Thursday, October 29, 2015

John Brakey on Wake Up Tucson: Pima County Tried to Rig Another Bond Election

This is what cheating with impunity looks like.  Yesterday and nine years after the RTA debacle, an employee at the Pima County Elections Division broke into a sealed part of the central tabulator to hook up an ethernet connection. This occurred after the Logic and Accuracy (L&A) Test was completed and seals were placed prominently on the vulnerable parts of the system.  Since live video feeds show a running total of the number of viewers during transmission, they probably did it when Pima County's video feed left the impression that no one was looking.  This, of course, was hours after John Brakey had left the observation room.  Brakey drove five minutes from his house, spent a couple of hours writing and emailing a number of people about the L&A Test and, by habit, hit the hot link to the election department's live feed.  Moments later, he was watching the act take place before him.

Elections employee breaking the seal (he's worked there 10 years).
John Brakey discussed this incident this morning on the local AM radio show, "Wake Up Tucson".



The following is Brakey's letter to the Secretary of State:

          Michele Reagan
          Arizona Secretary of State

I am an experienced, well trained election observer for three political committees and at least one or more nonpartisan candidates on the Nov 3 ballot. (On bottom have listed groups)
On the morning of Tuesday, Oct 27, I observed the logic and accuracy test at Pima County Elections (PCE).   After the testing was done (about 11am) I went to my home office to write a report of my observation and concerns in this election.  I turned on the live video feed and had it playing on my Samsung flat screen tv.  For several hours as I was writing my report, I saw no activity at PCE.  After I finished my report I emailed at 2:56 pm.  At about 3:00 pm, I notice two men who earlier were part of the L & A test enter the room.  At about 3:03 pm, I took the attached picture of an employee of ten years removing a security seal, and connecting ethernet cables. 
The second person turned on the computer. I could see that he went into a program I had observed earlier that day called ES&S “Election Reporting Manager” (ERM).
At this point I called some friends thinking that this could not be true.  Maybe there were party observers out of camera range.  After several more minutes passed, PCE Director Brad Nelson entered the room and sat on a chair right next to the man on the computer. Mr. Nelson had to have seen that the door to the computer cage was wide open (as seen in picture above).
 No sound comes through the feed but I could see that Brad said something and then started spinning around in the chair acting happy.

 After a few more minutes of trying to figure out what to do, I decided to go and see for myself what was going on.  I live about five minutes from Pima County Elections. When I got to the public observers’ door, it was locked.
I then noticed that Mr. Nelson now was with several other gentlemen on the Westside corner of PCE. I approached him and ask if I could talk to him. I than asked him if was there anything wrong with the live video feed.

He said no and explained to me quickly how it worked.

I then said, “well look at this” and I showed him my smart phone picture of his guy breaking the seal and illegally entering computer cage that holds the Election Management System’s computers that were previously sealed.  I have video of that procedure.
Mr. Nelson acted surprised and said for me to wait from him at the public observers’ door while he figures out what’s going on.
After about 25 minutes, Mr. Nelson returned and told me that he has already called the party observers and that a mistake was made and that the L & A test will be redone at 8:00 AM.
I know that he was dishonest with me. Mr. Nelson had to have known when he entered the room that protocol was violated. One could not have missed this obvious breach under his supervision and in such close proximity.  
I hope that the above information warrants a proper investigation. We are concerned and there are other serious issues that the Secretary of State’s office should investigate with us.
Additionally, I wanted to mention that I deeply appreciate your prompt work last week addressing the issue of verifying elections and hand count audits in Pima County. 
Please help us make sure that election are true and accurate .
Respectfully yours,
John R Brakey, of AUDIT-AZ & Special task force leader for Citizens Oversight for Verifiable Elections:
 
JohnBrakey@gmail.com  520 578 5678 Cell 520 339 2696
CC
Gini Crawford, Chair of the “Taxpayers Against Pima Bonds”   Email: GiniCrawford54@gmail.com
John Kromko, Chair of Tucson Traffic Justice”,                        Email: jkromko@dakotacom.net
Ignacio Gomez, Chair of the “No on the Sunnyside Override” Committee Email: TheYaquiTrader@live.com

Mission
of Citizens Oversight for Verifiable Elections, COVE: To restore public ownership and oversight of elections, as per the Arizona constitution; to protect the “purity of elections”, “run by the people”.  This will ensure the fundamental right of every American citizen to vote, and to have each vote counted as intended in a secure, transparent, impartial, and independently verifiable audited election process. 

