Election-integrity activists proved this week that when you want to know something, you get in a van and haul ass to Phoenix.
What they wanted to know was the exact location of the 2006 Regional Transportation Authority ballots that were transported from a secure storage facility in Tucson to Phoenix on Tuesday, Feb. 24, after being released to the Arizona Attorney General’s office following a sealed court order issued by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge. And while they suspected the ballots were going to Maricopa County Election Department, the activists also wanted to know the exact procedures that would take place to make sure chain of custody of the ballots was protected and how AG Terry Goddard will go about counting the ballots. They wanted all political parties in the counting process and as recount observers.
On Monday, Jim March and John Brakey from Audit AZ went up with a van of other activists and paid a visit to the Maricopa County Election Department. They were told the ballots are not there by election department employee Ray Valenzuela. The exchange was caught on film as part of JT Waldron’s documentary Fatally Flawed, on the Pima County elections-integrity travails.
The big news garned from the interchange: The AG has the ballots, the AG has contracted with the elections department up in heathenville (i.e. Phoenix) to prepare and do a hand count, and all of it is expected to take place in April. See a clip from Monday’s visit HERE.
Imagine that … the mystery of the RTA election–if it was flipped as the Pima County Democratic Party and election integrity activists have come to suspect–could be resolved by spring.
The activists ended their Monday road trip at the AG’s office, where they hoped to talk with Don Conrad regarding the ballots. They wanted to ask if a security seal could be placed on the ballots boxes and find out if the ballots are indeed there. They stuck around for an hour waiting, and were told no one was there to meet with them, so they headed outside to protest.
Via e-mail from Brakey: “Truly the AG office doesn’t get it! As we know election security is a cooperative process between elections officials and the political parties, per Arizona law. Historically, when law enforcement or ANY other agency seizes sole control of critical ballots, it’s a sign that either the agency does not understand chain-of-custody election laws–or it is their intent to commit election fraud. Without approved witnesses appointed by the major political parties, the public can NEVER be certain that ballots secretly sequestered by ANY agency are EVER counted correctly.”
For this week’s Weekly, The Skinny talked to AG Press Secretary Anne Hilby, who confirmed the ballots are in possession of the AG’s office and are being treated as evidence as part of their ongoing criminal investigation into allegations that the RTA election was flipped– although Hilby couldn’t confirm or deny they may indeed be at the Maricopa County elections office.
The Skinny requested a copy of the court order, but Hilby said the document is sealed in court and is not considered a public record. Hilby said an examination protocol has yet to be decided, but once it is, it will be made public before any counting or examination takes place. Of course, Hilby and her boss probably didn’t expect Brakey and company to drive up and ask for themselves.
“I can confirm the Attorney General’s office has taken ballots… The ballots are treated as evidence in a criminal investigation… We understand the significance of this issue, especially to particular organizations in Pima County,” Hilby said.
Come April, I’d like to have a front row seat in Maricopa County. I want to watch this count take place, and like everyone involved–from activists, to Pima County politicians and bureaucrats, the RTA folks, our own elections department and even Terry Goddard–I’m looking forward to an ending to what has often seemed like a never-ending story.
Before we can call it close to quits, we need the AG’s office to do this right, and that means talking to the Pima County Democratic Party, following chain-of-custody and other security measures as suggested, and making sure everyone is on board with the final procedures before that first hand touches that ballots. If not, it never ends.
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2009.
IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: DFA-Tucson
March 4, 2009
Dick Kaiser, co-chair
520 881-0711
Local Documentary of Election Controversy Ready For Release;
Groups Host Preview Monday Evening
Fatally Flawed, a newly-produced local documentary that chronicles the legal challenge to the May 2006 Pima County election which created the Regional Transportation Authority and generated a lawsuit resulting in the largest release of election data in US history, will be previewed for the public Monday, March 9 An alliance of the Tucson Chapter of Democracy for America and Voices of Opposition will host the presentation on Monday, 7 pm, at the University of Arizona’s Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (AME) building on the northeast corner of Speedway and Mountain. Free to the public.
The issues involving the apparent lack of integrity of the electoral process in Pima County and Arizona and the almost three year old challenge to release of the RTA election ballots for a hand count remain headline news to this day.
In addition to the preview of Fatally Flawed, principal investigators of the election will be on hand to provide insight on the current issues related to the controversy.
Recently, members of the local Democratic Party’s Election Integrity Committee offered individual opinions on the matter.
“The Democratic Party [and all other political parties] has a statutory right and a critical role in our state system to track and see what’s going on with our elections,” said Attorney Bill Risner, who is involved with the legal investigation into the validity of the May 2006 Regional Transportation Authority Election.
“Elections and election processes should not be secret, and when they are it’s a strong sign of either outright fraud or an agency fearful of having its own incompetence exposed,” insisted Jim March, board member of Blackboxvoting.org and local election investigator. “True security always lies in openness.”
Michael Duniho, former election inspector in Maryland and computer analyst concluded, “It seems clear that our system of ‘one-man, one-vote’ only works if a large number of people monitor the election, to be sure it is honest.”
From the words of those who controlled the election and others who have investigated the election, Fatally Flawed makes the case that:
1. Acts of omission and commission occurred before, during and after the May 2006 election by entrusted officials, constituting the charges of election fraud.
2. To date, government officials at the local and state levels have acted to thwart the resolution of these accusations of a rigged election.
3. Only a prompt, fair, and transparent hand-counting of the May 2005 ballots will remove the cloud over the creation of the RTA.
For further information, call 622-6419
Ms. Herreras acts as if certain facts are unimportant, when they are central. The Democratic Party did not oppose the RTA, does not now, and has bragged about that.
