tally totals, tally list) in the “official returns envelope”. Several laws outright mandate this (ARS 16-615, 16-622 and 16-624) and the reason is clear: the official returns envelope is something the county election officials themselves can’t get at very easily, not without a lot of other eyeballs on the subject such as observers and/or a court order – see also the current statewide policy manual of May 2010 on page 203 for the “in case of challenge” concept. Larry Bahill is a former election director Pima 14 years and helped write the laws when he was minority leader in the state house. On the stand, Bahill clearly expressed why these statutes exist. We've confirmed that Cochise and Apache county does it correctly and we are checking others counties. You have to ask yourself this: what good is the “official returns envelope” if there’s no copy of a signed “results tape” in the envelope to be opened in case of a conflict? ARS 16-615, clearly shows the results tape also known as “tally list” going into “official returns envelope”.

7) (LOST) This was a challenge to their practice of transporting critical materials with just one person, banned in the Secretary of State’s policy manual (see pages 144 through 146). Also see ARS 16 608, 16-564, and many more in the election codes (title 16) that go into chain-of custody issues. The judge simply ignored the problem for reasons we don’t understand at all.

8) (WON before court started) Finally at point eight we win a big one. Just before the trial started the county stipulated they were wrong, a shrewd move to quietly remove one of our bigger claims: no more picking precincts to hand count until after they release precinct-detail vote totals as per the ARS 16-602. What they were doing was both crafty and disgusting: by learning which precincts would be counted before releasing details for each, they could rig the vote totals among all precincts at the central database and then once they learn what will be counted, un-rig those ones selectively (shifting any false totals assigned there to other, uncounted precincts). This was the single most blatant violation along with the unsigned results tape and they gave up before trial started. We have on video two different times that we protested on this point, on 11/05/08 and on 08/25/10 .

There’s no way around it: in key areas the judge either ignored the law, introduced his own incorrect technical “knowledge” or made outright policy decisions contrary to the law as written.

The scary part: this is the chief civil court judge in the Arizona Superior court, Maricopa County branch. However, he made us feel like we all did something good, he thanked us and then said too bad there weren’t any school children here watching and learning how democracy works. Yep, Jim and I were born at night, but it wasn’t last night. He did have us going for a while until we read the Judges minute entry – his final “official” written ruling.

Well, we will most likely challenge the lack of network connection observation (point 2B), the pollworker secrecy on vote totals (point 5) and the withholding of the copy of the results tapes from the official returns envelope (point 6). Possibly others but those are the most legally clear-cut and vital in terms of the overall security of the election process.

Again we state: These Points “Interlock” To Make A Complete Election Fraud Recipe. If observers aren’t allowed to see the precinct data either on election night (point 5 above) or after wards (8), and are blocked from seeing what goes on at the central tabulator (2) when it gets there on systems connected to the internet (3) on unknown, untested and illegal software (4) and the one reliable record available of precinct results (results tapes) isn’t signed (1) OR put in a sealed bag for later review (6), then it’s not a proper election. The only thing left to call it is “illegal” – and that’s what we will present to a judge. Again, and again and again..

We below know that elections are just too important.

We've all learned over many years that Election Integrity is not about "trust" or "credentials", it's about transparency and oversight and our *right*, as a citizen, to *know* that our favorite candidate -- or least favorite -- won or lost in *our* public elections. If you find yourself having to trust in someone -- anyone, whether it be an election officials, a Judge, a voting machine company, or an EI advocate -- rather than being able to see things for yourself, then something has gone terribly wrong. As it has been in AZ and in much of the nation.

To get a good overview of the problems with elections in Arizona, it’s important to read the resolution with background information written by attorney Bill Risner and passed by the AZ Democratic Party Jan 23rd 2010: This report tells it like it is from a seasoned attorney with 42 years of experience on how bad the election systems is, it’s a must read if you care about elections: http://tinyurl.com/27mw9jn

John Brakey and Jim March

This Case Is About Forcing Maricopa County Election To Follow The Law – Nothing More, Nothing Less

2010-09-08T03:21:00.003-07:00

Trial begins Friday, September 10th 2010 at 8:15 AM.

So Folks, please be with us in court.

HONORABLE JUDGE ROBERT OBERBILLIG

CIVIL PRESIDING JUDGE

OLD COURT HOUSE

COURTROOM 309, 3RD FLOOR

125 W. WASHINGTON,

PHOENIX, AZ 85003

So far the score is even: our request for a jury was canned, their motion for summary judgment has been ignored.

We’re even on points, no knockouts; round three is the main event.

This case is about forcing Maricopa County Election to follow the law – nothing more, nothing less. As such, most of the issues are going to be of limited benefit outside of Arizona, although the basic concept of this sort of suit (Mandamus action) is possible across the nation.

The one major except is the use of uncertified software - that points a finger through Maricopa County back to the state and national-level voting system certification processes. Arizona bars the use of voting system software that isn't federally certified to the standards promoted under HAVA. While those standards are weak, they still scared Sequoia into dodging them completely on a key part of their product line – a part that can subvert the outcome of elections and produce data that both Maricopa County and Sequoia want to bar us from having. This part of the case is at the cutting edge of election law issues – the intersection of the rights of election software producers to maintain trade secrets versus the right of the people to know how our vote is counted.

This part is complex, but in a nutshell: Sequoia created an entire section of their election system that they didn’t submit for testing like they should have – in direct violation of AZ law. They then needed to hide the extent of the security breach that resulted. To do THAT, they needed to make sure the data files altered by this illegal module don’t see the light of day and to make sure, they labeled the data files as “containing proprietary trade secret software”. Right. In the data. So we couldn’t get it via public records. Well that was a mistake, because there’s no possible way the data files could conform to the rules on “election software”, which isn’t supposed to change from election to election. The data files do. So it’s gonna be comical: if they still claim the data contains “software”, they admit to a class 5 felony for installing uncertified software (the data) on a certified system. If they blanch at the idea of confessing to a felony and call the data “just data”, we get it via public records and per our insider tipster (did I mention him yet?) we get to prove the program that produced the data damn well should have been certified. It’s the world’s dumbest catch-22 and they’ve already walked right into it. At stake is yet more proof that the voting system vendors have been systematically “gaming” the voting system test process nationally – and that is the big enchilada in exposing the insanity of the US election system.

Out of a total of four national voting system test labs ever approved, three have been thrown out for poor performance and let back in only with conditions. The two worst labs (Wyle and Ciber) are based in Huntsville AL where we hope they do better working on military aerospace flight systems for the Redstone National Arsenal, their main business. The one lab not thrown out (iBeta) obviously specializes in more important matters: they’re mainly a video game tester. We wish we were kidding. This is the fig leaf of sanity used to rationalize all electronic voting in the US: “don’t worry, the test labs are watching”. This is what we’re about to strike a blow against.

At the local level, Maricopa County has overreached. They've designed a complete election process tuned for fraud. Take a look at this one chain of destruction:

Soon after the hand
count audit bill
passed in late 2006
Maricopa stopped
having pollworkers sign
these tapes above.

· Pollworkers don't sign polltapes per illegal orders.

· Also per illegal orders, pollworkers don't put one set of polltapes (signed or otherwise) into the “official returns envelope” also know as the conflict envelope, a signed and sealed clear envelope that election officials can't get into without major effort such as a court order or a special election team monitored by multiple political parties.

· Pollworkers are illegally told not to allow observers to see the precinct totals after the polls close.

· Ballot materials are transported by just one person instead of the two required by law from opposite parties. You guessed it. Illegal.

· Operations at the central tabulator computer are barred from any functional observation of any sort. Even when observers spotted obviously illegal activity, the county's response was to deny the use of cameras to document it and then tampered with the evidence.

Specifically, what we saw was a Sequoia employee running a Sequoia-owned laptop connected to the central tabulator. The laptop in turn had a cellular modem plugged into it, allowing an easy cross-connection between the cellular internet connection and the central tabulator station. Internet and outside connections to the central tabulator are flat banned. The county's response to an immediate complaint was to deny the use of cameras to document it and then tampered with the evidence. This happened on 08/23/10, just one day before the election with over 230,000 ballots all ready counted.

As a final insult, the county rigged the selection of precincts for the 2% hand audit, refusing to publicly commit the results as per the law or anybody else what the individual precinct results were beforehand. They illegally released "combined results" only. This allowed them to rig the rest of the precincts to whatever degree they want. Once they get the list of precincts selected for a count, they could "un-hack" those in the central tabulator database of votes and shift any hacking in the selected precincts to the unselected keeping the previously reported "combined results" intact. Arizona's hand-count law (new in late 2006) was designed to block this sort of thing. Maricopa County subverted it. They purchased the Sequoia system soon after that law was passed and stopped having the polltapes signed.

We're going to take it back.

This is our fight for our rights. Join us. Popcorn is unfortunately not allowed but otherwise, this is going to be the best show in town.

****

The links below are for reports prepared as part of the California Secretary of State’s “Top-to-Bottom Review” of state-certified voting systems.

Their findings on the Sequoia voting system were very disturbing. These reports include a source code review team; a red attack team, which performed security tests on the Sequoia system’s hardware and software. Those teams have submitted separate reports on their findings.

Link to reports:

Security Evaluation of the Sequoia Voting System Public Report

https://www.sos.ca.gov/voting-systems/oversight/ttbr/red-sequoia.pdf

Review of the Documentation of the Sequoia Voting System:

http://www.sos.ca.gov/voting-systems/oversight/ttbr/sequoia-doc-final.pdf

Source Code Review of the Sequoia Voting System1:

http://www.sos.ca.gov/voting-systems/oversight/ttbr/sequoia-source-public-jul26.pdf

WITHDRAW AL OF APPROVAL OF SEQUOIA VOTING SYSTEMS, INC.,

(October 1, 2009 Revision)

https://www.sos.ca.gov/voting-systems/vendors/sequoia/sequoia-31012-revision-1209.pdf

For A You-Tube Blast To The Past, Maricopa Elections Finds 489 New Votes With 2nd Machine Recount in LD 20 September 2004.

Arizona, Maricopa County Elections Subverts the Hand Audit of Ballots Again

2010-09-01T11:12:00.000-07:00

This encounter took place the day after the Arizona primary election of Aug. 24th. The Maricopa elections office is having representatives from the three recognized political parties (Democratic, Republican and Libertarian) pick which 2% of the precincts to hand count at Sheriff Joe Arpaio's training center.

It didn't go quite as planned. Arizona law (ARS 16-602 paragraph B1) says "don't pick until you've announced what the results are for each precinct". This is vital - otherwise, the county can learn which precincts are going to be hand counted and just avoid rigging those. As you'll see, this legal/security violation is one of many currently under litigation. Taken together, these violations are the county election department's way of make a claim to be able to rig our vote any time they want, to whatever degree they want.

The lawsuit is about taking that "right" away from them.

The plaintiffs include a mix of voters and candidates from across the state, all affected if the 56% of the AZ vote in Maricopa is tampered with. Lead attorney is Brad Roach (Republican) backed by consulting attorney Bill Risner (Democrat and veteran of many election lawsuits in Pima County AZ) and also consulting is Libertarian attorney (and LP state chair) Michael Kielsky. Investigators are John Brakey (a Democrat who's the cameraman in the above clips) from AUDIT-AZ based in Tucson, and Jim March (Libertarian with the goatee) with AUDIT-AZ and a member of the Board of Directors of BlackBoxVoting.org

This is not the 1st time. Video clip from November 2008.

