Arizona Election Fraud: Supervisors Accept County Shenanigans, Reject a Proper Audit

J.T. Waldron

The Pima County Board of Supervisors refused to conduct a proper hand-count audit of the 2012 general election ballots. This decision was made despite seasoned statisticians and computer experts in its own Election Integrity Commission indicating that the county's elections are not verifiable in their current state.

The primary reason? Timing. Pima County's use of this rationale is ironic because it appears that the county was in complete control its timing. As EIC member Mickey Duniho states in reference to Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry:

"Mr. Huckelberry unilaterally postponed the recommendation without consulting or informing the Election Integrity Commission. This violated the Commission’s right to advise the Board of Supervisors without interference, and it also violated basic rules of courtesy."

This postponement plays a role in solidifying the board's argument that 'it's too late'.

Huckelberry's recent memo, which is rife with distortions and errors, states that it's impossible to do a hand count audit. Such hyperbole was thoroughly eviscerated by Mickey Duniho's point by point response to the erroneous memo. Duniho provided his rebuttal in writing to each member of the board of supervisors.

"Your elections are being run by a sociopath," said EIC member Jim March. Elections Director Brad Nelson was held under a burning magnifying glass in the most recent Board of Supervisors meeting as March leveled a series of new charges against Nelson. First, March states that Nelson had his county-issued credit card yanked for fraud, yet he still keeps his job.

Other charges had to do with Nelson's management style with his employers. According to March, employees are willing to recall how they were retained because it was easy for Nelson to "make them cry" and "that's something he needed to do on occasion". Finally, March accused Nelson of breaking the law as he states that Nelson would ask temporary staff and poll workers to switch their party allegiance so that he can continue to retain these employees for future tasks.

Jim March's history of careful, meticulous analysis  before calling any one person's reputation into question adds significant weight to these charges.  We can only hope that an independent investigation into Brad Nelson's activities will take place. 

The only Supervisor concerned about having verifiable elections for this elections cycle was Ray Carroll, a Republican who has consistently moved to transcend party affiliation and improve transparency.

Arizona solidifies its national reputation as the 'meth lab of democracy' because those who can intervene refuse to make direct, immediate, substantive changes to the elections process.

Arizona Election Fraud: Mickey Duniho and Jim March Report Election Shenanigans to Pima County's Board of Supervisors

 County Board of Supervisors Comment for 11-13-2012

I have not spoken in this forum since I was appointed to your Election Integrity Commission four years ago. A sequence of events has brought me here today.

* * * * * * * *

The first event: In November 2011 the state added new election requirements, including one that counties must sort early ballots by precincts for the hand count audit. John Moffatt was involved, and reported to your commission on changes proposed and made – but did not report this new requirement to your commission.

The second event: In June and July 2012, Brad Nelson applied for and received a waiver from this requirement. Mr. Nelson neither consulted nor informed your commission of this action.

The third event: On October 26, with statistical evidence suggesting potential fraud nationally in computerized vote counting, an emergency meeting of your Election Integrity Commission unanimously approved a recommendation for today’s meeting that you order the sorting of early ballots and a precinct-based hand count audit to confirm the honesty of Pima County elections.

The fourth event: In response to a lawsuit the County included copies of two letters which revealed the existence of the new early ballot sorting requirement and Mr. Nelson’s successful request for a waiver of that requirement.

The fifth event: Without informing or consulting your Election Integrity Commission, your staff postponed your consideration of our recommendation to November 20.

The sixth event: In response to a query about why your Commission’s recommendation was missing from the November 13th agenda, Mr. Moffatt attributed the delay to ballot counting and possible recounts and challenges. The reasons given are clearly not relevant to delaying your consideration of our recommendation, and serve only to tighten the time frame in which to organize people to implement a precinct-based hand count audit before the ballots are moved to the Treasurer’s vault.

This sequence of events raises the question whether there is genuine importance or credence given to election integrity in our county. Your staff has been disrespectful to your Election Integrity Commission and by implication insubordinate to you.

The question now is whether you will take any action to address these acts of disrespect to you and the Election Integrity Commission you created four years ago, after listening to two years of public concern about the conduct of elections in Pima County, and after Pima County lost, at great taxpayer expense, a lawsuit having to do with election transparency.

If there is no election fraud to mask, there is no reason for Pima County’s continued tolerance of the obvious anti-transparency efforts demonstrated by your staff.

Thank you for your attention.

Michael A. Duniho

Did Expert Witness, Activists Thwart a Rove Ohio Vote Plot?

The Justice Integrity Project

By Andrew Kreig

 

A software expert’s testimony last week may have thwarted a plot to flip enough votes to secure a victory for GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Building on years of efforts by activists, election software critic Michael Duniho testified in Ohio's state court that secret software installed on Ohio machines could enable officials to flip enough votes to select a different statewide winner that the one chosen by voters. 

Duniho, a retired National Security Agency analyst, is shown at right in similar testimony in Arizona, where he is a local elections official. 

Duniho provided his explosive testimony first via telephone to a federal judge in a temporary restraining order hearing in the morning, and then to Franklin County Judge Mark Serrott to amplify his written affidavit, published here. The testimony supported an injunction request by election machine critics who have argued for years -- with scant previous success in courts and in the media -- that election machine software tampering has enabled theft of major elections, and thus poses a grave danger to the democratic process.

On Election Day 2012, their litigation and testimony raised the issue to unprecedented prominence. The litigation against state officials would have put any plotters on notice of serious threat of investigation and retribution. 

The contrary view is that no plot ever existed -- and that Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, shown at left, and fellow Republicans are being falsely suspected of bad intentions. Husted has denied misconduct in court filings. I reached out to him also for more specific questions, and shall update this post with any comment he or his staff provide. The Ohio Secretary of State's website contains background information.

This column reports Duniho’s testimony, and summarizes other evidence that election software poses a threat to fair elections. Reported also are: an Oct. 24 news conference announcing a chart alleging a Rove-linked “empire” of vote theft; a half dozen recent books on electronic election fraud; and a survey of a decade of major scandals, books, and articles.
The documentation draws on my previous columns, my research for a forthcoming book, Presidential Puppetry, and my ongoing interactions with research sources, several of whom asked my advice concerning their recent  news announcements in Washington. I suggested they announce litigation before Election Day because the public tunes out complaints from losers.

Update: I am scheduled to appear Nov. 12 on vote theft-critic Harvey Wasserman's 3 p.m. (EST) radio show on the Progressive Radio Network to discuss next steps with him and his fellow pioneer in the election integrity movement, Robert Fitrakis, a 2012 Green Party Congressional candidate. Fitrakis, based in Columbus, is a professor, attorney, website editor, and co-author of several books with Wasserman. Fitrakis filed the suit alleging electronic voting theft in Ohio’s 2004 presidential election and elsewhere.

