Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Judge Gives Green Light for Election Integrity Lawsuit

Andrea Kelly of the Arizona Daily Star reports:

"A state attorney general's investigation of the RTA election is not grounds to delay a Democratic Party suit against Pima County over access to public records, Superior Court Judge Michael Miller found Monday.

That means civil proceedings will continue without regard to the criminal investigation.

The Pima County Democratic Party filed two civil suits against the Board of Supervisors this year, seeking previously denied public records and databases relating to elections activity in the County Elections Division.

In the course of litigating these cases, the party discovered early ballots had been counted before election day, and requested an investigation of the May 2006 Regional Transportation Authority vote, saying it suspected the vote tallies could have been "flipped" or reversed.

The county asked the judge in the civil suits to stay one of the cases, or put it on hold, pending the results of the investigation on the grounds several of the people involved in the civil suit could also be interviewed in the criminal investigation.
Pima County Democratic Party attorney William Risner said the case involves the public's right to investigate elections, so it should not be put on hold.

Miller said the county request fails to meet several qualifications for the stay of proceedings. The case and the investigation involve different parties, different attorneys and different subject matter, Miller said."

This is good news for election integrity activists and transparency in our elections. Hopefully, via the lawsuits, we can get to the bottom of what exactly is going on in the Pima Election's Department and why they are printing off voter records illegally before the end of the election.

Jeff Rogers, attorney, did an opinion piece in the Arizona Daily Star a few days ago "RTA lawsuits are about integrity of elections"

"What is at issue is the integrity of our election process and our democratic form of government. The real story is what the Democratic Party is doing to make sure everyone's vote counts.

To meet its legal responsibility to provide election oversight, the Pima County Democratic Party was forced to file two public records lawsuits. The article discussed one of these, implying that the purpose was to challenge the RTA election. A related Star article presented a similar perspective ("RTA lawyer: It's too late to challenge vote," May 31). On the contrary, the Democratic Party fully and publicly supported the RTA."...

"After the 2006 general election, the Democratic Party discovered from computer print logs that summaries of early voting results were printed by a county elections employee on several different occasions before Election Day.

Viewing such extremely valuable information is prohibited, as it reveals how candidates are doing in their races. Arizona law makes it illegal to examine early vote tallies to project the outcome of an election. This is why results are not tallied until election night.

The Democratic Party sought records of the unauthorized reports but the county denied the request. The Democratic Party filed its public records lawsuit in February.

The Democratic Party also made a public records request for the Diebold "GEMS" electronic voting database, Pima County's central electronic voting tabulator file. This is not a request to obtain proprietary software, just the database and information it contains.

In refusing to turn over these electronic records, the county relied on the alleged "secret coding" of candidates as its sole reason for refusal. It turns out that Pima County's "secret" codes were actually published on the secretary of state's public Web site.

The county also made the astonishing suggestion that releasing the database to the party — which has a statutory oversight role — would compromise elections. There is no danger whatsoever in releasing the database, which is a public record. That information is essential to determining whether manipulation has occurred.

The Alaska Division of Elections released its voting database to the Alaska Democratic Party in 2006, concluding it was a public record and there were no security issues involved in its release."

Labels: Arizona elections, Bill Risner, democratic lawsuit, election fraud, election integrity

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Monday, June 11, 2007

URGENT: Please appear in Court Tomorrow

Help Pima County Democratic Party Attorney Bill Risner make the Case for Election Integrity

Attend Hearing 9AM Tuesday June 12th
Pima County Superior Court 110 West Congress, 6th Floor

The Pima County Democratic party lawsuit vs the Board of Supervisors is about the broader issue of Election Integrity not to change the outcome of a single election.

• The County in its latest filing continues to claim rights to secrecy and charge that our technical representatives, Jim March and Mickey Duniho are NOT experts.

• The County is asserting that election insiders, despite evidence of misconduct not yet explained, are the experts who have rights not to be challenged by any outsiders.
  
