Friday, October 26, 2012

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.

Friday, October 19, 2012

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).



Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Tom and Terry: Sunday’s comic bonus


Arizona Daily Independent


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……