ON MONDAY 08/16/2010 EMERGENCY LAWSUIT FILED TO FORCE MARICOPA COUNTY ELECTIONS DEPARTMENT TO FOLLOW THE LAW TO PROTECT UPCOMING ELECTION RESULTS FROM ELECTION FRAUD

2010-08-22T17:56:00.000-07:00

Pre-election research over the last three weeks (based on the work of AUDIT AZ since 2006) discovered flagrant ILLEGAL violations of Arizona Election Laws [2]. The interlocking pattern of deliberate subversion of these security measures indicated below makes manipulation of vote counting easy, thus leaving elections vulnerable to undetectable fraud:

Arizona Election Law requires pollworkers to sign poll tapes at the conclusion of the ballot count.[3] Maricopa Elections has removed the signature line and changed pollworker manual to remove instructions for pollworkers to sign the poll tapes printed by the precinct electronic voting machines.[4]
Maricopa Elections Dept. has prevented properly credentialed party observers from observing the central tabulator systems.
Maricopa Elections Dept. has been connecting to and distributing election data over the Internet, in violation of Arizona law.[5]
Maricopa Elections Dept uses uncertified software on the certified voting systems. These are listed in AZ law specifically as felonies.[6]
Maricopa County blocks the public from knowing the vote totals at the precinct, instructing pollworkers to withhold results and prevents any observers from photographing the machine totals.[7] This is in open violation of AZ law. In contrast Pinal County posts the “results tape” on the front door of each polling location. [8]
Maricopa County ordered their pollworkers for all recent elections not to place the polltapes produced by the electronic voting machines (“results tapes” that should, by law, be signed) into the sealed “official returns envelope”. This sealed envelope is to be preserved in case of a challenge.
Maricopa Elections Dept. orders their pollworkers to return critical ballot materials (the “memory cartridge” electronic ballot boxes) from the polling places at the end of election day with one person only.[9] AZ law requires two persons to be assigned this task, one from each party.[10]
Maricopa Elections Dept reports election results, combining by mail-in, precinct and provisional voting. It is easier to tamper with election results either by the precinct or mail-in votes; tampering with both to make them more or less equivalent in terms of the percentage of fraud is difficult. If a candidate or issue wins a large majority in one type of voting and loses in the other, it’s a strong indicator of election tampering. Maricopa County combines all the data into one total to avoid raising any inquiries into discrepancies.

These Points “Interlock” To Make A Complete Election Fraud Recipe. If observers aren’t allowed to see the precinct data either on election night (point 5 above) or afterwards (8), and are blocked from seeing what goes on at the central tabulator (2) when it gets there on systems connected to the internet (3) on unknown, untested and illegal software (4) and the one reliable record available of precinct results (polltape) isn’t signed (1) OR put in a sealed bag for later review (6), then it’s not a proper election. The only thing left to call it is “illegal” – and that’s what we will present to a judge.

Arizona law has set the conditions for any full recount to be the most difficult in the nation: recounts are automatically generated only when there is a 1/10th of 1% or smaller difference in election totals between two candidates or issues. Florida is the only other state that is close to this standard, and their required percentage spreads are less stringent. A candidate challenge is impossible, even if the candidate pays for it. This is a recipe for un-auditable election fraud [11].

A pattern is emerging in AZ elections. In the case of the Maricopa LD20 (Sept 2004) election,[12] Election Director Karen Osborne testified that an 18% error rate on optical scanning machines was within the accepted error rate for those machines! This same election fiasco resulted in ballots being confiscated by the FBI and never properly investigated. Regarding the Pima County court case about the disputed RTA election, a court ordered examination of the stored poll tapes from the RTA election of May 2006 showed that 44% of them were missing or didn’t match the official results.[13]

The Maricopa County Elections Department is responsible for the counting 56% of the total votes of the state of Arizona. Thus, subversion of the elections in Maricopa could easily result in changing the election results for the entire state in a statewide election. Therefore, a group of concerned citizens from five AZ counties, as individuals in Arizona, have filed a request for an emergency hearing to ask the court to force remedies for these violations of the law before the upcoming election on the 24th of this month. This Special Action Relief request asks for an expedited hearing to assure the upcoming election will follow election law to assure accurate results in this and all future elections in the state of Arizona. Other relevant links: [14] [15]

Our complaint cites each violation, referring either to Arizona law or the May 2010 edition of the state-standard election procedures manual.[16]

Contacts:

John R Brakey

520-578-5678

Cell 520-339-2696 Email: AUDITAZ@cox.net

Jim March

916-370-0347

Email: 1.Jim.March@gmail.com

Pinal county posts their "results tape" on front door of polling location.

This is not the USSR where Joe Stalin said: It’s not who cast the vote that count; it’s who count the vote that counts!

Electors’ v Purcell - 11 Motion supplemented.pdf: http://tinyurl.com/263cc8f
Report by John Brakey and Jim March, “Unlawful Actions of the Maricopa County Elections – A Partial Compendium of Sins.” August 17, 2010: http://tinyurl.com/2ej5egk
AZ Secretary of State’s procedures manual see page 144 & 145. This publication is available at: http://www.azsos.gov/election/Electronic_Voting_System/2010/Manual.pdf
Maricopa County Elections Pollworkers Manual - see page 41: http://recorder.maricopa.gov/pdf/ebworker_trainingManual.pdf
“Election Management System Security” on page 87, items 6 and 7. This publication is available at: http://www.azsos.gov/election/Electronic_Voting_System/2010/Manual.pdf
The Sequoia Ballot Preparation/Printing System (BPS) – Does It Need To Be Certified by Tom Ryan, Ph.D. Arizona Citizens for Fair Elections: http://tinyurl.com/25wsqn6
Maricopa County Elections Pollworkers Manual see page 41: http://recorder.maricopa.gov/pdf/ebworker_trainingManual.pdf
Pinal county pollworker manual - see page 23: http://pinalcountyaz.gov/Departments/Elections/Documents/Downloads/Poll%20Worker%20Reference%20Manual.pdf
Maricopa County Elections Pollworkers Manual - see page 42: http://recorder.maricopa.gov/pdf/ebworker_trainingManual.pdf
AZ Secretary of State’s procedures manual - see page 144. http://www.azsos.gov/election/Electronic_Voting_System/2010/Manual.pdf
To get a good overview of the problems with elections in Arizona, it’s important to read the resolution with background information written by attorney Bill Risner and passed by the AZ Democratic Party Jan 23rd 2010: This report tells it like it is from a seasoned attorney with 42 years of experience on how bad the election systems is, it’s a must read if you care about elections: http://tinyurl.com/27mw9jn
District 20 Recount Scandal Factsheet from AUDIT AZ: http://tinyurl.com/2bea8sh
The BRAD BLOG! 'EXCLUSIVE: Poll Tapes, Other Evidence Discovered Missing in Long-Disputed, 'Fixed' Arizona Election' at: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7946
ELECTORS v PURCELL-12 REQUEST FOR EXPEDITED HEARING; http://tinyurl.com/2fkbbr4
ELECTORS V PURCELL -13 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE; http://tinyurl.com/26ryqcg
AZ Secretary of State’s procedures manual: http://www.azsos.gov/election/Electronic_Voting_System/2010/Manual.pdf

Emergency Lawsuit Filed - Maricopa Elections

2010-08-18T07:57:00.006-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Aug. 17^th 2010

EMERGENCY LAWSUIT FILED TO FORCE MARICOPA COUNTY, ARIZONA ELECTIONS DEPARTMENT TO FOLLOW THE LAW TO PROTECT UPCOMING ELECTION RESULTS FROM ELECTION FRAUD[[1]].

Pre-election research over the last three weeks (based on the work of AUDIT AZ since 2006) discovered flagrant ILLEGAL violations of Arizona Election Laws [[2]]. The interlocking pattern of deliberate subversion of these security measures indicated below makes manipulation of vote counting easy, thus leaving elections vulnerable to undetectable fraud:

1) Arizona Election Law requires pollworkers to sign poll tapes at the conclusion of the ballot count.[[3]] Maricopa Elections has removed the signature line and changed pollworker manual to remove instructions for pollworkers to sign the poll tapes printed by the precinct electronic voting machines.[[4]]

2) Maricopa Elections Dept. has prevented properly credentialed party observers from observing the central tabulator systems.

3) Maricopa Elections Dept. has been connecting to and distributing election data over the Internet, in violation of Arizona law.[[5]]

4) Maricopa Elections Dept uses uncertified software on the certified voting systems. These are listed in AZ law specifically as felonies.[[6]]

5) Maricopa County blocks the public from knowing the vote totals at the precinct, instructing pollworkers to withhold results and prevents any observers from photographing the machine totals.[[7]] This is in open violation of AZ law. In contrast Pinal County posts the “results tape” on the front door of each polling location. [[8]]

6) Maricopa County ordered their pollworkers for all recent elections not to place the polltapes produced by the electronic voting machines (“results tapes” that should, by law, be signed) into the sealed “official returns envelope”. This sealed envelope is to be preserved in case of a challenge.

7) Maricopa Elections Dept. orders their pollworkers to return critical ballot materials (the “memory cartridge” electronic ballot boxes) from the polling places at the end of election day with one person only.[[9]] AZ law requires two persons to be assigned this task, one from each party.[10]

8) Maricopa Elections Dept reports election results, combining by mail-in, precinct and provisional voting. It is easier to tamper with election results either by the precinct or mail-in votes; tampering with both to make them more or less equivalent in terms of the percentage of fraud is difficult. If a candidate or issue wins a large majority in one type of voting and loses in the other, it’s a strong indicator of election tampering. Maricopa County combines all the data into one total to avoid raising any inquiries into discrepancies.

These Points “Interlock” To Make A Complete Election Fraud Recipe. If observers aren’t allowed to see the precinct data either on election night (point 5 above) or afterwards (8), and are blocked from seeing what goes on at the central tabulator (2) when it gets there on systems connected to the internet (3) on unknown, untested and illegal software (4) and the one reliable record available of precinct results (polltape) isn’t signed (1) OR put in a sealed bag for later review (6), then it’s not a proper election. The only thing left to call it is “illegal” – and that’s what we will present to a judge.

Arizona law has set the conditions for any full recount to be the most difficult in the nation: recounts are automatically generated only when there is a 1/10^th of 1% or smaller difference in election totals between two candidates or issues. Florida is the only other state that is close to this standard, and their required percentage spreads are less stringent. A candidate challenge is impossible, even if the candidate pays for it. This is a recipe for un-auditable election fraud [[11]].