Theirs and my multiple roles are increasingly typical in modern communications. Many news makers blog and broadcast these days, thereby blurring the lines between being a news source and part of the media. 

An even greater departure from past categories is that Karl Rove covered the Democratic National Convention September on a press pass. This was while he was also in the process of spending an estimated $300 million to help Republican candidates via his American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS funds. Also, he was allegedly scheming to steal elections via software fraud and voter suppression. Rove, like Husted, denies wrongdoing, and failed to respond to my request for comment on specifics. Whatever the facts on election fraud, Rove clearly is part of the Washington punditry elite delivering news to the nation.

The Duniho Testimony
 
Michael “Mickey” Duniho is a volunteer election official in Pima County, Arizona. He became prominent this fall among electronic voting machine critics because of his videotape testimony in an Arizona case arguing that dishonest officials can easily steal votes electronically. The photo above portrays that testimony, not his remarks by telephone in the Ohio litigation Nov. 6.

Duniho worked nearly four decades as a National Security Agency computer expert before his retirement. NSA is far larger and more secretive than the better-known CIA. It has vast information gathering and storage capabilities reported, among other places, in a series of authoritative books by former NSA staffer James Bamford.

Duniho claimed that the United States faced the threat of vote theft in Ohio because Husted, Ohio's secretary of state, had secretly installed software on voting machines covering 80 percent of the state’s population for no apparent legitimate purpose. The witness said the software could enable vote theft by officials, and no actual “emergency” required its installation throughout Ohio in violation of a state law requiring testing before installation. Also, Duniho said the voting machine company, Electronic Systems and Solutions (ES&S), appeared to be cheating the state on the cost of the software.

Husted’s legal team rebutted Duniho’s affidavit and testimony. The presiding state court judge failed to issue the injunction requested by the plaintiff.

A whistleblower in Husted’s office prompted the litigation by telling the Fitrakis team Thursday that the state secretly installed the controversial software in September. The Fitrakis suit was one of several he filed in state and federal courts last week with the cooperation of Columbus attorney Clifford Arnebeck, at left.

The litigation failed to attract much news coverage from major news outlets. Historically, reporters ignore allegations of electronic vote fraud as, in general, too complex and controversial. NBC News Political Director and Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd sent a Tweet this fall claiming election machine fraud is a “conspiracy theory” unworthy of coverage. 

Similarly, the New York Times published on Nov. 8 what can only be described as a biased, mocking profile of Mark Crispin Miller, a New York University professor and author who has documented election fraud. The Times article was A Long Day for a Professor Suspicious of Voting Machines. In contrast to the snide approach by the Times reporter, a YouTube video garnered more than 80,000 views with its more straightforward interview, visible here: None Dare Call It Stolen: US Election Fraud in 2012?
Despite such handicaps, the litigation last week doubtless reminded elections decision-makers that civil and perhaps criminal investigation could await them if dubious election results occurred. A reporter such as NBC's Chuck Todd can ignore a story. A defendant must respond in court, sometimes by sworn testimony that could potentially escalate into a criminal investigation that trumps secrecy provisions in official contracts with private vote tabulation companies.

The Secretary of State's Role?
Several voting theft opponents allied with Fitrakis and Arnebeck helped publicize the Ohio-litigation with a news conference Nov. 5 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Speakers included Clint Curtis, a Florida IT consultant who helped pioneering whistle blowing in the field by alleging that a Florida congressman asked  him to help defraud voters in the 2000 election. Also speaking were Harvey Wasserman, a frequent co-author with Fitrakis of books and articles on the topic, and Lori Grace, who has helped provide funding for such research. The activist group Protect Our Elections created a video of the speakers.

Several days previously, Ben Swann, a television-consumer reporter based in Cincinnati for Fox News affiliate WXIX-TV, published an investigative report describing how electronic vote thievery can occur. Swann’s video was widely circulated until YouTube removed it for violating terms of service. Election theft critics hope that such news reports encourage the FBI to demand records and interview all those involved. 

Their view is that massive elections fraud can be accomplished by very few conspirators so long as the operators are sufficiently expert and corrupt.

On Oct. 24, I  co-moderated with Arnebeck a news conference at the National Press Club. Alabama attorney Dana Jill Simpson and IT consultant Jim Marsh unveiled a new chart that they described as “Roadmap to Karl Rove’s Empire of Election Fraud.”

The chart is displayed at right, here on a downloadable link, and in larger size below. The relationship chart diagrams voting machine companies, and their ownership (including by Romney and Bush family backers).  Also, it asserts that a national training network runs a significant part of the nation’s back-office election operations through private companies hired by partisan officials who conduct operations in secret because the voting companies use proprietary software immune from outside scrutiny. 

Simpson, Marsh, and Arnebeck also announced formation of a new organization, Election Protection Action. This is one of several small civic groups across the country that have developed election fraud research for years, primarily in obscurity. 

Simpson has said she formerly worked with Rove and his allies on campaign opposition research that inevitably led, by her account, to campaign dirty tricks that soured her on the Republican Party. Among her allegations is that SmarTech, a Chattanooga IT consultancy, has played major role helping Republicans control elections, government websites, and government email  traffic both through the United States and globally.

Alabama Test Run For Election Theft?

Now a progressive, Simpson says that when she was a Republican volunteer opposition researcher she visited SmarTech in the days it was handling vast volumes of sensitive political traffic. Also, she has been reported to be knowledgeable on certain circumstances of one of the nation’s most notorious election software mysteries, the late-night switch of nearly 7,000 votes in rural Baldwin County that flipped Democratic Governor Don Siegelman’s reported re-election victory in 2002.
Speaking also at the Oct. 24 news conference was Siegelman's daughter, Dana, 27. She said the family went to bed on Election Night in 2002 believing news reports that her father had won re-election, but awoke to learn that votes had been shifted electronically in Baldwin County for never-disclosed reasons. She said that Alabama's Attorney General William Pryor, a Republican since elevated to the federal appeals court, threatened to arrest anyone who tried to investigate the vote-change. 

Therefore, she said, there was nothing her father could do except try to run again for governor in 2006. However, the Bush administration indicted him on corruption charges in 2004. When that case fell apart, they indicted him against before a different judge, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller, who was able to help prosecutors secure corruption convictions by making many pro-prosecution rulings that have puzzled legal experts for years but have been affirmed by appeals courts, including Pryor's. The convictions were primarily for Siegelman's reappointment to a state board in 1999 of a Republican who had donated to a non-profit that Siegelman supported.

