Over the weekend, I wrote about Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer sticking it once again to Pima County regarding election-security issues. Last week, Brewer sent out a press release along with her 11-page letter to Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry admonishing the county for the 133-page report Huckelberry and his staff prepared that’s full of security measures and proposals–some they have already put in motion, and others that need approval from the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
Well, Brew is being Brew, but she is also the Secretary of State and has the final authority on all things elections–and she is steamed. Her own press release describes the letter as terse.
So professional, yes?
Well, no. From Huckelberry’s perspective, the whole thing is a bit self-serving on the Brew’s part. When I called to get comment, he said he was left scratching his head a bit and wondering if he and Brew are “living on the same planet.”
He’s particularly perplexed by the timing, which arrives at the heels of Judge Michael Miller’s final ruling on May 23 that the county release the remainder of election database files going back to 1998. The decision ended a year-long public records lawsuit that oddly put a Democratic-majority-led county government against its own political party.
Huckelberry says he plans to address Brew’s views in a report for the supes’ June 17 meeting. There are certain pieces of his original report he feels confident Pima County can continue to move forward with.
The fanfare of the letter sent to media outlets–including that press release–remains troubling to Huck.
“It all seemed a little self-serving,” he says. “It seems like she is turning this into a political game, but this isn’t a game, this is for real.”
Pima County election integrity activists Jim March and John Brakey released a 21-page response to Brew’s letter, going through her comments point by point, which you can read here. This time around, for the most part, the activists stand by Pima County, although they agree with her on a few points.
“If Jan Brewer’s highest priority was security and reliability of elections she wouldn’t have exposed herself to conflict of interest criticism by accepting co-chair position of the Bush reelection campaign in 2004,” March and Brakey write.
From their perspective, Brew’s letter is flawed and makes exaggerated claims.
As of this writing, the Democratic Party is also waiting for the release of the database files Miller told the county to turn over. The county came up with a release plan, but those involved in the handover aren’t sure if they agree.
More to come, folks … more to come.
UPDATE: Brakey asked us to post this updated document, to take the place of the previously posted Word doc.
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2008.
OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE OUT TODAY FROM MARCH AND BRAKEY FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE:
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
June 11th 2008
For more information, contact John R. Brakey, AUDIT-AZ (520) 250-2360
Jim March, BlackBoxVoting.org, 916-370-0347
Brewing Up Election Trouble: Local And Nationally Known Activists Respond To Secretary Of State Jan Brewer’s 11 Page Letter
On 6/6/08 Arizona Secretary of State (SOS) Jan Brewer wrote an 11 page letter outlining objections to the election integrity process in Pima County. The letter followed a June 4th vote by the Pima County Board of Supervisors not to appeal a court decision establishing that computerized election databases are public records that must be released to political parties according to state law after each election.
Beginning in 2004 Pima County citizen election integrity advocates working with and within the Pima County Democratic Party were able to cooperate with the county government to achieve significant security improvements and recommend measures to increase transparency that make the county a model for fair elections in the state and nation. With the lawsuit over, that cooperation is now picking back up.
Brewer is intent on blocking this progress. Her press release and letter reprimanding county officials (see links at the end of this document) make clear her objections to any current and future security measures. The letter is filled with misstatements and inaccuracies that echo talking points by voting machine vendors.
Brewer maintains that most of the increased election security procedures created by Pima County in cooperation are superfluous, since the state’s “statutory and procedural security, educational and accountability requirements” assure fair and honest elections.
Her assertions don’t stand up to scrutiny.
• Brewer maintains that voting equipment is vigorously tested and certified at the federal and state levels. The state’s testing and certification process amounts to little more than an ineffective “kicking the tires” of the voting equipment. The state does no “red team” type security analysis, in which qualified security professionals take a complete voting system and, acting as both voters and elections staff in separate scenarios, attempt to subvert a test election. When “red team” testing was performed in California, every voting system failed miserably.
• Brewer objects to the disabling of modems that could allow outside tampering to anyone who knows the phone number.
• Brewer maintains that touch screen voting machines help disabled voters. Diebold and other providers of touch screen machines have long used the ploy of helping disabled voters to get their machines into polling places, while providing seriously substandard access. Brewer’s view of “accessibility” involves twisting disabled grandmothers into pretzels as shown.
• Brewer adamantly opposes the county’s proposal to graphically scan ballots and upload them to the Internet. Brewer vastly exaggerates the cost of this “security patch” which would cost under $150,000 in Pima County. This security measure was recommended by election integrity advocates working with the Pima Democrats as a check on Diebold products, declared “fatally flawed” along with every other Brewer-approved system in open court by Pima County’s own experts. Brewer has no trouble with spending $3 million to $6 million to replace the Diebold equipment with another vendor’s garbage, making her objections based on cost ring hollow.
The Need for Election Transparency
The concerns above and many more raised by Secretary of State Jan Brewer’s letter are discussed in greater detail in the document linked below but the point is clear. Brewer’s thinking does not include the concept of election transparency, where every phase of the election is open to the legally proscribed oversight by Arizona’s political parties. She apparently believes the voters should trust the state and counties to conduct fair elections. The Pima County Democratic and Libertarian Parties and Pima County’s officials are working together to create a transparent secure system – those are not opposites, they are hand-in-hand partners to a truly Democratic process.
The continuing efforts by Secretary of State Jan Brewer to impede our progress and to keep the process of counting votes a hidden and mysterious process makes us question her commitment to fair elections in Arizona.
Link to our EDA document:
Brewer….ugh. This woman makes Blackwell and Harris look like honest SOS’s. I hear she is going to Co-Chair McCain’s campaign. Not partisan at all that one. What a sleazy, lying, corrupt hypocrite. Jan Brewer and her pulled-so-tight-she-can-barely-see face lifts. You know how you know she is lying? When she opens her mouth.
No conflict of interest. Considering McCain only got 47% percent of his own parties vote, I guess having an SOS willing to help you steal elections so you don’t look like a loser in your own state when the Democrat beats you is necessary. There is no way he can win and if we thought 2000 and 2004 were bad, look out! Unless Obama does some major selling out to the corporations between now and November there is no way they will let him be President.
I believe the big delay on releasing the databases and implementing secure procedures is so the election watch folks could not analyze the data quickly enough and put safeguards in place in time to prevent stealing the 2008 elections. We already know they steal them in Maricopa from the LD20 race where one Republican steals from another Republican. With Sequoia which is less secure then Diebold and easier to hack, Jan baby got her way. If these evil election integrity activists in Tucson start to get transparent fair elections, that means that a whole lot of people getting “selected” by corporations who have a financial interest will no longer be. Maricopa is where the most election fraud is happening. Mark my words. After they get Pima cleaned up which is the little fish, Maricopa is the big fish to reel in.
Pima is just the street dealer. Maricopa is the drug lord.
This blog doesn’t allow spacing in between paragraphs? Isn’t it run on Wordpress? You must have it configured wrong because it is messing up the paragraphs which makes it hard reading the posts and comments. Please consider fixing that to a form that is easier to read. The folks at WP can help.
Where are the links that are referred to in the press release by March and Brakey??
Didn’t see them.
It take you to a story written about them in the Weekly.