A pattern is emerging in AZ elections. In the case of the Maricopa LD20 (Sept 2004) election,[[12]] Election Director Karen Osborne testified that an 18% error rate on optical scanning machines was within the accepted error rate for those machines! This same election fiasco resulted in ballots being confiscated by the FBI and never properly investigated. Regarding the Pima County court case about the disputed RTA election, a court ordered examination of the stored poll tapes from the RTA election of May 2006 showed that 44% of them were missing or didn’t match the official results.[[13]]

Our complaint cites each violation, referring either to Arizona law or the May 2010 edition of the state-standard election procedures manual.[[16]]

Contacts:

John R Brakey

520-578-5678

Cell 520-339-2696 Email: AUDITAZ@cox.net

Jim March

916-370-0347

Email: 1.Jim.March@gmail.com

[1] Electors’ v Purcell - 11 Motion supplemented.pdf: http://tinyurl.com/263cc8f

[2] Report by John Brakey and Jim March, “Unlawful Actions of the Maricopa County Elections – A Partial Compendium of Sins.” August 17, 2010: http://tinyurl.com/2ej5egk

[3] AZ Secretary of State’s procedures manual see page 144 & 145. This publication is available at: http://www.azsos.gov/election/Electronic_Voting_System/2010/Manual.pdf

[4] Maricopa County Elections Pollworkers Manual - see page 41: http://recorder.maricopa.gov/pdf/ebworker_trainingManual.pdf

[5] “Election Management System Security” on page 87, items 6 and 7. This publication is available at: http://www.azsos.gov/election/Electronic_Voting_System/2010/Manual.pdf

[6] The Sequoia Ballot Preparation/Printing System (BPS) – Does It Need To Be Certified by Tom Ryan, Ph.D. Arizona Citizens for Fair Elections: http://tinyurl.com/25wsqn6

[7] Maricopa County Elections Pollworkers Manual see page 41: http://recorder.maricopa.gov/pdf/ebworker_trainingManual.pdf

[8] Pinal county pollworker manual - see page 23: http://pinalcountyaz.gov/Departments/Elections/Documents/Downloads/Poll%20Worker%20Reference%20Manual.pdf

[9] Maricopa County Elections Pollworkers Manual - see page 42: http://recorder.maricopa.gov/pdf/ebworker_trainingManual.pdf

[10] AZ Secretary of State’s procedures manual - see page 144. http://www.azsos.gov/election/Electronic_Voting_System/2010/Manual.pdf

[11] To get a good overview of the problems with elections in Arizona, it’s important to read the resolution with background information written by attorney Bill Risner and passed by the AZ Democratic Party Jan 23^rd 2010: This report tells it like it is from a seasoned attorney with 42 years of experience on how bad the election systems is, it’s a must read if you care about elections: http://tinyurl.com/27mw9jn

[12] District 20 Recount Scandal Factsheet from AUDIT AZ: http://tinyurl.com/2bea8sh

[13] The BRAD BLOG! 'EXCLUSIVE: Poll Tapes, Other Evidence Discovered Missing in Long-Disputed, 'Fixed' Arizona Election' at: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7946

[14] ELECTORS v PURCELL-12 REQUEST FOR EXPEDITED HEARING; http://tinyurl.com/2fkbbr4

[15] ELECTORS V PURCELL -13 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE; http://tinyurl.com/26ryqcg

[16] AZ Secretary of State’s procedures manual: http://www.azsos.gov/election/Electronic_Voting_System/2010/Manual.pdf

-----------------------

John Brakey, co-founder of AUDIT-AZ (Americans United for Democracy, Integrity, and Transparency in Elections, Arizona) & Co-Coordinator of Investigations Velvet Revolution www.velvetrevolution.us

My sites with Arizona Election Integrity News www.audit-az.blogspot.com and SEEKING JUSTICE www.seekingjusticeauditaz.blogspot.com

Tucson, AZ, 85706 Phone 520-578-5678 cell 520 339 2696 John’s AUDITAZ@cox.net

__._,_

__,_._,___

'Arti-factual' Election Results in SC

2010-06-16T15:20:00.002-07:00

From the BradBlog:

'Arti-factual' Election Results in SC; And a Brief History of Recent ES&S E-Vote Failure in Advance of Thursday's Democratic Primary Protest Hearing

JUST IN: Protest hearing to be streamed LIVE Thursday @ 3pm ET...

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7899#more-7899

Posted By Brad Friedman On 16th June 2010 @ 19:54

First, some very good news just in: The hearing for the protest to the results of last week's SC Democratic U.S. Senate primary will be streamed ^[1] live on Thursday at 3pm ET via Live.VicRawl.com ^[2].
The protest will be heard by the Executive Board of the South Carolina Democratic Party to consider Judge Vic Rawl's protest to last week's bizarre election.
Second, I'm happy to say that I have finally been able to make contact with the campaign of former state legislator and Circuit Court Judge Vic Rawl ^[3]. I had a somewhat lengthy conversation earlier today with his campaign manager Walter Ludwig, and continue to be happy to report that it seems they have a very good grasp of the issues at stake --- in relation to the horrific ES&S e-voting system --- in their challenge to the 100% unverifiable election of Alvin Greene in SC's recent Democratic U.S. Senate primary race.
As I noted last night ^[4], in discussing Rawl's interview yesterday on Fox, given the sharp learning curve for those unfamiliar with the complex issues involved with e-voting and Election Integrity, they've done an excellent job of getting up to speed, at least inasmuch as possible in the short time they've been forced to become "experts" on the topic.
That, of course, is just another pitfall of using insanely complicated rocket science instead of common sense and eyeballs to add one plus one plus one in our current electoral system. Most candidates with questions about their election results simply can't afford the resources and computer scientists and time needed for the forensic investigation of these systems --- that's if they're even allowed access to the often proprietary trade-secret hardware and software --- following an election and prior to the date by which they must file and argue a legal challenge. That, as opposed to simply examining paper ballots and chain of custody procedures, as would be the case with sane, paper ballot elections.
Ludwig seems to understand just how bad the voting system is that voters were forced to use in SC's recent election, the same system used in dozens of other states despite The BRAD BLOG's ^[5] best efforts over the past six years to warn of the dangers.
"These machines are incredibly frail and subject to manipulation. They don't work very well." In short, Ludwig told me, "They're crap."...

'Arti-factual' Results
The case he'll present tomorrow to the state Democratic Party's executive committee does not include evidence of direct manipulation, but rather, a three-pronged case combining the known problems and historical failures of the ES&S iVotronic system, in combination with the statistical and political improbabilities that Greene, an unemployed, unknown candidate who did no campaigning whatsoever, could have legitimately received some 60% of the total vote.
"The results appear to be artificial, or 'arti-factual', as some people might say. As we've done our analysis, it just doesn't hold up," said Ludwig.
Speaking to the oft-cited fallacy being forwarded in the media that both candidates were equally unknown entities, who each did little or no campaigning, Ludwig re-iterated what Rawl has been saying in his recent media appearances ^[6]. "There is an inherent presumption that these were equivalent campaigns. We campaigned, the other guy just simply didn't."
Rawl has said he'd raised hundreds of thousands of dollars during the campaign, appeared at some 80 campaign events all across the state since March 1st, and had hundreds of campaign volunteers. By way of contrast, Greene didn't have a campaign website, had no volunteers, no campaign literature, and doesn't even own a computer or a cell phone.
I pointed Ludwig to a number of academic findings in regard to the state's Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems which he hadn't yet known of, and discussed my concerns about the sensitive memory cards used in those systems for both programming the ballot and recording votes.
As manipulation of the memory cards are one of the direct ways to potentially manipulate the machines, I've been very troubled by reports received by the campaign that some pollworkers were said to have been repeatedly accessing and swapping out memory cards throughout Election Day. Ludwig says that the cards have yet to be examined or quarantined. I strongly advised, as I have since first reporting this story ^[7], that someone get a court order for that immediately.

Read more at the BradBlog @ http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7899#more-7899

Elephant in the Room: Election Integrity in Arizona

2010-05-10T15:33:00.002-07:00

This last Saturday, Jim March and John Brakey did radio show called “GNOSIS” on Tucson Jolt radio 1330AM which was base on the blog article “When It Comes To Election Integrity In Arizona There’s Nothing Like Having An “Elephant in the Room” Or At Least A "Big Donkey".”

Here is the link if you want to download and hear the show:

Also here is link to court order about our records request to get the polltapes:

RTA Polltape Trial Monday March 22 To Enforce Transparent Release of Pima County Public Election Records

2010-03-19T21:08:00.010-07:00

Stand STRONG for Transparency!

ATTEND COURT TRIAL

Monday March 22

1:30-4:30pm

Pima County Democratic Party v. Ford

Re: Public records request for polltapes and election records from May 2006 RTA election

Judge Ted Borek's Courtroom

Fifth Floor, Room 583

Hear Ye, Hear Ye Election Integrity Supporters,

This is a wake-up call..... Please Join Us Whenever You Can During the Trial....It's That Important!.....

.......Make a Strong Statement.....Be There.....

While we've all been working on issues and candidates, feeling battle scarred from fighting desperate battles in the state legislature to keep our schools afloat, our children healthy and secure, while worrying about being fleeced by the banksters and foreclosed upon, stressed out by fear of losing our jo

bs and how to pay for spiraling cost of health care, the request for polltapes and public records for the RTA election filed over a year ago now has until now been hidden below the radar, stymied in court, buried by other pressing issues. Judge Ted Borek, on Thursday, May 18, set a trial for Monday March 22, that is expected to lead to a court-ordered transparent process for copying these vital records.

The truth is Pima County has used every available legal tactic to mount a determined and expensive campaign to stomp on our rights, to stall. denyand escalate costs on what started out as a straightforward agreement to set a time and a fair procedure for following the law by allowing copying of public records. This time, Pima County has spent over $150,000 and counting to hire two private law firms to handle this case. This is on top of the million dollars Pima County spent to deny release of electronic election databases. Enough already! We won't quit.

This stall tactic is an attempt to deny the public the right to obtain copies of the records of a public election, a right enshrined in Arizona law. As citizens, we must fight to exercise this right because it is the only way we can find out if our votes really count. As you know, transparency and open government is the foundation of democracy. The right of the public to know is a check against erosion of our democracy by the same powerf

ul interests that work to undermine the public interest in Congress, in the courts, in our legislatures, in the media and in local government.

Polltapes and Ballot Certification sheets are integral to the audit of all future elections.

The database pointed us to the need to inspect polltapes. From an examination of the databases for the 2006 special election, we learned that 85 separate precinct memory cards were at least loaded once to as many as 6 times starting at 10:15 pm election night. No backup of the database was made election night Tuesday as always had been done. In fact no backup was made until Friday at 5:01 pm. Why you may ask? Well, that is simple; they didn’t want to leave any evidence of wrongdoing. To have a flip, then you have to have a flop, no backup made, no evidence of misdeeds, except the database shows the time when the reloads were done and how many times it was done.

Bill Risner in his court filing of March 18th states:

“… We can be reasonably sure that the defendants haven’t spent $150,000 and counting on attorneys fees because of a dispute over a couple of hundred dollars in copy charges. The court needs to understand that the plaintiff has made a public allegation that the poll tapes may reveal that they were fraudulently programmed by the county’s computer operators. This court will never be asked to determine whether that allegation is true. On the other hand, the defendants are asking this court to issue an order permitting the suspect to take the evidence out of the boxes and back to the privacy of their office. That request is central to their case and central to the plaintiff’s objection. Since the court will frame its own order the wisdom of the most secure procedure is important”

“In the era of governmental frugality the expense of the defendants’ resistance to an examination and copying of records they acknowledge are public records is mind boggling. Within the past month, three individual citizens copied all of the poll tapes and yellow sheets from the recent November 3, 2009 Pima county election for a total charge of $12.40. The examination of the poll tapes is a routine matter.

Bryan Crane’s testimony is a fact that defendant Beth Ford does not dispute. The ownership by Pima County of a “cropscanner” machine, an infamous hack tool that can be used to fraudulently program precinct optical scan memory cards is a fact. Pima County purchased the machine. Bryan Crane practiced with the machine immediately upon learning that it could be used to rig elections. Those are facts that are not in dispute.