In 2007, Simpson broke with the Republican Party to swear that she was aware of a Republican plot for years to prevent Siegelman from running for re-election in 2006 by framing him on corruption charges with the help of “Karl” {whom  she identifies as most likely Karl Rove] and Fuller, whom she swore was picked to preside over Siegelman as judge because the judge "hated" the defendant and wanted to "hang" him.

Nonetheless, Fuller has remained on the case, and in August ordered Siegelman, now 67, to resume a seven-year sentence. Dana Siegelman, at left with her father before his reimprisonment, is leading a nationwide petition drive to persuade President Obama to pardon her father. The petition is here.
 
She said it has been signed by 34,000 people so far, including an unprecedented group of 112 former state attorneys general who separately wrote the Supreme Court that Siegelman's actions did not constitute a crime under the law. The Justice Integrity Project has gone beyond that finding and concluded that prosecutors and the trial judge framed Siegelman, thereby creating a notorious political prosecution of global significance. 
The Siegelman prosecution is the kind of result that can occur when vote thieves acquire the power to appoint prosecutors and judges. 

Simpson’s “roadmap” devised with Marsh is so other researchers, including the media and law enforcement personnel, can understand the ownership, operation, and goals of the nation’s vote-tabulation process. The critics allege that the process is increasingly secret and controlled by partisan officials seeking to rig outcomes in selected locales when the stakes are high enough.



Rove has denounced her as someone who makes incredible allegations. Also, he states that he has never met her. Vanity Fair columnist Craig Unger examined her allegations, SmarTech's responses and , and Rove’s denials in his recent book, Boss Rove. Unger found her to be more credible than Rove on the specifics.

I have reached a similar conclusion. Rove has failed to respond to my requests for comment, or an in-depth interview. Furthermore, representatives of the Romney family have denied that family or Bain investments in a voting tabulation company, HIG Capital, which controls Hart InterCivic, has a fraudulent purpose.

Historical Background of Software Fraud
 
Fitrakis, Arnebeck, and Wasserman have alleged election machine fraud for years, including in litigation alleging that the 2004 presidential election was determined by IT fraud. In their  books and unsuccessful lawsuits, they say Ohio’s electoral votes went to President Bush via what they call a “Man in the Middle” strategy whereby IT consultant Michael Connell helped arrange for SmarTech to have access to Ohio’s votes before they were announced to the public. 

Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a GOP partisan, arranged Connell’s consultancy via his company, GovTech, which hosted its operations at SmarTech in Chattanooga. Blackwell denied any improper motive or result. Yet Steve Spoonamore, the top IT employee for 2008 GOP nominee John McCain, testified that the set-up enabled vote-switching without public knowledge. Connell described in a 2008 pretrial deposition the specifics of how he set up vote transfers. Connell died a month later when his airplane crashed. I summarized that history in a 2010 column. An appendix to the column provides hot links to nearly a decade of major books and articles in the field.

The concept of "election fraud" orchestrated via voting machine software is different from "voter fraud," which typically refers to ineligible voters casting ballots. Republicans have enacted many harsh voter suppress laws to restrict voting by largely Democratic groups, as Huffington Post columnist Dan Froomkin noted Nov. 12, Voter ID: The More You Know, The Less You Like It. Some voter fraud does in fact exists, counters Melinda  Pillsbury-Foster, a host of World Truth Radio who formerly had close contacts with prominent conservatives. But, she says, whatever actual problems exist in voter fraud have been grossly magnified by the media to create a false equivalence with the much-greater problem of massive elections fraud.

Summing up
Conventional wisdom is that no plot existed this year, or ever in the past. But we’ll never know for sure unless the relevant operatives and officials are examined under oath. 

Michael Duniho took the process to a new level on Election Day, Nov. 6. Let’s hope that the beginning, not the end, of any questions.

Former Rep. Ted Downing Recalls Efforts to Exclude Audit of County Races

Pima County has not only fought over the plain meaning of various election and public records laws, it has actively intervened in drafting of election laws.

Specifically, in 2006, former Representative Ted Downing and former Senator Karen Johnson authored SB 1557 in the State legislature to mandate random auditing and hand counting of ballots. Pima County Election Director Brad Nelson told Downing that including county races in the bill would be a "deal breaker". Nelson said that he and the Maricopa County Election Director would oppose the entire bill if the County elections were covered by the mandatory hand count. Because of that threat, SB 1557 was passed into what became A.R.S. §16-602 and County races were not included.

www.facebook.com/teddowning
www.facebook.com/votedowning
http://www.teddowning.com/

Elections Specialist Jim March Testifies About Black Box Vulnerabilities and Election Fraud

Jim March's testimony covers a variety of ways to hack into an electronic elections system. In yesterday's hearing, March also had the opportunity to describe the various indications of fraud that he had discovered in the electronic records from the 2006 two billion dollar bond measure (RTA Election).

Pima County Attorney Daniel Jurkowitz somehow thought is was a good idea to bring up Attorney General Terry Goddard's investigation during his cross examination. This backfires as March responds by reminding the court that Goddard's recount was missing four precincts.

This testimony is key in finally referring to the statistical improbability of having a third of the 368 precincts experience memory card re-uploads followed by the discovery of the corresponding missing poll tapes. After all, experts with DNA analysis provide a statistical probability of there being a match to a suspected murderer. Why does the statistical match not apply here? There is no will to prosecute, of course.

Retired NSA Analyst Mickey Duniho Testifies in Arizona Election Integrity Trial

Mickey Duniho testified in yesterday's election integrity hearing held in Tucson, Arizona.  Duniho is one of thirteen plaintiffs suing Pima County to get them to comply with existing election laws.   He provides an excellent summary of the problems verifying elections counted on electronic voting machines.

Pima County is notorious for fighting measures for election integrity and  have spent millions of taxpayer's dollars to prevent disclosure of public election records. 

The aim of the lawsuit against Pima County is to get the court to:

1. Issue an injunction requiring the Defendants to instruct poll workers to include, in every Official Return Envelope, a copy of the signed “tally lists” or results tape as required by A.R.S. §16-615.

2. Issue an injunction mandating that the Defendants separate the vote by mail ballots by precinct.

3.  Issue and injunction ordering Pima County to conduct sufficient randomly selected hand count audits of the vote by mail ballots, according to the procedure outlined in A.R.S. 16-602.  County races must be included in the audit.

This suit also requests the recovery of legal fees incurred.

A ruling on this case is expected today.

