Mickey Duniho Resigns from Pima County's Election Integrity Commission

Mickey Duniho's resignation letter to Pima County Board of Supervisor Ray Carroll, the elected official who appointed Duniho to a seat in the Pima County Election Integrity Commission.

Dear Mr. Carroll,

I have spent many years at your request and that of others researching numbers of ways that elections in Pima County and the state could be made transparently honest. I have invested a great deal of research, much of it with others of the Pima County Election Integrity Commission and also with many others knowledgeable about methods of assuring the validity of elections. Six years ago I was honored by your appointment, having hopes for effective auditing of ballot counting in Pima County, and with the past experience of having witnessed apparently dishonest counts in my community. I now realize that these hopes and efforts have been wasted.

 The Election Integrity Commission in its six years has made a number of clearly sensible recommendations for improving legal and accurate processes for Pima County’s elections. Each of the Commission’s lucid suggestions to the Board of Supervisors or to the Secretary of State has been rejected outright or put off to another day when it was ultimately rejected by one or the other. The most recent recommendation, a very simple trial of an improved auditing procedure, was rejected quickly and blatantly, adding to the belief that the Pima County Board of Supervisors, the Pima County Administrator and Election Director, and the Arizona Secretary of State are engaged in the (successful) effort to block any substantive effort to improve the public auditing of ballot counting.  The only reasonable surmise at this point, considering the concerted and continued effort to prevent election reform, is that a majority of our county and state officials have a sincere stake in continued support of election fraud.

 Coming to the understanding that the Election Integrity Commission has been thwarted in its serious and sane efforts for election integrity in Pima County and the state, and that there currently seems to be no hope for election integrity in Pima County, I tender my resignation from the Commission.

 Sincerely,

 Michael A. Duniho

Duniho discusses the matter in a recent interview on the local radio show "Wake Up Tucson".  Video courtesy of John Brakey.

Southern Arizona powers-that-be don’t want you to know Bill Risner

L. Hunnicut
Arizona Daily Independent

                                       Video by John Brakey

On Friday 13, 2014, an ideologically diverse group of Tucsonans gathered to honor their friend; attorney Bill Risner. The event was years overdue.

Over the years, Risner has exposed and fought the powers-that-be in the community on behalf of the members of the community. And because of that effort, the powers-that-be have worked hard to keep community in the dark about the man who fought to shed so much light on their behalf.

From his days challenging the Viet Nam War as student body president at the University of Arizona, to just this past May when he sued City of Tucson for public records, Risner has been under the scrutiny of the powers-that-be because the powers-that-be don’t like people who bring scrutiny to them and their friends.

Over the years, despite his best efforts and those of so many others, little has changed in Southern Arizona, which is a microcosm of America’s ills. The only real change in our little world is that secret government agents have been replaced by computers that gather every shred of metadata possible in order to keep the powers-that-be and their cronies in cash and control.

Risner, a democrat, has taken on all the power brokers, in and out of his own political party. He took on Attorney General Terry Goddard and fought tooth and nail for the truth behind Pima County elections and specifically the fraudulent RTA bond election. The powers-that-be-good in the Party didn’t appreciate Risner much, but he won the admiration and loyalty of the grassroots.

That fight, Risner’s role in it, and the vastness of the County corruption earned little air time or column space. We don’t air our dirty laundry when the boys’ boxers are in the hamper.

In 1975, when investigative reporting still existed, Fred Allison of KGUN 9 News did a story about Risner and the secret agent from the Pima County Sheriff’s Office who was assigned to shadow him. It is hard to gauge the impact the report had on viewers at the time. It aired once. No relics of a follow-up can be found.

(Today, in Tucson, it would not be covered by the mainstream media, or even the tragically hip tabloids. They all crawled into bed together sometime back in the 1980’s but the citizens were the only ones who got screwed.) `

The following is an account from Risner to one of Tucson other tireless transparency advocates; John Brakey:

In the fall of 1975 on Channel 9 News had press coverage over allegations by someone that the Pima County Sheriff had wanted deputies to be on the lookout for Pima County supervisor Ron Asta in order that they might catch him in a compromising condition and stop him for a DU. Asta, an urban sprawl foe, who had earned of the wrath of developers, had not supported a larger budget for the Sheriff’s Office.

Risner ran into a television reporter while visiting the Pima County supervisor’s office. The reporter asked Risner if he knew about the Sheriff’s Office targeting anyone for political reasons. Risner said he had been targeted. The reporter asked Risner if he would agree to an interview. Risner, who is more sophisticated than the average bear, refused but suggested that he interview “his agent” who had worked for the Sheriff’s Office while targeting Risner.