The plaintiff is not attempting to “re-visit” issues addressed by the Attorney General or Judge Harrington. The Attorney General did not look at any poll tapes nor did his office express an opinion on any poll tapes. Judge Harrington simply refused to accept jurisdiction. The documents attached to Beth Ford’s objection do not mention the poll tapes.

The Democratic Party has chosen to examine the poll tapes. That choice is a permissible choice. Since we have a legal right to examine the original and to obtain copies, we wan tthe process to be one that ensures that the tapes are original tapes.

The Democratic Party is not aware of any other election department in the country that owns a “cropscanner election rigging tool.” Such ownership and possession is a very big deal. That infamous and undeniable fact is not the sole reason that the plaintiff wants copies of the poll tapes.

Those poll tapes are very valuable and, indeed invaluable in understanding the electronic database and the canvas. For example, plaintiff’s examination of the poll tapes from the most recent [City] election has revealed serious violations of state and federal law that the Democratic Party is now addressing. Those violations deeply affect the integrity of our local elections and were uncovered only because copies were obtained of the poll tapes and the yellow sheets.

“Plaintiff has previously noted that John Moffatt, the person who Beth Ford has identified in her case disclosure as the person who developed the plan to remove the poll tapes from Iron Mountain, directly violated a prior court order and personally took the Democratic Party’s electronic database out of the Clerk of the Superior Court’s vault. He, therefore, has a specific track record of violating specific court ordered security. His past conduct alerts us and should alert the court to the risk of permitting the original public records to leave the custody of Iron Mountain where they are under court protection.”

The court should take judicial notice of the prior sworn testimony by plaintiff as permitted by Arizona case law that was previously cited and has not been challenged by defendant.”

Fatally Flawed Second Showing at Crossroads 11/16/09 @ 7 pm

2009-11-12T12:24:00.003-07:00

Voices of Opposition on the Big Screen!

Presenting Fatally Flawed.

It's 2009. Do you know where your vote is?

Arizona Daily Star headline, Wednesday 11/11/09: 109 votes found after election's "final tally"

FATALLY FLAWED

When: Monday, November 16, at 7 pm

Where: Crossroads 6 Grand Cinemas, 4811 E. Grant Road, Tucson, AZ

Admission: $3/person at the door

"Fatally Flawed" is a true detective story about the RTA vote, the two billion dollar bond transportation measure passed under suspicious circumstances in Pima County in 2006. This shocking film documents the long-standing fight to re-examine the ballots, which has involved the Democratic and Libertarian Parties as well as high-level state and county officials. Everyone needs to understand the questions raised about election integrity in Pima County.

FATALLY FLAWED, The Movie

2009-09-12T19:09:00.008-07:00

Go here for current updates:
http://audit-az.blogspot.com/

EIC Meeting: 7 pm on Wed., June 17th, 2009

2009-06-15T14:08:00.001-07:00

AGENDA

Pima County Democratic Party EIC Meeting

June 17, 2009

7pm

Headquarters

Mickey Duniho will update us on the Meetings of the Pima County Election Integrity Commission

Donna Branch-Gilby is replacing Paul Eckerstrom as the Democratic Representative to the Commission.

Priority # 1 Recruiting election board members and volunteer observers for the City Election
Looking ahead to 2010--Recruiting poll workers
Develop a Reference Manual
Putting political pressure through a letter-writing campaign on the County Supervisors to increase transparency, adhere to predictable schedules for county elections.
Preserve hand count audit gains by lobbying the legislature
Status of U.S. Electoral History Power Point Presentation
The DOJ has rejected Georgia's system of using Social Security numbers and driver's license data to check whether prospective voters are citizens, a process that was the subject of a federal lawsuit before the November election. Potential impact on Arizona's Prop. 200
The Supreme Court later this year will rule on the constitutionality of Sec.5 of the the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The ruling could potentially weaken the Voting Rights Act. Arizona would be in a position of needing to police its own voter rights laws. The Secretary of State is not equipped to do this. Need for an independent nonpartisan preclearance commission.

I look forward to discussing these issues with you on Wednesday. Even though it is summer vacation time, we need to do the ground work that will prepare us for the tasks ahead.

Thanks,

Sandra Spangler

Chair, Election Integrity Committee

Pima County Democratic Party

RTA Election Handcount Underway

2009-04-08T08:16:00.003-07:00

The big question is, are they even the same ballots?

Bev Harris analyzes the issues and outlines them here.

According to the Arizona Daily Star:

"Attorney General Terry Goddard's office is counting the ballots as part of his criminal investigation into allegations the votes were flipped to show the opposite of voters' wishes.

Each and every ballot is being counted, though the count is going slower than expected, Goddard said Tuesday. Initially, his office thought the counters could get through 16 boxes of ballots per day, but on Monday they completed just five boxes, he said. Goddard is bringing in more people to count the ballots, and now hopes to reach a 12-box daily average.

Most of the 105 boxes moved from secured storage in Pima County to the Maricopa County Elections Division probably contain ballots, said Anne Hilby, spokeswoman for Goddard. The rest likely contain other election-related materials, she said."

The problem here is: 1) Terry Goddard hasn't exactly been a proponent of election integrity as he repeatedly refused to do his job in investigating allegations of fraud, (even after receiving a signed affidavit) and even went so far as to say he had no authority and 2) Chain of custody has been broken - why move the ballots from a secured location in Pima to Maricopa under insecure, nontransparent circumstances, having a private meeting with the judge to seize them, and then counting them in the county with the worst election integrity issues instead of where the process could be more transparent and tightly controlled? It makes it pretty easy to switch out ballots.

This count will resolve NOTHING, regardless of the outcome, because the process is as insecure as when the Pima Elections Department had Access hooked up to the election machines giving easy access to flip the votes. It is easy to suspect this is all just another pivot, smoke and mirrors tactic to make the public think their elections are secure as election fraud will continue in Arizona.

Of course Goddard knows this, but keeping the public in the dark is what they do best.

Join Us for Monday's Preview of Fatally Flawed

2009-03-05T20:51:00.002-07:00

When : Monday, March 9th at 7pm

Where: University of Arizona's Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering Building (North East Corner of Speedway & Mountain, Free Parking on the East side of the building)

Free & Open to the Public

Fatally Flawed, a newly-produced local documentary that chronicles the legal challenge to the May 2006 Pima County election which created the Regional Transportation Authority and generated a lawsuit resulting in the largest release of election data in US history, will be previewed for the public Monday, March 9, 2009 @ 7 pm.

An alliance of the Tucson Chapter of Democracy for America and Voices of Opposition will host the presentation on Monday, 7 pm, at the University of Arizona's Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (AME) building on the northeast corner of Speedway and Mountain. Free to the public.

The issues involving the apparent lack of integrity of the electoral process in Pima County and Arizona and the almost three-year-old challenge to release of the RTA election ballots for a hand count remain headline news to this day. While Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard has indicated that the recount process is not over, questions remain over the whereabouts of the ballots and the procedure to be used to count them.

In addition to the screening, principal investigators of the election will be on hand to provide insight on the current issues related to the controversy.

Recently, members of the local Democratic Party's Election Integrity Committee offered individual opinions on the matter.

“The Democratic Party [and all other political parties] has a statutory right and a critical role in our state system to track and see what’s going on with our elections,” said Attorney Bill Risner, who is involved with the legal investigation into the validity of the May 2006 Regional Transportation Authority Election.

"Elections and election processes should not be secret, and when they are it's a strong sign of either outright fraud or an agency fearful of having its own incompetence exposed,” insisted Jim March, board member of Blackboxvoting.org and local election investigator. “True security always lies in openness.”

Michael Duniho, former election inspector in Maryland and computer analyst concluded, "It seems clear that our system of 'one-man, one-vote' only works if a large number of people monitor the election, to be sure it is honest."

From the words of those who controlled the election and others who have investigated the election, Fatally Flawed makes the case that:

1. Acts of omission and commission occurred before, during and after the May 2006 election by entrusted officials, constituting the charges of election fraud.

2. To date, government officials at the local and state levels have acted to thwart the resolution of these accusations of a rigged election.

3. Only a prompt, fair, and transparent hand counting of the May 2005 ballots will remove the cloud over the creation of the RTA.

For further information, call 520-622-6419
For a list of future Monday Night events, check www.voicesofopposition.com

Urgent: Appear in Court Tomorrow to Help Count the Votes!

2009-01-13T10:10:00.002-07:00

Attend Hearing: 10AM Wednesday, January 14th
Pima County Superior Court 110 West Congress, 6th Floor
Judge Charles Harrington Court room- 4th floor, room 472.

Your Presence In Court Will Help Pima County Democratic Party Attorney Bill Risner Make the Case That the RTA Ballots Must Be Preserved.

Let the Judge know it matters to you that your votes will be counted transparently!

The fate of the RTA Ballots may be determined at this hearing!

This case IS about the obligation of public oversight of elections central to maintaining a Constitutional Democracy.

The Pima County Democratic Party position is that the Court does possess the legal and constitutional power to weigh the evidence brought forward by the Democratic Party that tampering did occur in the May 2006 RTA election and to order that the ballots be recounted under strict court supervision as the ONLY method that would confirm proof of election fraud.

This case is NOT about a frivolous election challenge that the law requires to be filed within 5 days of election certification. The Pima County Treasurer filed this case to ask the Court to resolve the issue whether the County Treasurer must continue to preserve the ballots or have the ballots destroyed according to the law after 22 months.

The case IS about upholding the rights of Arizonans to have ballots counted transparently!

The Democratic Party filed Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIA) that uncovered evidence pointing to electronic election manipulation. Detection of evidence concealed in election data generated by computers requires lengthy forensic analysis that could not have be done in time to satisfy the narrow constraints of existing election law. Much of the evidence surfaced as a result of the Pima County Democratic Party vs. the Board of Supervisors public information lawsuit. The purpose is to persuade the Court to exercise its power to protect voters’ rights.

The facts show that the intent of free, fair and transparent elections guaranteed by the Arizona Constitution are jeopardized by electronic elections when votes are counted secretly. Electronic elections require transparency and accountability precisely because it is so easy to manipulate and cover up evidence. The Court could be persuaded that current law prohibits a judicial remedy, therefore the Court has no power to intervene in what amounts to an election contest. Such a ruling would ignore the larger threat to democracy itself posed by computerized elections and set a damaging precedent that will undermine the rights of all Arizona citizens.

============

Terry Goddard Town Hall Oct. 16, 7pm

2008-10-14T13:46:00.013-07:00

Dear Friends;

The same computer operator, the same election director and the same management structure exists today as on the RTA election day. Counting the ballots is not just an issue of "uncertainty on the outcome" of the RTA as it is on the integrity of our elections. Can we be sure of any election?

The national impact of a rigged computer election is huge as the entire computer system nationally is vulnerable to similar rigging. Nonetheless, that is not our central issue. Our central issue is the integrity of Arizona elections. Goddard receives a check from the people of Arizona every payday. He is paid to carry out his oath of office and not to conceal crimes against the people. It is the people's interest and not his personal political future that must be dominant. The consensus of opinion in Pima County is that we need an answer. When the computer operator says he rigged the election on the instruction of his bosses that is fraud and the precise type of fraud that Goddard must investigate.

Join us at a Town Hall with Terry Goddard Thursday, Oct. 16, 7pm at the Tucson Ward 2 Office, 7575 E. Speedway.

Let’s demand he exercise his authority to count the RTA ballots and end the uncertainty about the outcome of the election.