Donna Branch-Gilby Talks About Why She Ran Against Supervisor Sharon Bronson

Arizona:  In light of Pima County Supervisor Sharon Bronson's campaign season shots at Republican rival Tanner Bell over money and politics, the public is slowly starting to learn that the real question should be "Who's your sugar daddy?"

Arizona Citizens' Election Integrity Lawsuit Explained by Attorney Brad Roach and Republican Candidate Bill Beard

From left to right:  Attorney Brad Roach,  John Brakey,
Bill Beard, Chris DeSimone 

KVOA Wakeup Tucson at 7:00 AM Mountain Time on 1030 AM radio

Stay tuned for the final clip containing Pima County shill Benny White refusing to
participate in the Elections Integrity Board's emergency meeting scheduled to discuss former NSA employee Mickey Duniho's analysis of past elections. White mistakenly assumed that the meeting was going to discuss the pending lawsuit requiring Pima County to follow existing election laws. One can assume he is also mistaken in thinking he can be a co-defendant in that case because he ultimately would be acting against significant members within Pima County's Republican Party who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Editor's Note:  I was wrong with that assumption.  Benny White did testify last Thursday and stated that it was not his desire to separate ballots by precincts, despite it's value as an auditing function.  We'll have a post of it shortly.




NSA Analyst Mickey Duniho's presentation to the Pima County's Election Integrity Board will be posted later this evening.

Pima commission to discuss chance of election fraud in larger precincts

Arizona Daily Star
Carli Brosseau

The Pima County Election Integrity Commission is holding a special meeting today to talk about whether one member's statistical analysis of votes in recent elections shows evidence of fraud.

Under the group's bylaws, an emergency meeting can be held if at least five of the nine members call for one.

Michael "Mickey" Duniho
His presentation to the Election Integrity Board
will be posted on The Intercept today.

Mickey Duniho, a retired National Security Agency computer programmer, requested the meeting two days ago after he began plotting cumulative votes by precinct and noticing that outcomes seemed to differ by precinct size.

He was replicating earlier studies done by California researchers Francois Choquette and James Johnson, an aerospace engineer and a financial analyst. The researchers argue that their analysis of the recent Republican primary shows Mitt Romney making strange vote gains in most states' large precincts.

Duniho - formerly a Republican election observer in Maryland, a supporter of Democrat-backed lawsuits against Pima County's Elections Department and now a registered independent - said that his results seem to parallel those of Choquette and Johnson, who tried to account for their findings using demographics.

He is now collecting demographic data by precinct to try to explain his results with other factors, such as whether a precinct is rural or the affluence of the precinct's residents.

Duniho suspects that the patterns he found show a 10 percent flip of votes in favor of the Republican candidate in the 2010 race between Raúl Grijalva and Ruth McClung and the race between Gabrielle Giffords and Jesse Kelly the same year, as well as votes switched to benefit Romney in the Republican primary.

"The problem is figuring out what the statistical evidence does mean," Duniho said. "The computer is a black box. It is very easy for the guy who wrote the program to do just about anything."

At today's meeting, Duniho hopes to persuade the county Elections Department to sort early ballots by precinct before doing the hand-count audit required by law.

He has been advocating for that sorting, as well as for upping the percentage of ballots hand-counted, for about six years, arguing that his method boosts the chances of revealing fraud if it were to occur.

By law, Arizona counties must do a hand-count audit of 1 percent of early ballots and 2 percent of precincts in at least one federal and one state race. Pima County already audits more than required - 4 percent of precinct-cast ballots and 1 percent of early ballots. No local races are audited.

Some of the commission's members have argued strongly against holding the meeting and worry that it could unnecesarily increase fears about the vote count.

Benny White providing false testimony
to the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
about John Brakey's arrest while monitoring
elections in the Fall of 2008.

Benny White, a Republican election observer, responded to news of the meeting request with a sharply worded email.

"After reviewing the academic research involved with the links in the message, I conclude that the allegations being made are absolute nonsense," he wrote. "These academics don't take into account the fact that election results are the response by voters to campaigns and candidates. …

"I think there is a greater probability that fluctuations in the electrical voltage of the lines serving the election department have more to do with variations in election results than these alleged anomalies."

The county's technical consultant on election matters, John Moffatt, agrees that the data do not seem to show a vote flip in Pima County, but he does think the California researchers may be on to something with their findings in some other states.

Pima County employee John Moffatt speaks of
"witch hunts" in the past, but is responsible
for the incoherent rationale that required a suit
to obtain electronic public records. 

"It's worth paying attention to, and we took it seriously," he said. "My personal opinion is that it's another witch hunt, but our responsibility is to check this stuff out, not just blow it off."

He adamantly rejects allegations that county elections staff somehow tampered with any results.

The county's elections director, Brad Nelson, will not be at the meeting to approve a change of audit procedures because of family issues, but county workers involved in those processes caution that while it's theoretically possible to make Duniho's suggested change, it would be logistically difficult.

"That's a monumental task," Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez said. "It's kind of late to be changing the procedures in the middle of a major election."

The sorting machine needed to do the job efficiently would cost at least $125,000, said Chris Roads, deputy recorder and registrar of voters.

To do the sorting by hand would likely take two days, Moffatt said.

The window to challenge a vote count after an election in Arizona is five days after the canvass.

Arizona Election Fraud: East Side Republicans Club host Democrat Bill Risner on election integrity

Arizona Daily Independent

Republican Lori Oien, head of the East Side Republican Club, invited democrat attorney Bill Risner to discuss election integrity in Pima County. The Election Division, under Brad nelson, has come under scrutiny since the RTA Bond election in 2006.

Oien, a former candidate for Tucson City Council, introduced Risner, Republican Election official Benny White, Democrat Election official Mickey Donohue, and a documentary film crew that has been following her and documenting her life for the past 11 months. She told the multi-partisan group, that she had heard Bill Risner on the radio and because election integrity is “not a Democrat or Republican issue, but a fairness issue,” she invited Risner to address the packed house.

Risner, White, and Donahue presented pending lawsuits, current practices, and continuing concerns. Risner explained that “the problem for people who care about democracy and whether your vote actually counts is that we using computers, and they are computers that are privatized and suing their software, and computers do what they are told.” It is exactly what the Pima County computers were told which is at the heart of the continuing legal battle between Risner and the Pima County government.

Pima County officials exempted County races from hand count audits, and have denied access to the ballots cast in the 2006 election, as well as refusing to use optical scanners in the County’s possession to account for all ballots cast in election subsequent to 2006.

