If you hoped the legal proceedings that brought the Pima County Democrats and Libertarians into court on Jan. 14 would bring relief for those who continue to question the results of the 2006 Regional Transportation Authority election … well, you’ll need to look elsewhere, at least for now.
Judge Charles Harrington released his ruling on the claim filed by the Democratic and Libertarian parties asking for the judge to take control of the ballots. It’s a no-go for Harrington, who says the argument was an attempt to contest an election–and it is too late.
During the hearing, the Democratic and Libertarian parties told the judge they weren’t asking for a criminal investigation. They told him their claim wasn’t an election challenge and that he had the legal authority to take control of the ballots in an effort to finally lay to rest any belief that the RTA was rigged or just fine an’ dandy.
Pima County’s attorney argued it was too late for the courts to intervene, saying that Harrington had to follow the law, and in Arizona, that means that elections must be contested within five days of the canvas. Harrington agreed.
Pima Democratic Party attorney Bill Risner is expected to file a motion to reconsider–which is similar to what he did during the first-election integrity hearing in front of Judge Michael Miller, during which the party sought the electronic database files. At first, Miller only gave the party one file before relenting and saying the county should release other election databases.
The Pima County Republican Party, which hired an attorney to file along side the county and Pima County Treasurer Beth Ford’s attorneys, issued a press release today defining the Democratic Party’s claims as “a lawless judicial intrusion by the courts into the election process.”
“As a party that has long been critical of judicial activism, the Pima County Republican Party is pleased to see that the court respects the separation of powers that is so important to our form of government. If there has been unlawful tampering with the ballots or the election results, Attorney General Goddard or County Attorney LaWall can–and should–conduct a proper investigation.”
Where current investigations stand remains unclear. During this last hearing, even Risner told Harrington that Goddard’s office refuses to talk to him or his client, or discuss claims that the RTA election was rigged. And Goddard has publicly told election-integrity activists that a court order would be needed in order for any ballots to be recounted.
That won’t happen on Harrington’s watch, unless Risner’s motion to reconsider is successful.
In a press release from election integrity activist John Brakey of AUDIT-AZ, he questioned Harrington’s ruling and asked whether the current legal system can uphold fair elections.
“In this case, the judge is saying that the state law limiting challenges to a five-day post-election window bars reforms even in a situation where fraud is obvious (or in the case of this motion, assumed as fact). One fact is clear. Contrary to the state’s constitutional mandate, the legal structure isn’t adequate to ensure fair elections. When laws conflict with constitutional mandates, it is the court’s duty to override those laws.”
It’s kind of like when Risner was warning Harrington during the Jan. 14 hearing that the courts could no longer wash its hands of election integrity matters–something the judge didn’t appreciate.
“That, however, is precisely what the court did,” Brakey wrote in his press release. “We at AUDIT-AZ herby metaphorically gift Judge Harrington with a huge stack of hand soap.”
Well, if soap is what it will take, then perhaps Harrington will have a change of heart like Miller did last year, when he decided no security risk existed and ordered Pima Couty to release the remaining electronic data base files going back to 1998.
Yep, the battle for the ballots continues.
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2009.
The RTA stole that election fair and square. So sit back and enjoy it, citizens. Yesterday’s roads for tomorrow (at a tidy profit for some select folks) whether you voted for them or not. And, since your votes can continue to be manipulated, Goddard and LaWall have more important plans for the future than justice.
It’s interesting to see the Republican Party’s formal stance in this matter. While few can profess to truly understand the “Republican mindset”, I know a lot of straight shooting Republicans that would take issue with this hackneyed “legislate from the bench” argument. It’s ironic (or perhaps sad) that they would use the same apple-and-orange comparison by accusing those interpreting the law as “legislating from the bench”. It’s the same argument used by that snake oil salesman James Baker against Florida’s courts during the neo-con theft of the 2000 Presidential Election.
Judge Harrington is shirking the court’s duties in this matter when his main argument for a “lack of jurisdiction” is his assertion that the Democratic party has a “plain, speedy and adequate remedy at law.” Everyone knows that’s a joke.
Again, the reason for this cross complaint was the lack of a “plain, speedy and adequate remedy at law.” The legislature offers a five-day window to challenge an election and the facts show that (with a computerized voting system) it is impossible to discover election tampering inside a five-day window. Thus, the legislative branch offers no “plain, speedy and adequate remedy at law”.
This state’s executive branch is supposed to conduct a criminal investigation. Not only is the State Attorney General Terry Goddard involving the suspects of the crime (Pima County) in developing exculpatory evidence on their behalf, he also refuses to make a proper examination of evidence provided by the complainants. In addition, Goddard continues to perpetuate the fiction that he does not have the authority to examine the ballots in the course of a criminal investigation. It is safe to say that the executive branch fails to offer “plain, speedy and adequate remedy at law.”