Attorney General Terry Goddard has continued to ignore the calls from the public, the media and even the Pima County Board of Supervisors to count the paper ballots from the contested RTA Tax Increase Proposition.

The subject of the town hall is “Crime and Fraud Prevention.” Let’s fill the room with people who care about election fraud and let Goddard know we want to stop the madness and count the votes before the November 4 election. Can you imagine the impact this would have nationally if the ballots show the election was hacked?

Also present will be County Attorney Barbara LaWall, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, Tucson Police Captain Carla Johnson and Rodney Glassman.

JOIN BILL RISNER, ARLENE LEAF, JIM MARCH, JOHN BRAKEY, MIKE HAYES, MANY OTHERS THURSDAY, 7PM AT THE WARD 2 OFFICE. LET’S SEND GODDARD ONE SIMPLE MESSAGE: COUNT THE VOTES!

John R. Brakey, 520-578-5678

Links to more information and videos:

4/21/08 must see TV! By Bud Foster KOLD TV: 2 minutes long:

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=fqlefIQVkrk

Facts learned in the Election integrity lawsuit against Pima County: From deposition of State Election Director Joseph Kanefield: “Who Checks the Vote Counters?” NOT the Secretary of State! Not the Attorney General! Not the County!

“It’s The Ballot Count, Stupid! Florida Déjà Vu in Arizona” By Denis Campbell • Oct 13th, 2008 • Category: Lead Story (Reprise article since the New York Times now sees this as an election issue…) Millions will soon begin early voting in the General Election. Nearly half of all US counties will use Diebold GEMS tabulation system.

Election officials have the ability to print election summary reports [...]:

http://www.vadimuspost.com/it%E2%80%99s-the-ballot-count-stupid/

Video Pima County RTA Card Reader - 16 min - Jul 21, 2008 In the RTA election of May 16, 2006 more than 70 optical scanners failed on Election Day at various precincts. Election day:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8186883351933387074

“Pima Rig Evidence Whitewashed by AZ Atty General” July 14, 2008 Bill Risner is asking the Arizona Attorney General to take one simple step to find out whether the 2006 RTA election was rigged: Count The Ballots. AUDIT-AZ:

www.electiondefensealliance.org/Pima_whitewash

Deposition of Bryan Crane by attorney Bill Risner, on vote flipping, Pima County Election Trial - 11 minutes:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=208062947245666793

December 5, 2007: The testimony of James Barry is mainly to illustrate that the Pima County government had a deep, vested, and motivated interest in the outcome of the RTA election. They County spent $75,000 on Barry's services alone in analyzing prior bond and tax elections, by precinct, creating a plan to divide up projects based on possible electoral trouble areas, and creating a campaign plan. He also was paid $13,000 by the Yes for RTA Committee.

11 minutes:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1282511168148207359

Link to other Videos can be found here:

http://www.fatallyflawedthemovie.com/pages/clips.html

Press Conference TODAY

2008-09-11T08:31:00.004-07:00

What: PRESS CONFERENCE

When: Thursday, September 11, 2008 2:30 pm promptly

Where: Valdez Main Library Downtown, Downstairs meeting room

Larry Bahill, Pima County Elections Director from 1981 to 1993, will brief the press on how an Election Department should be run and will comment on current problems. The current Election Director, Brad Nelson, has falsely blamed the delay of election results on a supposed Democratic Party demand to avoid the use of electronic transmission of results from precincts to the central count facility. Mr. Bahill will describe how his department produced early results without modems. He will also discuss the need for election observers to ensure election transparency and the need for thorough documentation of chain of custody tracking of ballots. Mr. Nelson instigated the false arrest of John Brakey at the hand-count audit session on the 6th of September because Mr. Brakey was asking questions about incorrect, broken, and missing security seals on ballot bags, and Mr. Nelson is on record as saying that he himself has done nothing to document or trace security seal problems – thus rendering the legally required, essential random audit of the computer’s vote count nearly useless.

In addition to Mr. Bahill, other speakers will include Brad Roach (candidate for County Attorney), Donna Branch-Gilby (candidate for Board of Supervisors), Richard Harding (retired senior employee of the Pima County Election Department), David Euchner Esq (chair of the Pima County Libertarian Party), and Bill Risner (Pima County Democratic Party Attorney who won a landmark lawsuit against Pima County about election transparency).

This non-partisan Press Conference is supported by Democratic Party, Libertarian Party, Independents, and notable Republicans (not the party) a growing number of elected officials and others involved in the elections process, including:

Bill Risner, Esq.,
Jim March, Computer Expert, BBV,
Randy Graf,
Donna Branch-Gilby,
Jeff Rogers Esq (Vice-Chair of Pima County Democratic Party),
David J. Euchner Esq (Chair of Pima County Libertarian Party),
Professor Ted Downing, (Chair of State ADP-EIC),
John Kromko,
J. M “Mike” Hayes,
Mickey Duniho,
Richard Harding (retired employee Pima Co Election Dept),
Noel Day (former employee Pima Co Election Dept), and many more.

TOPIC: Examining Pima County’s Flimsy Excuses for Posting Late Election Results

The Pima County Election Department attributes the delay in releasing the vote tallies on a timely fashion on the Pima county Democratic Party.

Fact is, it was Pima County’s own decision not to use phone modems; due to security concerns of possible hacking the central tabulator through the phone modem to precinct at end of day phone connection.

Then, Pima County Election Department then blames the Democratic Party for the slow results.

In point of fact, Pima County disconnected the modems. Facts are when Larry Bahill was the election director he had to run and load 250,000 plus punch cards and had 100% of the precincts reported by 1AM! Therefore, Pima County's other excuse that it takes a long time to load 400 memory cards just doesn't stand up.

Undoubtedly, questions will come up about the illegal arrest of John Brakey. Bill Risner will address this. Larry Bahill will address that it was totally uncalled for and unprofessional for Brad Nelson to have Mr. Brakey arrested.

Details at the Press Conference.

Your participation counts in this Citizen Voter action to help shine the light of integrity and transparency on the games being played by the Pima County Election Department.

Additionally the next morning at 9AM, please be at the Pima County Board of Sups meeting for the canvas. We will recommend the canvas is NOT certified until proper protocols and validation are the election is completed. We see many problems that must be addressed.

The Pima County Election Transparency Project

Contact: John Brakey 520-578-5678 Cell 520 250 2360

Ed R. Murrow a.k.a. Real Journalism is Dead

2008-08-28T06:20:00.040-07:00

The Fourth Estate is actively at work.

The corporate media has done a miserable job over the past decades representing the people they are supposed to work for--the citizens. Instead, they serve the corporate business and wealth interests in our country. It is nearly impossible to get accurate and investigative journalism anymore. Instead, what you get is propaganda for and by the oppressors and mudslinging against anyone who is fighting to keep the constitution in tact and to represent and fight for democracy.

Whenever we link to and quote corporate media sources, let this be a general disclaimer that for any one nugget of truth and transparency they report, they suppress, propagandize and/or outright shill for their corporate bosses ten times more often. Since we are an all-volunteer citizen organization and not a conglomerate, corporate-moneyed "news" organization, we don't have to serve anyone but the American citizens. So, as we link and quote to 'news' articles in this post and past and future ones, keep in mind we are extremely dissatisfied with the overall tone and coverage of this fight, save for one or two reporters who at least attempted to get a general understanding of the issues and report as such.

Unfortunately, the editors and owners call the final shots and determine what gets printed. So-called journalists who have no problem calling people insane or knotheads or idiots. We would like to ask Nintzel and Boegle what 'evidence' they have that Kromko is insane or that state Rep. Russell Pearce is a knothead and Don Goldwater is an 'idiot'? It seems anyone that goes after corporate abuse gets called names and presented as liars. You don’t have to agree with someone’s positions but this is beyond unprofessional and an indication of just what the standards are at the Weekly. You would think for all the fake concern the Tucson Weekly has published in prior articles regarding the welfare of immigrants on the border, that they would at least want to look at the main cause of the ongoing border issues...the illegal corporate abusers. One thing seems consistent, from their ongoing reporting to endorsements, the corporate candidates and corporate initiatives are backed by the Weekly the vast majority of the time over taxpayer and citizen rights.

In the Jimmys’ world, when the RTA sponsors pay a along time corporate hack pollster to propagandize that the initiative would have passed anyway, and the hack is said to have been so "nice" to supply that propaganda--and of course being the independent, responsible journalists Jimmy and Jim Nintzel are, they don't question the conflict of interest on the purported polls. Nope. And Boegle doesn't need 'evidence' that the polls were done when said, that the results are what they show, etc. Why does he have a vested interest in denying the election was stolen? That is the real question. Oh, but with plenty of circumstantial evidence and a signed affidavit saying it WAS stolen, well that isn't evidence to him and instead, his paper accuses the person swearing by the affidavit of being a criminal type element, bad employee, etc. Even more ironic, the polls they quote didn't even show the initiative passing! It shows 46% the week up to the election. You need 50%+ to pass. Apparently they need reading glasses too. I guess the real life polls by people who actually talked to voters in thousands going door-to-door don't matter to the Tucson Weekly because it doesn't serve their agenda.

Those numbers aren't "evidence" in the Nintzel/Boegle Orwellian world.

"If I Did It: Confessions of the Hacker and How I rigged a $2 Billion RTA Election":

2008-08-16T19:30:00.002-07:00

Who is willing to take a polygraph?

• Short report: What we believe happened in the May 16, 2006, Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) bond election in Pima County, Arizona

• Video clip on how we believe it was done and the equipment used then see this short video. From HBO’s Hacking Democracy: The Pima county way and the special equipment needed to Rig the RTA Pima Election Department purchased a Cropscanner Card Reader programmer

Confession is good for the soul.

A press report last week quoted Bryan Crane as saying he had to look up on a map where the Boondocks Bar was located. However he got there, he was seen that evening by another available witness who knows Mr. Crane. Mr. Osmolski related his conversation with Mr. Crane to four separate people at the bar that evening.

After watching these two short video clips you can understand what guilt does and why Bryan Crane confessed to Zbgniew Osmolski:

• Video clip Attorney Bill Risner deposing 'the hacker' Bryan Crane 2/27/07. A very nervous, guilt ridden Pima county election Diebold/GEMS computer operator.

• Video clip from the Pima County AZ court trial testimony of Bryan Crane. Bill Risner on redirect takes Crane apart over the slip of the finger on the computer mouse, bull manure story.

-John Brakey

Tucson Citizen & Tucson Weekly still get it wrong

2008-08-15T10:23:00.007-07:00

AuditAZ Co-Founder and election integrity activist, John Brakey, sent a letter to activists regarding the Tucson Citizen and Tucson Weekly's misconstruing the facts of the Pima Democratic Party's lawsuit against the Board of Supervisors for the election databases.

Below is part of the letter regarding the legal decision and background:

"In its endorsement of Sharon Bronson, the Tucson Citizen misconstrued the facts. Therefore, misled its readers when it did not provide context for the Board’s expensive yearlong opposition to releasing electronic computer databases.

The Tucson Weekly followed with its own endorsement of Bronson without providing context. The judge ruled that electronic databases were public records because the county was unable to prove its burden that releasing the records was a security risk. Indeed, it is true as Donna Branch-Gilby affirmed, that Bronson made a motion on January 8, 2008 not to appeal the Judge’s first order to release only two databases.

However, the larger context of all of the motions made at the January 8 meeting clearly proves that Bronson’s maneuver was intended to block the release of all other databases, including the RTA, that the Democratic party had asked for. The judge’s order allowed for future release of more databases beyond the two.