Aside from the concerns about the computers’ accuracy and security is the manner in which early ballots are handled by the County. Currently, early ballots are tabulated over a week before General Election Day, which has triggered speculation in past races that the results were known to political operatives who used that information for unfair political advantage.

White, who is a staunch defender of Pima County’s system, conceded that in the past there was fraud, but he said that there is none now.

“It’s our contention base on facts and past history that by the morning of the 30th of October with approximately 25,000 plus vote counted they will know who’s winning and losing and if they need to HACK or STUFF any county races, they will have 7 days to do it, said John Brakey of Americans United for Democracy Intergrity and Transperency in election Arizona, (AUDIT-AZ).

Tom and Terry: Sunday’s comic bonus

Arizona Daily Independent

By L Hunnicutt

Tom Horne was found this past week to have violated campaign finance laws.
The public outcry is nearly non-existant.

Both Attorney General Tom Horne and former Attorney General Terry Goddard failed to provide shed light on the RTA election.

Thr public outcry has been nearly nonexistant.

Crickets……

U.S. Election Officials "Reserving the Right to Cheat"

Brief history of Pima County’s election reform struggle

Arizona Daily Independent 

Bill Risner

Bill Risner

This timeline is designed to give people new to the issue an understanding of why we think there’s problems, what we’ve done about it so far and why we need to keep going after eight years of hard effort. A few items refer to happenings outside of Pima County but directly related to the issues here.

I’ve attempted to set out a time line and story from my viewpoint. Several persons have been key to a joint effort to achieve an honest count of votes. The effort has been long, costly and difficult. It was initially centered in the Pima County (Tucson) Democratic Party. Eventually heavy pressure from major contributors and the party’s candidate for governor caused the Democratic Party to drop out of the struggle.

November 1996. At this election part of the ballots in Pima County were counted on optical scanners using GEMS software and another part of the county used punch cards. The data from the different systems needed to be “merged” so the company sent an expert to Tucson to teach the county computer operator how to use Microsoft Access to accomplish that task outside the constraints of the software. Thus, the county learned that data could be manipulated outside the software constraints and re-inserted without leaving any fingerprints. All the “fingerprints” could be simply erased before re-insertion.

This “off-line” work could be done on any computer that used Microsoft Access, a common program. Testimony established that Pima County’s election computer operator regularly took home with him copies of election data where such data manipulation could easily be accomplished.

First Phase: Study, Reform and Cooperation

November 2000. The Florida ballot counting highlighted the necessity of looking for cheating. Bill Risner had obtained a complete recount of punch card ballots in a City of Tucson election 1990 and offered his experience and help to Gore’s lawyers in Florida. The offer was among many and was not accepted.

Bill Risner, a Tucson personal injury lawyer, had handled various election cases on and off throughout the previous thirty years. He had twice been hired by the county government as a special election lawyer. He was functionally the county Democratic Party lawyer in election law matters.

Bill asked to be appointed as the Democratic Party’s observer at the next election. He knew the party historically had not looked for cheating and wanted to observe the entire ballot handling process to see where one could cheat. Everything looked good at the 2002 election up until the actual tabulation where all that could be seen was a couple of blinking lights in a black box containing a computer. Bill knew nothing about election software or computers.

2003: Pima County Democratic Party chair Paul Eckerstrom at the request of a concerned Democrat created an election integrity committee and appointed Bill Risner and Tom Ryan to the committee.

Dr. Tom Ryan, Ph.D., was at or near retirement from a career as a computer specialist. He knew computers and was interested in the role they played in the election process. Tom lead the investigation of the computer system and wrote a report on the vulnerabilities of our computerized system. The County Democratic Party adopted his report as its policy.

2004: Tom Ryan identified the “early ballot” processing as a critical point because it constituted one-half of the ballots and had no auditing of accuracy at any point.

October 2004: Tom Ryan and Bill Risner, on behalf of the Democratic Party, met with Pima County’s Election Director Brad Nelson to ask for changes in the early ballot vote counting so as to have auditable results. Nelson later reported that the software “doesn’t permit it.”

November 2004: John Brakey worked at Precinct 324 as a poll observer. John suspected cheating among a couple of poll workers and conducted a personal investigation that proved it. After official disinterest in his proof, he started a group called AuditAZ. He has remained a driving force in pushing for fair and honest elections.

November 2005: Bill Risner and Tom Ryan obtained the City of Tucson’s agreement to audit its early ballot counting at the city election. The same auditing that Brad Nelson said couldn’t be done. The city and county use the same software.

May 16, 2006: A Special Election was held in Pima County to approve a one-half cent sales tax to generate $2 billion to pay for a 20 year road plan favored by “growth lobby” business interests and the county board of supervisors. The same sales tax had been defeated in four prior elections. The four prior losses were by a 60% – 40% margin. This victory was reported as a 60% – 40% approval. None of the election activists claimed the election was fraudulent.

But, they did object to the lack of monitoring and the questionable use of a Microsoft Access manual by the election operator during counting, as it violated election procedures. Local Democratic activists consulted by telephone with Jim March of Black Box Voting during the count that evening. Pima County refused to permit any political party to monitor that bond election.

Later, the county party brought Jim March from California to Tucson for expert consulting. He eventually joined the local election activist team. Jim is a Libertarian and a board member of Black Box Voting. He is applying his computer skills full time to election computer issues and was an invaluable addition to the citizen team. Jim consults with election activists nationwide.

Summer 2006: The Democratic Party election team was joined by Michael Duniho (“Mickey”), a retired National Security Agency (NSA) master programmer who had been a Republican Party election monitor for many years in Maryland before retiring to Tucson. Mickey became the local Democratic Party point person in recommending and achieving many procedural and equipment security changes for the fall general election.

November 2006: At this point the Democratic Party “team” included four people with extensive computer election expertise: Tom Ryan, Michael Duniho, Jim March and John Brakey and one lawyer with election law expertise. After the general election they used Arizona’s public record laws to request computer audit logs from the election. The county provided the audit logs that revealed that the county illegally printed summaries showing actual vote counts of “early ballots” more than a week before election day.

A public record request was made for the entire county electronic database of past elections. The county refused to provide that database. The citizen computer experts knew there was not a valid reason for the refusal and the county gave none.

Second Phase – Lawsuits and Discovery that a major election had been rigged.

January 2007: The Pima County bi-annual organizing convention of the Pima County Democratic Party unanimously passed a resolution requesting the Democratic dominated county board of supervisors to turn over the database and not force their own political party to sue them.

The board of supervisors still refused.