Contrary to what the judge would like us to think, the courts do have jurisdiction in this matter, especially when they are asked to provide “prospective relief” against future elections tampering.
Makes me wonder when is somebody going to do their job?
Technical analysis of the election databases uncovered unprecedented anomalies that clearly show that the 2006 RTA election was manipulated. Conveniently, NO backup of the database was saved and set aside on election night Tuesday 16th of May 2006 which is standard practice. Not until May 19th at 5:01 pm (three days later) was the election-night database first backed up and saved. Comparison of the database from the May 19th and another database saved on Saturday May 20th reveals the many discrepancies – among these, we see precincts where replacement memory card data was fed in that either added to the vote totals or in some cases subtracted ballots. Ballot purging can’t happen without a significant paper trail, which is nowhere in evidence. What we can’t see clearly is what happens to the database between 16th at 4pm and the 19th at 5pm. The audit log only records when you go through the GEMS front door. However, the backdoor is MS-Access, and Ted Downing finding the MS-Access manual on election night next to the central tabulator and then later Bill Risner found out that the election department owns a Cropscanner – a known burglar tool to illegally program Diebold precinct memory cards. (Link to video on how to do that:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8186883351933387074
What this all adds up to is this: a very high failure rate of memory cards would be the only thing that could legitimately explain all these uploads. Failure rates this high should have caused the county to blame Diebold – but they didn’t. Why? Because it appears to be self-inflicted and they knew it! Something was going wrong. We know from the audit logs that the re-uploads of memory cards started fast and furious after 11:00pm on election night, yet eyewitness observers say they went home between 10:30pm and 11pm because “everything was winding down”. Once they left, things wound back up again per the logs.
The other fly in the ointment is that the Oro Valley town council race was nail-biter close – the final official difference between winner and loser was three votes. They knew it was close and they knew it would trigger a mandatory recount. Faced with problems likely caused by amateur tampering with memory cards and/or the central tabulator database, they tweaked votes and ballots up and down in various precincts to make the results balance. We know the tweaking was politically motivated because of the memory cards reloaded after the main body were done, all 22 of the Oro Valley memory cards were affected. A technical glitch wouldn’t focus so heavily on Oro Valley but hand-repairing the Oro Valley recount certainly would.
Upshot: we don’t think this would have been caught at all except for the Oro Valley race being so close. That caused them to scramble to clean up the data by hand, and they left traces of tampering while doing so. This is also likely why they stopped taking snapshots of the progress of the election between the 16th and 19th, to give them time to do the cleanup. And it’s that cleanup effort that screams out from the logs and casts doubt on this entire election, including the RTA race.
These and many other facts lead AUDIT-AZ to believe that the RTA election was likely stolen.
Furthermore, last week, Tom Ryan PhD a member of the Pima County Election Integrity Commission, submitted to the commission a report titled “Anomalies in the GEMS databases from the May 16, 2006 Bond Election”Link to report:
http://www.fatallyflawedthemovie.com/pages/orocoverup.html
From the first trial (we won) with Judge Michael Miller; Excerpts from Memorandum, Declaration and Exhibits and these are just four examples of many we have:
I. iBeta reported to the Arizona General: “During testing it was discovered that the GEMS software exhibits fundamental security flaws that make definitive validation of data impossible due to ease of data and log manipulation.” Link
http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/files/iBeta_report.pdf
II. The county’s lawyer, Pima County Chief Civil Deputy Christopher Straub, explained in his opening statement that the GEMS software is not secure. “The databases themselves are not secured. We know that and we agree they can be altered using Microsoft Access.” (Opening Statement, Trial Transcript, Dec. 4, 2007, Christopher Straub, “Because it can be easily manipulated, the bottom line is in this whole thing is we’re only going to catch stupid people, all right, because one could also alter the audit logs. One could do anything.”
III. David Jefferson, Ph.D.: “The security mechanisms that are there are ‘in general hopelessly inadequate to prevent manipulation of ballot records or vote totals by anyone with even a very short period of access to the system. …”
IV. California Secretary of State Office Source Code Review of the Diebold Voting System: “Our analysis shows the technological controls in the Diebold software do not provide sufficient security to guarantee a trustworthy election. The software contains serious design flaws that have led directly to specific vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to affect election outcomes.”
• Link to Judge Harrington’s decision: http://www.fatallyflawedthemovie.com/media/Harrington%20Ruling.pdf
• Link to Motion to Reconsider by Bill Risner filed 2/4/09:
http://www.fatallyflawedthemovie.com/media/Final%20-%20Motion%20for%20Reconsideration%20filed%202_4_09.pdf