Bronson’s claim that that she made the motion not to appeal does not tell the story that she was the one who cited “legal impediments” to obstruct the release of the databases.

The Fact is the Board of Supervisors is also the Board of Elections. The key to honest elections lies here in Pima County with them, not with the appointed County Manager who has known since 1996 about the Diebold election system backdoor.

Here is a video link to what really happened at the Jan 8th BOS meeting (20 minutes). It is not like what Bronson has said.

http://www.sweetremedy.tv/pages/forcedagenda.html

The Clip comes from an upcoming Documentary Called "Forced Agenda: How the Growth Industry Subverts Democracy"

Bronson and Valadez, for over two years, fought us over the issues of transparency in elections and never voted with us until “yuppie riot”.

On Jan 8^th, I knew the only way we could win was to get Supervisor Ann Day (R) with us by putting Richard Elias (D) on the spot. Richard never voted with us unless we lost. I knew this, and got people to contact Ann Day.

What put us over the top with Ann Day was Dr Tom Ryan meeting with her, and was able to finally convince her.

Bronson on the morning of the 8th called me and tried to play me by saying to me "you won, let’s work together again.” Then at the meeting, Bronson tries to release just the two databases the judge initially ordered, which would have been useless for the purposes of analysis. To find a flip you have to have a flop. You can't do one with out the other.

If anyone should get credit for pushing the Jan 8th vote over the top it was Ann Day. The video link shows the clear position of Bronson and her obstruction to transparency.

Half way through the video, please pay special attention to Huckleberry and Deputy County Attorney Straub celebrate when they thought they had successfully fooled the crowd into accepting one database for the Primary, and one for the General Election of 2006.

However, their little celebration was premature. At the break Richard Elias tried to clear the room, before the rest of the speakers had been heard from. As the meeting starts again the "yuppie revolt" erupted to help clinch the victory. We won the vote to release all the databases by 5 to 0, including the RTA databases, thanks to Ann Day (just like I said would happen if we had her vote).

We have the rest of the video from J.T. with Sound and Fury, that we could mine for more details.

So friends, what do we do? Change Can’t Wait.

Hope, Peace and Democracy.

John

John Brakey, co-founder of AUDIT-AZ (Americans United for Democracy, Integrity, and Transparency in Elections, Arizona) & Co-Coordinator Investigations for Election Defense Alliance. "

We're too sexy for our flag...

2008-07-22T17:54:00.022-07:00

Why Aren't Stolen Elections A Grassroots
Concern?

One of the things we find very disconcerting is how much attention is focused on throwing money to candidates in the elections, registering people to vote, getting out the vote, etc., but so little focus is on making sure that vote counts. Why is that? Is it because of how complex our system is, how unsexy election integrity is, that there are no "rock stars" or soundbite internet stars of the election integrity movement? Whatever the reason, you would think after the number of indictments, admissions, testimonies, etc. regarding election tampering--as well as statements under oath and passed polygraphs from people like Clint Curtis--that the activists and public at large would start to take this issue more seriously.

I hear complaints all the time about the 2000 and 2004 presidential election. If you recall, both years in the presidential election there was obvious fraud in Ohio and Florida because more people came out to vote in precincts than were even registered. Watching the results coming in live and comparing it to the Secretary of State's registered voter numbers, one could immediately see a huge fraud issue.

In Arizona, we have made ground-breaking progress that has ramifications for the rest of the country, yet trying to get the story out and connect the dots for people not only in the larger metro areas and Phoenix, but across the country is overwhelmingly difficult. I met so many wonderful activists at Netroots Nation this past week, yet when I started to talk about stolen elections, disenfranchisement, etc., the conversations quickly were diverted by disinterested activists who would rather make fun of McCain's latest geography gaffe or discuss Obama's hope meme than actually DO something to make sure our votes count. I didn't meet activists who actually knew of the group or groups in their states that have election integrity groups, with the exception of those already working with such groups like Election Defense Alliance. I can't tell you how discouraging that was.

We have a serious shortage both in the number of activists working on this issue in their states, and of funding. How do we get people involved? Activists will go to movies on the issue, like the Stealing America movie that was playing at NN. Yet what do they do when they leave the room? Do they sign up to be poll workers, find out of there is a local E.I. group in their state, donate to such a group, or just complain then move on?

Granted this was a bloggers' convention and bloggers are generally more talk than action oriented, but I even noticed this problem at true activist conventions. Would posting half naked men and women get people's attention enough to at least read some of the issues we are dealing with? It is frustrating.

I remember during the New Hampshire primaries this year how a number of prominent blogs on the left skewered anyone that suggested that there was fraud going on, even though statistical analysis showed the likelihood was favoring fraud and ballot boxes going home is always a serious breach of chain of custody. At the movie Uncounted that we sponsored here in Tucson, I met a man who was responsible for doing some analysis on the New Hampshire primaries which showed counties using Diebold went for Hillary and counties using the paper method breaking for Obama. Physicist David Griscom, one of our colleagues in the election integrity battle, wrote an excellent article on OpEd news regarding the same issue.

The prominent democratic bloggers, however, didn't want to hear about it because it involved two democrats, so the "bad guys" would be of their own party. There is the tendency for the conservatives to think only Democrats steal elections and Democrats to think only Republicans do when the reality is it is a nonpartisan issue and election fraud is less about party than control, corporate control, of our electoral processes.

Since the citizen win last month of the release of past database records from the Pima County elections going back to 1998, a witness has signed an affidavit stating that an elections official, Brian Crane, admitted the RTA election was flipped at the behest of his boss. The local media has already started a character assassination against the witness. Nonetheless, we will continue to pursue this fight. Attorney General Terry Goddard (D) was an obstructionist in the first investigation or rather the NON investigation and the citizens of the great state of Arizona deserve better. We deserve to have transparent, fair and fraud-free elections. Pima County Democratic Party attorney Bill Risner has mounted a great deal of evidence and wrote a letter to Attorney General Terry Goddard requesting a real investigation and that the ballots are not destroyed.

Bill Risner's Letter to Attorney General Terry Goddard

2008-07-15T11:53:00.001-07:00

Dear Mr. Goddard:

I sent you a short letter on July 9th, 2008, together with Mr. Zbigniew Osmolski's Affidavit,. I will be out of the County from July 15 through the end of the month. Accompanying this letter are various materials that may help you to better understand the nature of the allegations and more fully understand the past investigation by your office staff.

At the beginning of the database lawsuit, the Pima County Democratic Party, and I personally, had confidence in your Office's integrity. Additionally, I was sensitive to political currents. That is why I informally told Jim Walsh what we were finding out in our lawsuit against the Pima County Board of Supervisors. It was a "heads up" conversation relating to him that we were acquiring evidence suggestive of criminal activity but not enough in my opinion at that point for your office to open an investigation and none was requested.

Later, attorneys for the Board of Supervisors forcefully suggested that I was obligated to make a criminal complaint if I believed crimes had occurred. At that point, I made an appointment with John Evans of your Office who agreed to open an investigation. The "suspects" were listed on your office form as the "Pima County Election Division." The Pima County Democratic Party offered technical expertise. Your office chose not to accept our technical expertise and we did not complain then nor do we complain now about that decision as your office can investigate in the manner that you choose.

I subsequently had a conversation with Mr. Evans in which I asked him what our role was in the investigation. He said it was a "one way street in which he could not give me information but he could receive information from us." I then gave him the names of two witnesses including Robbie Evans, Jr., who for four years was the computer assistant to Bryan Crane. I explained that Mr. Evans, Jr. would testify that Mr. Crane regularly printed unofficial tallies or summary reports of actual votes before election day. Your Office investigators chose not to interview that witness, even though they knew his testimony would contradict Mr. Cranes' prior testimony. Instead your investigators accepted Mr. Crane's fourth different under oath story without comparison with the prior explanations nor did they question any contradictory witnesses. [Video from trial testimony of Robbie Evans, Jr., testimony of Chester Crowley and trial testimony of Isabel Araiza (20 years with Pima Election Department)]

During a subsequent conversation with Mr. Evans, I learned that your offices' report from iBeta would be provided to the suspects, but a copy would not be provided to the Democratic Party, although Mr. Evans concluded the report would be a public record, he said he would require us to retain a copy from the County suspects. I have attached several of the letters that I subsequently sent to John Evans.

I am sure you are now aware that your office joined with the suspects in a joint study, permitted the suspects to direct the investigation and gave them a copy of the investigative report before conducting any interviews. [Aug 6-Sept 13, 2007] Before commenting on the iBeta report, I would like to review the background of the decision to proceed in that manner. Mr. Evans had initially contacted Michael Shamos, a nationally known voting systems expert at Carnegie Mellon University. Mr. Evans and Mr. Shamos' e-mails are attached. Mr. Shamos immediately recommended the ballots themselves be examined as he said: "Ultimately the proof of the pudding is in the ballots." "My suggestion would be to re-tabulate from the original records. This should tell us very quickly whether the GEMS results were fudged. What is the difficulty with this approach?" Indeed!

Mr. Evans response was:

"As for the white wash, I would agree with you but the party to the civil law suit that discovered this problem is very much on board. They want the data base to be looked at and they have approved the scope of the project. The most vocal local naysayers have bought into this process."

Mr. Evans was completely wrong. We had not "bought into this process." He insisted on this process. Nevertheless, Michael Duniho, on behalf of the Democratic Party, strongly suggested that the ballots he examined. Mr. Duniho recalls a heated exchange with Mr. Evans.

Our deference to your office's integrity at that point should not be characterized as being "on board" Mr. Evans' flawed process. Mr. Evans' e-mail also contained this important reference to the "issue to be investigated."

"Regarding your questions, the initial issue is about the absentee ballots that were run before the joint summary report. The next question is whether after the summary report there was a flip of the fields. So the accuracy of the absentee ballots is questioned and the accuracy of the subsequent ballots may be an issue."

The evidence to resolve that key question was already available to the Attorney General. A.R.S. § 16-445 required Pima County to send "at least ten days before the date of the "RTA election" a copy of the ballot layout. In other words, the position of how the computer would read "yes" and "no" votes was on file. If the computer had later been instructed to read those votes reversed or "flipped" so that "no" votes would count as "yes" votes the computer data could easily have been compared with the data on file with the Secretary of State.

A.R.S. § 16-445D specifically provides that the data on file "shall be used by the Secretary of State or Attorney General to preclude fraud ... "

In other words, the entire purpose of that data was for it to be examined in a fraud investigation by the Attorney General. Your office did conduct a fraud investigation where that evidence would have provided the answer, but it was neither used nor requested by your office.

Furthermore, your office actively attempted to obstruct the Democratic Party's attempt to find that evidence, when the Democratic Party scheduled a deposition of the Secretary of State's office. Your office filed a Motion for a Protective Order asking the trial court judge to prevent us from learning the whereabouts of that evidence. We ultimately prevailed over your office's objection and learned it had been mailed back to Pima County where Brad Nelson personally handed the critical evidence to Bryan Crane, and it has not been seen since. The Arizona State Election Director, Joseph Kanefield, testified that the Secretary of State's office was aware of the criminal investigation having been informed by your office.