Bill Risner, hoping to avoid a more complicated lawsuit over the database, sued the county board on behalf of the Democratic Party to obtain the illegally printed vote summaries made before election day and videotaped discovery depositions of the county election director and computer operator.

April 17, 2007: The “summary report” lawsuit depositions revealed further illegalities and a lawsuit was then filed by the Democratic Party against the county board seeking the entire electronic database.

The County furiously defended that lawsuit. Its lawyers initially sought a “stay” in the lawsuit discovery because they claimed no one in the election department could testify because they all might assert their Fifth Amendment Right to avoid self-incrimination.

This “Database” lawsuit was defended by the County using all their resources. I estimate that the county spent more than $1 million in defending that public record request.

That lawsuit represented a new phase in the struggle, because it was abundantly clear that the County was hiding something very big and it could only be that it had fraudulently rigged the May 16, 2006 RTA election. The depositions and other discovery solidified our conclusion.

During the pendency of that case, the initial lawsuit was concluded when the county agreed to open the ballot boxes from the November 2006 general election where they claimed all the “summary reports” could be located. The subsequent examination confirmed the illegal printing as alleged by the Democratic Party.

At the four-day Superior Court trial in the database case, the county’s defense was that the Democratic Party could print fake results in the future if they learned the font and page layout used by the GEMS software and thus could create “chaos and mayhem” by “spoofing” the actual results. That absurd claim and thus lack of any defense re-confirmed that the county would fight to the last taxpayer dollar to prevent discovery of its election secrets.

January 27, 2008: Tucson Resident Zbigniew Osmolski went with friends to the Boondock’s Lounge where he had a candid conversation with Bryan Crane, who confessed that he “fixed” the RTA election on the instruction of his bosses and he did what he was told to do. Crane expressed his concern about being indicted and said he’d like to talk but couldn’t trust anyone. Affidavit of Zbigniew Osmolski: http://electiondefensealliance.org/files/Osmolski_Affidavit.pdf

May 23, 2008: The court ordered the County to turn over its database and to pay $234,347.20 to the Democratic Party’s lawyer as fees and costs.

An additional $19,161.05 in fees and costs was ordered to be paid by the county for the “summary report” case.

July 24, 2008 – Meanwhile, the ballots from the RTA election were in storage under the control of the Pima County Treasurer. The ballots are the definitive evidence of the fraudulent RTA election. The County wanted to destroy the ballots. A lawsuit was filed by the Pima County Treasurer for “guidance” by the court as to whether she was required to destroy the ballots.

The Libertarian Party and the Democratic Party filed a counterclaim alleging that substantial evidence existed to show that the RTA election was fraudulent and, therefore, the court should take control of the ballots and have them examined. That evidence included a confession by the county computer operator that he had rigged the election at the instruction of his bosses.

December 23, 2008: The optical scanners used at precincts print a “results tape showing the votes cast at each precinct at the closing of the polls on election day. Those scanners can be programmed by a machine called a “cropscanner” to print fake results. Pima County purchased such a machine two weeks after being alerted by a Black Box Voting Organization national alert on July 4, 2005. Invoice for the cropscanner Pima County Elections: 

http://electiondefensealliance.org/files/crop_scanner_invoice.pdf

Strong evidence was uncovered that Pima County may have used its newly purchased hack tool to rig the RTA results. The Democratic Party filed a third lawsuit – a public record lawsuit requesting to examine the poll tapes because the tapes might have clues showing they had been fraudulently programmed. After lengthy litigation, the tapes were produced and some 44% of the poll tapes were found to be “missing” or didn’t match the final database.

January 27, 2009: Superior Court Judge Charles Harrington ruled that the Arizona Courts lacked subject matter jurisdiction to consider evidence of a fraudulent election for the purpose of an injunction to prevent cheating in the future. He dismissed the case without requiring the County to answer the allegations because he found the Democratic and the Libertarian parties did not state a claim.

November 17, 2009: The Libertarian Party filed an appeal to the Arizona Court of Appeals of that ruling. The Democratic Party was pressured by Democratic elected officials and contributors to not appeal as the case could embarrass its candidates. The Libertarian Party asked Bill Risner to join its lawyer in continuing the case the Democratic Party now wanted killed.

October 28, 2010: In a Memorandum Decision, the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed Judge Harrington and ruled that the Libertarian Party had stated a claim and that they could pursue their claim that the RTA was fraudulent and obtain injunctive relief.

November 12, 2010: Pima County requested the appellate court to reconsider its ruling, claiming the Libertarian Party had alleged nothing more than “a discrete incident of past wrongdoing.” Its request was denied.

November 29, 2010: Pima County petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court for review. Review was denied. The case was sent back to Pima County.

May 4, 2012: The County Board of Supervisors requested that the case again be dismissed because they claimed they had not cheated in any subsequent election after the $2 billion road plan and tax increase and that the Libertarian Party had not specifically alleged they had a “good faith belief” that they would cheat again. Pima County Superior Court Judge Kyle Bryson dismissed the Libertarian case a second time, claiming that the most the court could do would be to issue an order that Pima County just “obey the law” and that it could not consider actual procedural changes. Therefore, he ruled that the Libertarian Party had not stated a claim that any court could consider.

July 11, 2012: The Libertarian Party requested Judge Bryson to reconsider his ruling.

August 13, 2012: Judge Bryson confirmed his ruling.

September 10, 2012: Libertarian Party filed its notice of appeal to the Arizona Court of Appeals. The local election activists fully understand that the stolen election in 2006 will not be reversed. That is not the issue. Their goal is to prevent cheating in the future. There are many steps the court could order to prevent cheating. Court intervention is needed because the county administration will not agree to changes that would prevent them from cheating. However, the county court won’t permit evidence to be presented.

We recognize that the same system used here is used in thousands of jurisdictions across the nation. Our goal is to help protect democracy at our home and hope that it helps others in our state and country.

The following are some additional links to related information: http://www.alternet.org/story/92366/arizona_activists_outline_evidence_of_2006_electronic_vote_theft

Will Your Vote Count in the Upcoming Election?

RTA election fraud suit under advisement

Arizona Daily Independent
Lori Hunnicutt

Pima County Superior Court Judge Kyle Bryson has taken under advisement the matter of whether Pima County’s alleged voter fraud in the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) election on May 16, 2006 will be heard in Court. The Arizona Court of Appeals overturned a previous decision by Judge Harrington that his court did not have jurisdiction and remanded the case. Judge Bryson was assigned the case late last year.

A packed courtroom listened as attorney Bill Risner respectfully told the Judge Bryson that the previous judge had made a mistake, and “now is your chance to fix it.” The judge will most likely decide whether to fix the mistake or not within the next 30 days. Plaintiffs do not expect a ruling before the current Primary Election is over.