Monday, October 5, 2015

An Open Letter to the Pima County Board of Supervisors and Its Elections Department

 Mission of Citizens Oversight for Verifiable Elections, COVE: To restore public ownership and oversight of elections, as per the Arizona constitution; to protect the “purity of elections”, “run by the people”.  This will ensure the fundamental right of every American citizen to vote, and to have each vote counted as intended in a secure, transparent, impartial, and independently verifiable audited election process. 
Chair of PCBOS Sharon Bronson
130 W. Congress, 11th Floor, Tucson, AZ 85701
Phone: (520) 724-8051 Email: district3@pima.gov  

Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez                                                                             OPEN LETTER                         
240 N. Stone Avenue, Tucson AZ 85701
(520) 724-4350  Email: fann@recorder.pima.gov 

Brad Nelson, (CERA) Elections Director
6550 S. Country Club Road, Tucson, AZ 85756
Phone: (520) 724-6830 Email: Brad.Nelson@pima.gov 
Monday, October 04, 2015

Dear Honorable Sharon Bronson, Chair PCBOS, County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez and Election Director Brad Nelson:
    We are pleased to announce that we have formed a coalition called “COVE” which stands for Citizens Oversight for Verifiable Elections.  At this point in time we have three committees members which are Gini Crawford, Chair of the “Taxpayers Against Pima Bonds, John Kromko Chair of Tucson Traffic Justice and Ignacio Gomez, Chair of the “No on the Sunnyside Override”.   We also expect to have several of the four certified legit non-partisan candidates from Oro Valley's recall joining COVE and naming our observers.  We expect our observers to have the same rights and respect that you give the two political party observers.  As you know most of the candidates and issues on the ballot are non-partisan.
   Our members are invoking their rights as “a political committee” and/or “nonpartisan” under ARS 16-621 Proceedings at the counting center, “Excerpt from section A”. …and shall be conducted in accordance with the approved instructions and procedures manual provided for in section 16-452 under the observation of representatives of each political party and the public. The proceedings at the counting center may also be observed by up to three additional people representing a candidate for nonpartisan office, or representing a political committee in support of or in opposition to a ballot measure, proposition or question….”  
    Here’s a link to the history of what happened in that case back in the 2006 RTA Bond Election titled “Elections remain compromised” which cost taxpayers several million dollars in litigation and left the voters wondering if their vote “really counts”. The only solution is to have a verifiable election.
    We at “COVE” support the Pima County Election Integrity Commission letter to Sharon Branson Chair BOS, dated September 28, 2015, advising minimal hand count audits that they hope to have in the November Election.  However, we must point out that this does not resolve the Vote by Mail problem of being unverifiable: video Mickey Duniho, (see problem below).
    Your own Pima County Election Integrity Commission has been proposing solutions that "you’ve been ignoring for years".  We refer to the April 17, 2015 letter from PCEIC to BOS titled, “Recommendation to Use Ballot Images to Enhance Early Ballot Audit”, and the letter dated July 18, 2014, to the BOS “Recommendation for Early Ballot Sorting by Precinct on Early Ballots”.
    There is nothing in state law to prelude the County from doing a voluntary hand count”.  Tom Ryan, Chair Pima Co. Election Integrity Commission.
    The big problem we see where the ballots could be gamed with impunity is in the Vote by Mail (VBM) in the November General Election which is about 80% of the votes.  VBM ballots are not sorted by precinct except inside the central 'hackable' tabulator that could easily be preprogrammed only hack ballot batches over a certain size, thus avoiding the random testing done by audit batches pulled for hand counting. That's why the Volkswagen case is so meaningful to elections transparency activists, WV rigged the testing.  “…the cheating was preprogrammed into the algorithm that controlled the car’s emissions.  Computers allow people to cheat in ways that are new.  Because the cheating is encapsulated in software, the malicious actions can happen, far removed from the testing itself.  Because the software is "smart" in ways that normal objects are not, the cheating can be subtler and harder to detect.”
    “That's why we must have software verification with two parts: Transparency and Oversight” which as we know in Arizona, neither exist. “Transparency means making the source code available for analysis. The need for this is obvious.  It's much easier to hide cheating software in the manufacturer's code. Cheating on regulatory testing has a long history in corporate America.” By CNN Bruce Schneier:  "VW scandal could just be the beginning”.   
    According to AUDIT-AZ longtime attorney and friend Bill Risner: “Every study of the security of computer voting systems has identified insiders such as company employees and or vendors and election department employees as the primary security risks.  These same vendors when having their software certified, instructed the test labs "NOT" to check the software for security.”   Video Bill Risner in Court:

    The solution is simple: Pima County’s new ES&S central count scanners, the EVS 5200 makes a digital image of both sides of each ballot. These digital ballots have a bar code and precinct number that can be sorted by precincts and counted. We know of several companies that have software that can sort and read the digital images that work in elections. However, the gold standard is hand marked paper ballots that are hand counted.  We recommend printing and counting the digital VBM ballots and then taking a "statistically assured" random group verification to the original ballots that are stored in numbered batches. Here’s a short video depicting digital ballots from Dane County in Wisconsin, where they used an older version of the EVS 5200 called the DS200 as a way to verify voting machines output with digitally imaged ballots as shown.

    Again by utilizing the existing election laws:  “ARS Title 16 – Elections and Electors", the Arizona Secretary of State Election Procedures Manual Revised 2014, to download the entire manual here, or link it to specific pdf pages below in this manual.  As political party, candidates, and as electors, we invoke our rights to the following positions, and request that the named party oversight designates be given prior significant constructive notice in writing & verbally, to invoke oversight, before these boards meet.   Each of these boards shall consist of at least two members, and shall be registered voters of the parties on the ballots cast.    Each board’s responsibilities shall be as provided in SOS manual:

                  & Citizens Observers                      *      snag board
                  L & A testing                                   *     duplication board
                  receiving board                               *     inspection board
                  write-in board                                  *     accuracy certification board
                  data processing board                    *     audit board

   The Persons noted below are designated as Observers for the counting of the early ballots, the General Elections ballots of November, and until all votes are counted.   Also, these persons have authority under ARS 16-571 to visit precincts. 
     Mickey Duniho, John R Brakey, Ally Miller, Richard Hernandez, Sergio Arellano-Oros, Paul Hilts, Jonathan Salvatierra, and others, to be trained and named later.
    The first Chairman of the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the Rev. DeForest Soaries, appointed by George W. Bush as the first chair of the commission created by the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), otherwise known as the “Hack America Vote Act”, in the wake of the 2000 Presidential Election Debacle, stated in Oct of 2006: "We know more today about how to build a machine to take pictures of rocks on Mars than we know about how to build a machine to safeguard the American right to vote.”  Read what else Rev. DeForest Soaries has to say.
    Today, thanks to the work of election transparency activists, scientists & statisticians, Secretary of State Debra Bowen of California, in 2006 called for:  Top to Bottom review on voting system.  From citizens on commissions like PCEIC, universities, and their reports generated, we now know that these machines must NOT be trusted.  This short video of 8 minutes, gives the best overview, and is right on the money in every respect, when it comes to electronic voting --- be it via touch-screen computers, or paper ballot optical-scan systems. 
    Ronald Reagan said it best; “Trust but Verify!”   Conversely, No Verify, means NO TRUST!  The Board of Supervisors actions on this matter will show the citizens of Pima County whose side you’re on?
    On a closing note: Please demonstrate by action that this is not true in Pima County. History teaches us that elections without public accountability are nothing more than vote-counting in the dark, controlled by a county government, in the act of choosing itself and its cronies, while picking our pockets.  Our message is simple: “We the People”, must have elections that are 100% transparent, that are completely verifiable, with a documented ‘chain-of-custody’, followed by mandatory election verification!  Nothing less!
  Government can never be the sole verifier of its own secret elections.
    Respectfully yours,
   John R Brakey
John R. Brakey of Americans United for Democracy, Integrity, and Transparency, Arizona & Special task force leader for Citizens Oversight for Verifiable Elections.
JohnBrakey@gmail.com        520 578 5678 Cell 520 339 2696