• The County filed for a stay to stall the lawsuit citing that the evidence of county election department employee misconduct had been turned over to the Attorney General’s Office for investigation.
  
• The lawsuit would be on hold indefinitely until that investigation was complete even though election problems need a remedy before any more elections are conducted.
  
• Fifty people attended the last hearing on short notice. We must pack the courtroom June 12 to support Bill Risner. This case was featured last Friday on Arizona Illustrated http://kuat.org/misenplace.cfm?ID=625
  
• During Last weekend’s interviews with John C Scott on 1330 AM and Emil Franzi on KVOI 690 AM Bill Risner and Party Vice-Chair Jeff Rogers convincingly educated the general public about why every citizen should understand that it is vigilance and public oversight of all political parties during every election is what makes our votes matter in Arizona.
  

Labels: Bill Risner, democratic lawsuit, election fraud, election integrity

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Saturday, May 12, 2007

***Monday's hearing has been rescheduled.***

Judge Harrington has vacated Monday’s hearing and transferred the case to Judge Michael Miller.

We will update you on the new hearing date and time.

Labels: democratic lawsuit, election fraud, election integrity, Pima County

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Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Pima County Democratic Party Files Lawsuit Against Board of Supervisors

"A hearing has been scheduled by Pima County Superior Court Judge Charles V. Harrington at 1:30 pm on Monday, May 14,2007 on the Pima County Democratic Party’s request for an order requiring the county to turn over to the party its stored computer data from past elections. The hearing is called an Order to Show Cause hearing and at that at time Chuck Huckelberry and the Pima County Election Department will be required to present evidence specifying why it would harm the public interest if the history of past elections was known to Pima County’s largest political party.

By statute the Pima County Board of Supervisors run our county and state elections. Although three of the elected supervisors were nominated and elected as Democrats, nonetheless, Supervisor Valadez and Supervisor Bronson have consistently opposed the party’s efforts to obtain public records from the county and have forced their own party to sue. At the recent County Convention a resolution was unanimously passed requesting their cooperation, but they have ignored the resolution and have refused to help their party."

Pima County Democratic Party Attorney of record, Bill Risner

"What we have documented from Public Records Request, Depositions from Pima Co Election Department central tabulator, Diebold GEM audit log clearly shows serious problems.

The County manger Chuck Huckelberry and his Attorney are trying to find a rabbit hole to put the case down. There is a possibility that on or before May 14^th at 1:PM in Judge Charles Harrington hearing could be canceled and if it is we'll meet on the court steps and have Bill Risner, Donna Branch-Gilby, and Vince Rabago, Dr Ted Downing, and hopefully Earnest Hancock and others address the group. The suit is against Pima County Board of Supervisors.

William "Bill" Risner is the attorney of record for Pima County Democratic Party. To quote Pima County Democratic Party’s Attorney Bill Risner in his reply to the court:

"The defendant Pima County has asserted that the sky will fall and the sun will not rise in the morning if the Democratic Party obtains the past election data they seek."

For over 2 years we have been investigating Pima County Election Department and we don't like what we're have found. They have illegally been printing of election results up to 8 days before the election using the mail in early ballots. This has been going on since the primary of 2004. We know how the backdoor works with the GEMS/Diebold system and how it could be easily hacked using MS-Access.

They've known about the backdoor since 1996: Several Pima County bureaucrats from the very top down have known about the backdoor in our voting system. This odd procedure is not found in the 548 page Diebold's User Guide for our voting software, nor does explain that the system is built upon Microsoft Access. Furthermore, by using MS-Access, in less than a minute; a person could switch election by changing two positions in the candidates table (in Access) flipping an election all the way down to the precinct level. "

John R Brakey

Labels: Bill Risner, Board of Supervisors, Chuck Huckelberry, democratic lawsuit, Democratic Party, election fraud, Pima County

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