At the time of the RTA bond election, questions arose regarding the election results almost immediately. They persist in this lawsuit in Arizona Superior Court.

County races, including large bond elections are currently exempted from a hand count of the votes, which increases the concern about election fraud.

The stated goal of a lawsuit filed in Arizona Superior Court by Tucson attorney Bill Risner on behalf of the Libertarian Party is “to protect the “purity of elections” in the future, starting with the 2012 elections. According to attorney Bill Risner, the lawsuit is based on two facts; “At the present time it is easy to cheat using our election computers and impossible to challenge a rigged election.”

The lawsuit alleges that “Pima County, through the direction and control of its county administrator C.H. “Chuck” Huckleberry, has systematically subverted critical controls required to protect the purity of elections. The elimination of those controls has permitted county management to take advantage of the ability to cheat presented by defects in our computerized election system.”

The central allegation in the suit is that “county management fraudulently rigged the Regional Transportation Authority election.”

The Pima County Democratic Party had previously taken on the issue. It was through the Discovery process in that effort, that the current suit bases its allegations. In papers filed with the court, lawyers claim that from “three other lawsuits involving the Pima County Democratic Party and Pima County,” a path was provided “for future discovery that must be followed in this lawsuit.”

The Libertarian Party argues that “The ease of cheating when matched with the impossibility of challenging any specific election requires court intervention in order to protect the purity of elections and ensure that we will have free elections.” They cite three Arizona Constitution sections as the basis of their claim, including Arizona Constitution Art. 2 § 21, which requires all elections to be “free and equal.”

Plaintiffs say that the most important legal and factual building block of this lawsuit is the agreed upon fact that it is very easy to cheat with our election computer software. In the suit, it is alleged that “the ease of cheating may be counterintuitive, especially among those least familiar with computers, but it is a fact. The ease of cheating may be a surprise even to those who are familiar with computers but whose familiarity was derived from securely developed programs. Our election computer system has quite simply been built to cheat and, at least for that goal, it has succeeded.”

Both conservative and liberal activists hold that the goal of the lawsuit is to make elections a transparent process by removing Pima County’s ability to cheat undetected. They have fought for over six years of litigation for the courts to decide they indeed have jurisdiction to ensure clean elections.

Precedent-Setting Court Case Could Affect 2012 Elections

Click here to follow court documents for this case.

Enter this Case Number: C20085016

Possible RTA election fraud focus of lawsuit

Arizona Daily Independent

This week Pima County administrator Chuck Huckleberry claimed that a law forward by State Representative Terry Proud and signed by the Governor, HB2408, was retaliatory. The law calls for an audit of the Pima County Bonding disbursements. Huckleberry and an editorial in the newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, argued that if Proud wanted the information, all she had to do was ask for it.

However, for over 4 years, various interests have asked Huckleberry for information regarding the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) election on May 16, 2006. At the time of the election, questions arose regarding the election results almost immediately. They persist in the form of a lawsuit in Arizona Superior Court.

The stated goal of a lawsuit filed in Arizona Superior Court by Tucson attorney Bill Risner on behalf of the Libertarian Party is “to protect the “purity of elections” in the future, starting with the 2012 elections. The lawsuit is based on two facts; “At the present time it is easy to cheat using our election computers and impossible to challenge a rigged election.”

The lawsuit alleges that “Pima County, through the direction and control of its county administrator C.H. “Chuck” Huckelberry, has systematically subverted critical controls required to protect the purity of elections. The elimination of those controls has permitted county management to take advantage of the ability to cheat presented by defects in our computerized election system.”

The central allegation in the suit is that “county management fraudulently rigged the Regional Transportation Authority election.”

The Pima County Democratic Party had previously taken on the issue. It was through the Discovery process in that effort, that the current suit bases its allegations. In papers filed with the court, lawyers claim that from “three other lawsuits involving the Pima County Democratic Party and Pima County,” a path was provided “for future discovery that must be followed in this lawsuit.”

The Libertarian Party argues that “The ease of cheating when matched with the impossibility of challenging any specific election requires court intervention in order to protect the purity of elections and ensure that we will have free elections.” They cite three Arizona Constitution sections as the basis of their claim, including Arizona Constitution Art. 2 § 21, which requires all elections to be “free and equal

Lawsuit highlights:

It Is Easy To Cheat With Pima County’s Computerized Election System

The most important legal and factual building block of this lawsuit is the agreed upon fact that it is very easy to cheat with our election computer software. The ease of cheating may be counterintuitive, especially among those least familiar with computers, but it is a fact. The ease of cheating may be a surprise even to those who are familiar with computers but whose familiarity was derived from securely developed programs. Our election computer system has quite simply been built to cheat and, at least for that goal, it has succeeded.

Battle Over Ballots

Tucson Weekly
Mari Herreras

Almost five years after the RTA election, a group of activists keeps fighting for election integrity

Bill Risner: "We want an order to keep them from cheating
in the future. This court does have jurisdiction to see
that the Constitution is followed in Arizona."

Tucson attorney Bill Risner stood before a Pima County Superior Court judge earlier this month and asked the court to take another look at the 2006 Regional Transportation Authority election.

Risner said there was enough apparent foul play involved for the court to change how ballots are counted in the county.

Yes, folks: The election-integrity battle rages on.

In the May 2006 RTA election, voters approved a 20-year, $2.1 billion transportation plan funded by a half-cent increase in the sales tax, with 60 percent of voters supporting the plan, and 58 percent supporting the half-cent sales tax.

Risner and other critics questioned the results when the plan passed, citing conflicting polls and precinct reports, and pointing out that the growth lobby had a lot to gain in a $2.1 billion plan to pay for roads and improvements.

Among other things, activists asked the state Attorney General's Office to look at anomalies detected in computer software that the county used to track votes. The anomalies issue led to a successful public-records lawsuit in 2010 that gave the Pima County Democratic Party access to the computer database for the RTA election.

The next legal challenge: asking the court to allow the public to look at the RTA ballots and other elections materials still in storage. Before that hearing ended, then-Attorney General Terry Goddard had the ballots inspected and counted, and determined there was no foul play. Critics, however, contended that a forensic analysis of the ballots should be done, and that key election reports were missing.