As for the iBeta "investigation" jointly conducted by the suspects and your office, it is clear to us that the investigation was steered by the suspects down blind alleys. The statement of work written by iBeta contained no reference to either swapping ID codes or replacing a database with one modified on another computer. During the investigation, the suspects' technical defense person, John Moffat, suggested the investigative contractor engineer look at the Preferences table in the database to see if the programming had changed, and also to back each batch of early ballots scanned out of the database to see if vote totals had been changed. But the simplest manipulation of the election database, swapping the codes that identified the Yes and No votes, would have been done in the Candidate tab and swapping the codes would not have changed any vote totals -- it would have merely reassigned the votes. Needless to say, the investigative contractor engineer found no conclusive evidence of tampering -- either because it did not know where to look or because he carefully avoided looking where tampering was likely to have occurred. [See version of the iBeta Report with notes by Mr. Brakey and Mr. March.]

The iBeta report discusses five "tests." Test 1 produces no useful information. Test 2 did turn up what appeared to be evidence of "tampering," but the company accepted John Moffat's explanation. Test 3 confirmed "five copies" of the test target file were identical. This was not a useful conclusion as the key issue was data that had been erased. Test 4 was a test "prepared" by John Moffat concerning the "Preference table." I have previously noted the uselessness of that test. Test 5 was also "prepared" by John Moffat, and again, was a test not directed toward the allegations. That test was whether votes had been externally added which has never been an allegation. [Copy of the iBeta Report without added notes]

John Moffat is paid $184,000 per year by the County for a 30 hour week. He works part-time, so he can continue to run a separate company he owns. He reports directly to Charles Huckelberry on an "oral" basis only. Since competent evidence, such as the Osmolski Affidavit, quotes Bryan Crane as saying that he was told to fix the election by his bosses, it is clear that County management has a potential motive to obstruct an investigation. An assessment of John Moffat's role in your investigation, and in the civil case, indicates that his role has been to prevent an examination of past election practices. At a recent meeting of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, John Brakey reported that John Moffat said he would cooperate with the Democratic Party in the future if we would agree not to look into the past. [Brakey and March confirm that this was suggested several times.]

A press report this week quoted Bryan Crane as saying he had to look up on a map where the Boondocks Bar was located. However he got there, he was seen that evening by another available witness who knows Mr. Crane. Mr. Osmolski related his conversation with Mr. Crane to four separate people at the bar that evening.

The truthfulness of Mr. Crane's confession can readily be determined by examining the ballots. As noted by Michael Shamos, the proof is in the ballots. The likelihood that the RTA election was fraudulent can also be inferred from the totality of the circumstantial evidence. The circumstantial evidence is strong. I have already mentioned that Mr. Crane received from Mr. Nelson the RTA pre-election tape sent to the Secretary of State's office pursuant to A.R.S. §16-445. The box delivered by Mr. Nelson contained several tapes but only the May 16, 2006, RTA tape has disappeared. An inference can be drawn from the disappearance of computer data that has the specific ability to prove the crime by contradicting saved data. [Nelson trial testimony and Tucson Citizen articles on Dec 6, 2007 and Dec 15, 2007.

The motive of the "bosses" could not be clearer. The proposal that a sales tax be approved for roads was defeated on some four prior occasions. The May, 2006, proposals were unanimously endorsed by all five supervisors. Supervisor Valadez was the RTA Chairman.

Months before the RTA election, the Board of Supervisors hired James Barry, a Special Assistant County Manager, to work under the direction of Chuck Hucklelberry, and develop a computer database of all previous County board elections by precinct to determine precinct by precinct voting patterns. Mr. Barry's contract began the day after his retirement from the County. Mr. Barry was paid $75,000 for that work. At the same time, Mr. Barry received approximately $12,000 from the RTA Yes Committee for "consulting." [Video, Barry trial testimony]

The RTA was said to have passed by a surprisingly large margin. Yet the RTA Yes group was privately claiming in the weeks leading up to the election that their tracking polls showed the measure likely to lose. A Microsoft access manual was seen and photographed in the vote tabulation room on election night. Use of MS access on an election computer was and is illegal. [Electronic Voting System Manual, p. 89 and ARS 16-442. Also, see Letter to Secretary of State Jan Brewer.] The Chair of the Pima County Democratic Party requested days after the RTA election day for a party consultant to enter the tabulation room accompanied by Election Director Brad Nelson for the sole purpose of looking at the cables attached to the election computer. The request to enter the vacant room to see if another computer might have been connected to the election server was denied. This request occurred while all parties were present in a room next to the vacant room.

Chester Crowley, an election department employee, testified at trial that the election computer had in the past been connected to Bryan Cranes' computer in his office and he believed Mr. Crane had printed unofficial tallies on his office printer directly from the election computer.

Mr. Crane's assistant for some four years, Robbie Evans, Jr., testified that Mr. Crane regularly took home during elections a compact disc (CD) of election data. Isabel Araiza, perhaps the election division's senior employee and the office manager prior to Brad Nelson being hired, testified that she had discussed with Brad Nelson the security problem of Bryan Crane taking election data home with him during live elections. Mr. Nelson did not object to the practice and did not instruct Mr. Crane to cease that practice. The GEMS system has a well-known security defect known as "the back door" whereby data can be changed using Microsoft Access without knowing or using a password. The GEMS audit log is not separate from the data itself. That means that election data can be changed and then the audit log itself can be amended to erase any history of the changes having been made.

The audit log for the RTA election shows Araiza testimony]

The number of persons who could observe inside the counting room was severely restricted in the months just prior to the RTA election. Brad Nelson radically changed prior procedures so as to prohibit employees that previously had access to the counting room from doing so during the RTA election. [Araiza testimony]

Bryan Crane was quite familiar with the ability of the GEMS system to export data and manipulate it off line. He had done so in 1996 at the instructions of Chuck Huckelberry. The deposition continued only when I agreed to not ask any questions at that time about 1996. The audit log of May 11, 2006, shows that thirty-three seconds after the election computer was opened that morning, Bryan Crane created a second "Day 1 backup" and erased the prior day's data, replacing it with a new "Day 1 backup." This action would be similar to your experienced secretary backing up a brief she was preparing for you before going home and then seconds after coming to work the next day again "backing-up" the brief when no additional charges had been made.

Such an event is highly unlikely. Bryan Crane's normal practices are known. At trial, he was questioned by Deputy Pima County Attorney Chris Straub and explained that the writing over of the data had been a "slip of the finger on the mouse." That explanation cannot be true, however. That is because the John Moffat testified that he had been instructed by the County's lawyers not to ask questions of Mr. Crane about violations of law relating to the printing of summary reports.

Joe Kanefield testified that he assumed the county had itself examined such allegations as would any organization or company. His assumption is the same as ours. Therefore, the total organizational failure to do so speaks volumes to the necessity of an outside review and clearly suggests that the management of the organization is complicit. In other words, it supports Mr. Crane's statement to Mr. Osmolski that he fixed the RTA election on the instructions of his bosses.

Ten months prior to the RTA, the Pima County Election Division, at the request of Bryan Crane, purchased a "crop scanner," a read-write device that is a computer hacking tool. That tool has no other purpose than to illegally alter the programming of precinct voting machines. Actually, it does have a legal use, but I am certain the election division was not using it to know when to irrigate their crops. The Pima County Democratic Party's election integrity Committee has an unusual number of individuals with extensive computer and election computer expertise.

Dr. Tom Ryan, PhD. is a retired computer engineer who has been studying computer election issues for several years. The Pima County Democratic Party adopted a report he wrote in April 2003 concerning election computer problems. James March is a member of the Board of Directors of Black Box Voting, a National Organization of citizen election reform advocates. He was one of the first computer technicians to examine the Diebold GEMS software. He has been consulting with the Democratic Party on election security issues.

Michael Duniho ("Mickey") has retired to Tucson from a career with the National Security Agency where he was one of fifty "master programmers." He has spent innumerable hours learning election and ballot processing procedures. John Brakey, another computer, expert, is self-taught, but has an excellent grasp of the GEMS system and its potential use in fixing an election. All those informed individuals are in agreement that sufficient questions exist to merit a hand count of the RTA ballots.

All of our freedoms in the Untied States are ultimately guaranteed at the ballot box. Anything less than an honest count of ballots is a crime that strikes at the heart of our Democratic system. All of us who have been active on issues related to election security believe that the ballots for the RTA must be preserved and counted. Only you, as Arizona's Attorney General, can take control of the ballots as potential evidence of a crime and count them. Our community, your political party, and our core freedoms, will be protected only if you act to determine whether a major crime has occurred against the Democratic process.

The issue is not the fallout of that crime but whether the crime has occurred. Pima County management now asserts that they want the RTA ballots preserved, but they want a judge to tell the Pima County Treasurer what to do with the ballots. The ballots can be preserved and counted only if Arizona's Attorney General does the job he is required to do. The obligation to determine if a crime has occurred is not for the Democratic Party. The political party is not a prosecutorial agency. It has been involved in order to preserve its core role of election observation. The prosecutor's role is yours. Whether or not a crime has occurred can be simply and definitively determined through an examination of the ballots. We ask for you to personally direct that the current investigation be conducted in such a manner as to arrive at an answer that the people of Pima County can accept.

Very truly yours,

RISNER & GRAHAM

LIST OF RELEVANT FILES, INCLUDING SOME NOT REFERRED TO IN RISNER'S LETTER.

Citizen Transparency Wins!

2008-06-04T18:09:00.007-07:00

The long hard battle for citizen oversight of elections and transparency was won yesterday when the Pima Board of Supervisors decided not to appeal the decision by Judge Miller to require the Board to turn over the database files since 1998 to the Democratic Party as well as any other oversight party. In addition, Pima Democratic Party attorney Bill Risner will be paid for all but $90,000 of his legal expenses (by us the taxpayers of course). The entire cost to taxpayers is likely around $1 million when you include the County Attorneys, staff, and legal fees they incurred fighting their own citizens on this. This case is a perfect example of poor government and what volunteer citizen activists can do to raise the issues and keep holding their elected officials accountable.

Had the Board of Supervisors not wasted over a year and hundreds of thousands of dollars and just turned over the data, it would have been less painful for all involved. We here at AuditAZ do want to thank the biggest obstructionists on the Board, Sharon Bronson, Ramon Valadez and to a lesser extent Ann Day. Had it not been for their "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach to this case, the general public, local media, and voters and volunteers from the Democratic, Republican, Green and Libertarian parties (plus independents) would not have gotten so outraged and our profile would not have been raised to the level it has. We thank you for all the added members who joined to help us out due to their outrage at the shenanigans both at the Board meetings and in court. Chair Richard Elias didn't exactly show leadership on this issue either.

We would be remise if we didn't send out a special thank you to Ray Carroll, who was the one Board Supervisor who consistently supported citizen rights by first voting "no" to the purchase of Diebold DRE machines and then subsequently voting to allow access to the database records we requested.

The Board of Supervisors are up for re-election this year. If this issue matters to you (and it should) check out the challengers in the other four races and ask their positions on election integrity and transparency. Accountability is essential to having your vote count and accurately recorded as the voter intended. You have the power to determine who the gatekeepers are, who is accountable to whom (our public officials are supposed to be accountable to us) and ultimately protect the constitution and the most fundamental right we have: the right to vote in clean, fair accurate elections. When you cast your votes in September and November, you can rest assured that the ability to defraud your vote just got more difficult with Judge Miller's ruling.

The hard work of Mickey Duniho, John Brakey, Jim March, Tom Ryan, as well as numerous other election integrity activists have made what was once relegated at a "conspiracy theorist" hobby into a huge victory for American citizens.