Risner gave the reporter the agent’s name and telephone number. The reporter called him and the agent agreed to be interviewed for TV but only with a camera on the back of his head. Bill Risner then agreed to be interviewed for the segment.

(Back then, as it is now, if you tell a story that exposes their corruption, you will be crushed if you are the only one telling the truth. Even if you aren’t the only one telling the truth, if no one else has the nerve to tell it publically; you are toast. You can count on the cronies of the powers-that-be to line up to lie about you and marginalize you in every manner available. It’s the Tucson way.)

Bill Risner first learned that he had a “personal” agent one evening while he was visiting the Pima County Jail to see a client. A person standing behind the desk asked Risner if he recognized him. Risner said no, he did not. The man told Risner that he should he had been “his agent.” Risner said “let’s talk.”

Risner asked as they walked outside, “What do you mean?”

Risner’s agent told him that he went anywhere he thought Risner would be or where he could hear who Risner was talking to and what Risner was saying. If, for example, Risner spoke to a college class, the agent would be there pretending to be a student with a spiral notebook to take notes.

The agent then wrote weekly reports that were distributed to the Sheriff’s Office, the FBI, the State Police, the Tucson Police, and military intelligence.

Fred Allison reported it all. Both men shared their stories and Tucson continued slouching toward 1984.

In 2014, Risner is now trying to expose what many believe was a deal to sell off valuable public property at illegal below-market prices to the cronies of the powers-that-be. He represented concerned citizens who wanted to see the records of the negotiations that they, as citizens, are legally permitted to view.

Although the number of developers have dwindled, in the 8th poorest metropolitan area in the country, guys like Don Diamond still pull the strings of the elected officials on every level of government in Arizona.

A Pima County Superior court judge ruled against the City, for its failure to comply with public records requirements and awarded plaintiffs $15,800.00. The judge found, “COT’s slipshod approach to Ms. Cruz’s request, unreasonably expanded and delayed the resolution of this matter….”

That is it in a nutshell.

The powers-that-be have unreasonably delayed so many possible resolutions to so many of our community’s problems in an effort to maintain the status quo. Guys like Bill Risner don’t divide and conquer; they uncover. And given the all the information, people of good will can make the right decisions and resolutions.

We are "news blind" - Tucson media ignore news

William Heuisler
Tucson Crime Prevention Examiner

1) Neither the Arizona Daily Star nor local TV news has demanded to know who is responsible for the hundred million dollars missing from “Rio Nuevo” projects.

2) Neither the Arizona Daily Star nor local TV news has mentioned Superior Court case # C 20085016 where Pima County admitted under oath to wrongdoing and security lapses in the two billion dollar Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) election.

3) No media outlet has bothered to mention how Brian Crane, chief computer tech for Pima County Elections, admitted buying “election flipping” software, called Crop Scanner, prior to the largest, most expensive bond election in Pima County History.

4) No one reported when Pima County affirmed in testimony that the RTA election was a, "discrete incident of past wrongdoing” (Ford v. Dem. etc, 2010).

5) No one questioned Attorney General Goddard who first had “sufficient cause to investigate” but changed his mind a week later. Not one reporter wants to know why Attorney General Horne, “…declines to initiate another (?) investigation”.

Our Constitution protects press freedom. Shield laws in 30 states protect journalists from compelled production of confidential/unpublished information. The press is protected. What about the press’s duty to protect the public with information?

Garry Duffy, the Citizen reporter who
actually did report about the missing data
tape at Pima Elections.

And newspapers knew about the corruption back in 2007. Garry Duffy, reported for the Tucson Citizen: “No one seems to know what happened to a computer tape record of the May 16, 2006 (RTA) election… The county elections director made the revelation in his testimony Wednesday in a Pima County Superior Court trial... The case goes to the heart of the democratic process – the security of voting and vote counting…” (Duffy, 2007)
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The Citizen is gone. The “heart of democratic process” story is forgotten. Not a printed peep now about an ongoing civil suit and Pima County’s admissions of “wrongdoing”. Nothing is reported about a two billion dollar fraud on the taxpayers of Pima County.

Two billion is how much from each county taxpayer?

Do local TV and newspapers have a duty to inform their public when millions and billions of tax dollars are lost, or when official corruption occurs? Are the news media in Tucson malingerers? Are they willfully blind, or have they just taken sides against taxpayers?

Duffy, G. (2007. Tucson Citizen. Record of votes in ’06 RTA election missing.

http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue/2007/12/06/70793-record-of-votes-in-06-rta-election-missing/

Ford v. Democrat Party of Pima County (2010). Justia.com US Law. Arizona Court of Appeals, Division two, unpublished decisions. Case # C 20085016

http://law.justia.com/cases/arizona/court-of-appeals-division-two-unpublished/2010/cv20100001memo.html