Arizona Election Fraud: Attorney Bill Risner's Argument Reaffirms the Need for Election Integrity

In Tucson, Arizona, today's hearing had two remarkable features.  First, the lack of substance  behind Pima County's motion to dismiss and, second, Bill Risner's argument reaffirming the purpose and significance this court case has for future elections.   Here's is Bill Risner's argument on behalf of the trial itself:



The whole point of the appeal won by the Libertarian party was that courts do have jurisdiction to issue orders to ensure fair, transparent elections when the legislative branch and the executive branch fail to do so. In an obvious stall tactic, Pima County decided to make the same arguments that were lost in the appellate court decision.

"You don't have subject matter jurisdiction for that" argued Pima County's private attorney Ronna Fickbohm in reference to ballot scans, a remedy proposed by the Libertarian party. Currently practiced in Humbolt County, California, ballot scanning is the measure making optical scans of the ballots available for public perusal.  Fickbohm continued to argue against the appellate court decision by insisting that proposed remedies can only be handled by the legislature.  The Libertarian party already established the failure of the legislative branch to offer a timely remedy and won the appeal based on that argument.

Additional points made by Pima County seemed to involve technicalities where none really existed.  Ronna Fickbohm  makes the argument that the plaintiff doesn't "say there's an ongoing problem of election fraud in the future." The judge may not appreciate this argument given the fact that removing Pima County's ability to cheat was the basic, implicit underpinning of the case for prospective relief.

Finally, Pima County attempted to rewrite recent history by suggesting that previous statements recorded in their last records trial are taken out of context and never meant to indicate that their software system was a security issue.

Here is Pima County Attorney Chris Straub (replaced by the pricier private counsel, Ronna Fickbohm) clearly making the argument on behalf of the plaintiff. You can decide whether it's taken out of context:



Here is today's entire hearing:



Video shot and edited by John Brakey

Arizona Election Fraud: Access Tucson Breaks Media Blackout

Dear Citizens Against Rigged Elections:

PLEASE, be in court with us, 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.

Monday March 5th- 11:00 AM
Judge Kyle Bryson’s Courtroom, Fifth Floor,
Pima Superior Court: 110 W. Congress, Tucson, AZ

For those who can’t make it, we will be video recording and will upload to our AUDITAZ’s YouTube channel. http://www.youtube.com/user/AUDITAZ/featured

Last Friday we did Stewart Thomas TV show (above) called World Harmony: Can It Happen? (a program that tries to bring more peace and human harmony into our world)


Tonight's Topic - ELECTION INTEGRITY: AN UPDATE WITH NATIONAL IMPLICATIONS!

Our guests:

- Bill Risner, Attorney

- Jim March, Board Member of Black Box Voting

- John Brakey, Election Integrity Activist with AUDIT AZ stands for “American United for Democracy Integrity and Transparency in elections Arizona


PROTECTING THE PURITY OF ELECTIONS
THE INITIAL DISCLOSURE STATEMENT FILED BY PLAINTIFF ATTORNEY BILL RISNER ON 1/12/12 IS A GREAT COMPREHENSIVE STATEMENT OF FACTS: http://tinyurl.com/LPFiling

Arizona Election Fraud: Pima County Continues to Delay Forensic Exam of RTA Ballots

Editor's Note:  This crucial court case is currently experiencing a media blackout among local Tucson press.  This includes the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Weekly.  This case is a textbook example of a battle waged by the growth lobby against the will of the population.   The reason why the county is using such extreme measures to stop this trial is that the plaintiff, the Libertarian Party, may conduct discovery which includes a forensic exam of the RTA ballots to demonstrate to the courts that the 2006 RTA election calling for a two billion dollar twenty-year sales tax hike was rigged.   This is the prerequisite for the courts to grant prospective relief for rigged elections.

If they felt they would be exonerated, Pima County would welcome the scrutiny.  Instead, it appears that Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry is pushing his attorneys to use all conceivable tactics to delay and obstruct the procedure, which would ultimately benefit the nation as a precedent-setting court case aimed at improving election integrity.

AUDITAZ
John Brakey


Video of Court Hearing:   http://youtu.be/yGALqZGvaRs

THE INITIAL DISCLOSURE STATEMENT FILED BY PLAINTIFF ON 1/12/12 IS A GREAT COMPREHENSIVE STATEMENT OF FACTS: http://tinyurl.com/LPFiling

PROTECTING THE PURITY OF ELECTIONS
 
IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
THE STATE OF ARIZONA IN AND FOR
THE COUNTY OF PIMA
CASE NO. C20085016
HEARING ON JAN 30, 2012  2:30 PM
COURT ROOM OF THE HON. KYLE BRYSON
RAW FOOTAGE RUNS 37 MIN

Defendant Pima County's Attorney Ronna Fickbohm, files and gets "emergency hearing" based on false certification to request the court to stop deposition of Pima Co’s Election Director Brad Nelson. UPDATE: DEPOSITIONS GET GREEN LIGHT FROM JUDGE TO GO FORWARD. 

Plaintiff's attorneys, Bill Risner and Ralph E. Ellinwood file Motion to Strike and Sanction Pima County for misleading the Court, filed:1.27.12:   http://tinyurl.com/7krbr4c  

Plaintiff also filed a motion in response to Defendant Motion for Protective Order filed 1.30.12:  http://tinyurl.com/83qk3mq

Pima County is doing everything possible to stop this case from going forward including filing motion based on deception.  http://tinyurl.com/7krbr4c  

The case is as fundamental as it gets. What we're seeking "prospective relief" so they cannot cheat in the future. ANDREA WITTE "THE CONNECT THE DOTS LADY" has connected the dots into a 10-Point Quick Summary of The Fact pattern in this gripping saga of power and deceit. And we propose a remedy that is easy, inexpensive and doable. Link to Flyer: http://tinyurl.com/7amy6ff

Since our saga began over five years ago, more and more people across America are becoming aware of the serious security flaws in computerized voting systems. They are systems designed to cheat, and they are everywhere. As the political scene heats up with the Presidential election, all eyes will be on Tucson as ground zero for exposing these flaws in open court and proposing reasonable checks and balances in the system. We must protect the purity of elections and public confidence in election results — a cornerstone of our democracy. That's what this case is ultimately about.  http://fatallyflawedelections.blogspot.com/ 

BACKGROUND: AUDIT-AZ, the Pima County Libertarian Party and other interested citizens of multiple parties for years have been investigating election processes in Pima County. In previous actions, the Democratic Party took the lead in winning public records lawsuits and revealing the extent of the problems, including poor security practices on "designed to cheat" systems, election results that consistently did not add up, missing or falsified paper, and election officials and staff who continuously flout the law.

AUDIT-AZ will be running the pool camera and if you can't make it to court you can watch the proceeding on our AUDITAZ's Channel on YouTube the next day: http://www.youtube.com/user/AUDITAZ/featured