John Brakey's budget proposal for future elections can be found here. He does a cost benefit analysis that is a very good solution and work around to our already present Diebold machines.

Garry Duffy at the Tucson Citizen won an Arizona Press Club award for his work on covering this trial. A big "thank you" to him and his excellent coverage. The Tucson Weekly's Mari Herreras has written some excellent blog articles with links to documentation relating to the case and future proposals.

Now the tenuous task of analyzing the data that the PDP has obtained is underway. If you would like to help in future projects, please sign up and get involved. You can also DONATE since AuditAZ is all volunteer organization and our expenses come out of our own pockets (with big holes thanks to the current high gas prices).

What is the Democratic Party Thinking?

2008-06-01T12:12:00.002-07:00

It is hard to even contemplate what the Democratic Party is thinking in opposing this bill. They have been on the forefront of such excellent legislative and election transparency initiatives. Their own EIC committee supports the bill. The message below is from the Pima Democratic Party EIC Co-Chair Sandra Spangler:

Support SB 1053
Extend Citizen Oversight to Nonpartisan Elections

Monday, June 2, 2008 SB 1053 as amended is scheduled for final vote in the Arizona Senate. The Arizona House adopted the amendments proposed by the Conference Committee on May 28.

Since a minority report filed by Democratic Rep. Steve Gallardo raised concerns that amendments added to the bill will codify into law a shorter voting period for early voting, it is uncertain whether Governor Napolitano is prepared to sign this bipartisan bill that earned overwhelming bipartisan support. If the Governor decides to veto the bill, other corrections to the bill that avoid scheduling city and county elections too close together will not take effect and Democrats will be blamed.

Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez and other election officials support SB 1053.

Call the Governor to urge her to sign SB 1053

Toll Free 1-(800) 253-0883
Fax (602) 542-1381

Text of SB 1053 http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dd7gcz27_218dhns48cf

For details read this article: Mule Train Mail: Dr. Downing on Citizen Oversight of Non-Partisan Elections

Prevent the Appeal

2008-06-01T00:05:00.003-07:00

URGENT

CALL PIMA COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
520-740-8126

ATTEND BOS MEETING

Tuesday June 3, 2008 9AM
130 W. Congress St., Hearing Room, 1st Fl.

On Tuesday the Pima County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to decide in secret session with County attorneys whether to APPEAL Judge Miller’s decision to grant the Pima County Democratic Party electronic election databases going back to 1998.

Demand ACCOUNTABILITY! Call the BOS on Monday to tell them “NO” The Board has already spent too much the public’s money arguing against releasing public records. The County’s “delusional defense” did not stand up in court. View the videos posted at http://arizona.typepad.com/blog/election_integrity/index.html

Ann Day, District 1
(520) 740-2738

Ramón Valadez, District 2
(520) 740-8126

Sharon Bronson, District 3
(520) 740-8051

Ray Carroll, District 4
(520) 740-8094

Richard Elías, Chairman, District 5
(520) 740-8126

For More Details about Tuesday’s meeting read Tucson Citizen article below

County to discuss ruling to release vote databases
tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/86871.php

GARRY DUFFY
Tucson Citizen

Pima County officials may decide Tuesday whether to appeal a Superior Court judge's ruling last week ordering the release of electronic vote databases to the Pima County Democratic Party.

The Board of Supervisors will meet with county attorneys in secret session to discuss the issue. Part of the discussion will be a ruling by Superior Court Judge Michael Miller awarding $228,000 for legal fees to attorneys representing the Democrats because they were successful in the legal dispute involving the databases.

Supervisors also will consider a motion by board Chairman Richard Elías to create a sister city relationship between the county and Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico, to improve commerce and relations between the two communities.

Elías said residents of both communities regularly interact culturally and in business.

Pima County residents vacation on beaches in the Mazatlan area, while residents from that city come to Tucson and contribute to the local economy.

http://www.pima.gov/cob/e-agenda/06032008/06032008Ad.pdf

ADDENDUM

Pima County Board of Supervisors’ Meeting
130 W. Congress St., Hearing Room, 1st Fl.
June 3, 2008 9:00 a.m.

. . . EXECUTIVE SESSIONS

Public discussion and action may occur on the executive session items listed below during the regularly scheduled meeting.

D. Pursuant to A.R.S. §38-431.03(A)(3) and (4), for legal advice and direction regarding the Democratic Party of Pima County v. Pima County Board of Supervisors, Pima County Superior Court Cause No. C20072073.

Arizona Elections Bills, Good & Bad

2008-05-11T15:08:00.003-07:00

Our sister organization ACER has put together a list of bills currently in the Arizona Legislature regarding election integrity, Arizona election process and the Arizona Secretary of State elections manual. We need the support of citizens to make sure our elections are free from fraud and transparent to the public in Arizona. Their website lists 17 bills but since we have highlighted three in the past, we are going to do so again here:

SB1053 elections; counting center; observation. (Senators Gray and Blendu.) Adds a new provision to state law that all proceedings at the counting center shall be under the observation of a representative of a candidate for nonpartisan office, a representative of a political committee in support of or in opposition to a ballot measure, proposition or question. Current law specifies representatives of each political party and the public. The bill provides for observers in non partisan elections. Passed out of Senate Judiciary. SUPPORT
SB1395 ~~orders of protection; animals~~ strike all bill for elections (Senator Johnson) Creates provision for graphic scanning of 10% of early, provisional and polling place ballots for purposes on maintaining the transparency of the vote counting process. SUPPORT
SB1477 elections; manual audit revisions (Senator Johnson and Senator Gray) Expands the hand count from 1% to 2% or ten thousand for early ballots to conform with the 2% manual audit of the precinct-cast ballots. On Senate Judiciary agenda for 2-25-08. SUPPORT

ACER lists their support and opposition to the various 17 bills. AuditAZ supports the three aforementioned, and for the full 17, please click here.

When you review that list, you will aslo see another bill which we join ACER in opposing. The lawsuit the Pima County Democratic Party has filed against Pima County Board of Supervisors and the Elections Division and their "lost" tapes highlights why this bill will do more damage to our transparency of elections in Arizona:

HB 2364 election law amendments. (Representatives Crandall, Reagan: Adams, Konopnicki) Makes a number of changes to election law. Makes changes to the election date concerning a vacancy for a U.S. representative of Arizona. Makes changes to dates in the voter registration file concerning when a person can be moved to the inactive list and eventually removed. Eliminates of ARS 16-445 Section 11 E. Specifically strikes this language: Each program tape or disc or any other material submitted to the secretary of state shall be returned to the county, city or town within six months after the close of the election for which it was submitted except: 1. When a court ordered recount is pending. 2. When a restraining order is in effect. 3. When any other legal action is pending. The bottom line is that these changes could bolster the argument that no one can examine what is sent to the Secretary of State. The material sent to the Secretary of State would have been important to the Pima County Democratic Party's examination of fraud in the RTA election. That material was sent back to Pima County where it "disappeared." Subsection A would not require Pima County to destroy evidence because the Secretary of State would destroy it for them. Passed out of House Judiciary 2-21-08. OPPOSE

Attend April 21st, 9:30 am Court Hearing

2008-04-18T09:16:00.008-07:00

Show Your Support for Election Transparency

Monday, April 21 9:30am
Judge Michael Miller’s Courtroom

Sixth Floor Pima County Superior Court
110 West Congress

Judge Miller’s ruling established a nationally significant precedent that established computerized election database records as public records. The Pima County Democratic Party pleading requested the release of all computerized databases. Although Judge Miller ordered databases from the 2006 primary and general elections released, Pima County attorneys fought to dictate the terms of the transfer. Pima County Democratic Party Chair Vince Rabago and Attorney Bill Risner won that skirmish, forcing the county technical staff to transfer data to a new laptop out of the box, to prevent any corruption of data in public view of a video camera. Only a united expression of multipartisan objection stopped the Board of Supervisors from following the County Attorney’s advice to appeal Judge Miller’s ruling. In face of public opposition the Board reversed itself and agreed to release the database from the RTA election because citizens stood up and demanded to be listened to.

Monday’s Hearing will focus on release of the rest of the election databases from 1995 going forward. Release of all databases will allow computer analysts at the University of Arizona to analyze all Pima County computerized databases to facilitate the development of a software tool capable of detecting irregularities in computer data that need further investigation. Depositions from top national computer security experts with election experience concur that there is no security risk from releasing data from past elections. Yet County Administrator Chuck Huckleberry has thrown up a smokescreen by misrepresenting the facts to justify withholding public records.

Transparent elections depend upon the release databases after every election.

Sandra Spangler
Acting Chair, Pima County Democratic Party Election Integrity Committee

Uncounted's Tucson Premiere

2008-03-15T15:48:00.010-07:00

On March 11, 2008, AuditAZ sponsored the Tucson premiere of Uncounted - The New Math of American Elections.

The turnout was spectacular with approximately 350 attendees. Director David Earnhardt along with The Brad Blog's Brad Friedman and Pima Democratic Party attorney Bill Risner spoke after the movie on issues regarding election integrity. The attendees were then allowed to ask questions of the panel. A special thanks to The Loft for allowing us to show the movie at their theatre and their ongoing support of the community.

Arlene Leaf and Sandra Spangler, AuditAZ organizers (left), hand out information on Senate bills, our organization, the Pima County Democratic lawsuit against the County, and sell DVDs to moviegoers.

Director David Earnhardt (lower right) did a spectacular job on the movie both in content and presentation. Michael Moore could learn a few tricks from Mr. Earnhardt on production quality.

Of course, we had time for a few laughs and silliness. Mary Mancini, (lower center) Media & Outreach Specialist, poses with the movie DVD at the behest of AuditAZ organizer Cheryl.

After the panel discussion and Q & A, moviegoers gathered on the patio to chat more until we were kicked out at closing. Several of us moved the party to Kingfisher restaurant where we enjoyed more intimate conversations with David, Mary and Brad.

If you are interested in having a house party to educate voters on what is happening to our elections, you can now buy the DVD and host your own screening.

Contact your Senators for Support

2008-03-10T17:13:00.008-07:00

YES We COUNT!!

Tell Arizona Legislators to Move These Bills Forward For Transparent Elections!

Find your House and Senate Members at www.azleg.gov

Log in to Request to Speak On the Record to Legislators via the Internet.

http://alistrack.azleg.gov/rts/login.asp

Sign up at Tucson Legislative Ofﬁce 520-398-6000 for a user name and password

SB 1053

Expands right of candidates and political committees to send observers to provide oversight for nonpartisan elections. (Former State Rep. Ted Downing worked with Sen. Chuck Gray to write this bill. Contact Sen. Gray at cgray@azleg.gov (602)926-5288

SB 1395

Legalizes Graphic scanning of early, provisional ballots and 10% of polling station votes. Graphic ballot images can be burned to a single-use disk and/or placed on a website. This bill would make it possible for Pima County to implement its proposal for scanning that was opposed by the Secretary of State. (Sen. Karen Johnson is the sponsor of strike-all bill that originally was for orders of protection for animals). Contact Sen. Johnson at kjohnson@azleg.gov (602)926-3160

SB 1477

Allows political parties to do logic and accuracy tests using their own marked ballots. Improves auditing procedures. (Dr. Tom Ryan, www.azfairelections.org spearheaded this bill sponsored by Sen. Karen Johnson and Sen. Linda Gray. Contact Sen. Johnson
kjohnson@azleg.gov (602)926-3160 and Sen. Gray lgray@azleg.gov (602) 926-3376