The RTA has always been understood to be a multiphase proposal that even when the final phase is over, our daily had to reassign it’s transportation reporter to the boondocks for reporting another desperate effort to fight the shortage of ‘free’ asphault would be needed almost certainly if the now two ‘RTA’s suffered there are any clue.
So you see the question is- do we wait until these incredible decades are over to suddenly declare another emergency in which we “MUST DO SOMETHING- ANYTHING!”, or can we have a vote sooner, say before even the first half decade is over.
It was not voted down as strongly as it should of been, also not controversial, because many believed it was a waste of time to vote at all, it would not pass. Now we know better, and we also know there is no way it could possibly be put to a vote of the people again, and pass.
As long as we know that, it will never end, the opposition to it, based upon the obvious, that it was at it’s heart a corrupt election, deliberately scheduled to deceive an insignificant number of voters, largely special interest ones, into being able to vote for it and not shoot themselves if it passed.
True the election integrity folks include all sorts, even some who could serve on a jury, at least for a misdemeanor, and maybe even some who could maintain a professional license, especially if they get to pocket six figures for a low five figure outlay of either there own time or compensation for assistants.
What the weekly ignores is that yeah, you acknowledge being here because you got a free ride for a year, and once having addicted the locals to ‘free’ distraction once a week, who could depose you? Or at least by the the time the Rialto called, who would notice you suddenly got much more corrupt perhaps? But do you really think your endorsement, along with that of every politician, can sustain a second votes scrutiny? You ignore the fact that you know it can’t. The fact that almost no one voted last time. The fact that you had no right to claim disinterest against public interest even in the outcome.
Mr. Brakey rushes in to give two different years for the election. Yeah it’s fascinating but the facts are not disputed. Too few people could control the outcome. Now those few are augmented by unknown others.
The typo is telling. The first phase is a done deal, lives have been lost, transit has been setback a generation or more, but the other phases we can be spared. They are not ‘born’ yet! NOT EVEN
a time machine can make the RTA acceptable. A new election would have the conduct of the RTA investigated so far certainly, and that is easy to do.
The money is getting spent in ways almost every debate had the proponents denying. The shifting of money from operating cost to toys that recently has yet to hit the press despite the ultimate resignation of one of the perpetrators of utterly fraudulent claims about the nature of the voter approved line items would become appreciated by community leaders, even elected ones, enough for them to even acknowledge publicly.
That ten year old born in half a decade risk being mowed down by some drunken hybrid yuppie because a billing clerk ultimately killed our not just afternoon but comprehensive, actually full time jounalistically staffed paper no redefiniton of marital union can possibly excuse. NO state law enforcement agency is strong enough to resist the pressue of the auto industry on this one. Once the prior elections results managed to be ignored enough to dare put the same dam question before the electorate the future of the healthy evolution of transportation was jeopardised. The very fact that we have voted on this question too many times prevents a single election from being taken seriously. People who want to own cars need to find a way of paying for them and to use them. Get over it. Stop the madness of thinking we should all be so outrageous. Get a life!
Thanks, Mari. You get it. So many government officials have so mishandled the RTA election problems that it becomes more and more difficult to believe any of them. Terry Goddard is hardly trusted by Pima County Democrats. He hasn’t responded to offers to share evidence from the Election Integrity people or the Pima County Democratic Party’s attorney, Bill Risner. He has publicly stated over and over again that he conducted an investigation and there were no problems with the RTA election. His original investigation, however, was a cooperative effort with Pima County, the accused party. The county was allowed to help pick iBeta, the company hired to investigate the files, and then suggest what they looked at and what questions to answer. When iBeta’s report “cleared” the county, it did so only after stating there was actually no way to know whether the election was fixed because the Diebold GEMS software was so terribly flawed. And they found indications that files had been manipulated, but that meant no one had manipulated them because the evidence of manipulation would have been so easy to remove. Huh? Add to that, the promise an Assistant Attorney General made in a public document to the individual accused of hacking the election–the alleged hacker won’t have to take any more **** about this because the AG’s office will take it for him. Goddard begins this stage of the investigation in desperate need of a do over. He’s got the opportunity. But as you say, only if he can demonstrate the proper chain of custody and security measures have been followed with the ballots, and only if his count is done with the oversight of all interested parties. Everyone in Pima County, in Arizona, in the world, for that matter, should be able to watch this count so no one will have any more doubts. Please!!!
This isn’t really about the RTA at all and whether people supported it or not just obfuscates the issue. The issue is about clean, fair, accurate elections whether it be a Republican stealing an election from another Republican (LD20), developers stealing from taxpayers, or Democrats stealing from other democrats in primaries. There are no “bad parties” here…only corrupt people within and outside parties who try to scr@w over the citizens of this county and country. If someone I can’t stand gets elected fair and square, I can accept that. I cannot accept stolen elections, corruption, etc. even if it is from a candidate or proposition I support because it is the cornerstone of democracy to have fair and accurate elections. That is the real issue here.
The chain of custody has already been broken, so counting what very well could be forged ballots will not solve anything.
I appreciate the Weekly publishing my comment, and at least those two others, whether or not they suffered a moderation delay, and somewhat at least if other comments did not survive to be seen by anyone that ‘delay.’
It is not known to me that all my comments have been made available in the past- perhaps that shows my age, that I’m not a kid anymore not just old enough to drive and not because I’ve never been so evil as to suffer from that vice longer then the novelty or demented contentionability of some sort of necessity lasted.
The real questions I ask are too rarely asked. Why so many phases? IN what crystal ball is it presumed that people like me are so special, people who realize, within a few years if not months or weeks or mere days or moments, that hundreds and thousands of people moving only themselves at the same time, to and from only a relative few number of places, is impossible to ever afford to do well, and has never been done well, and will never ever be done well simply because we all have not just unmet needs but even greater wants that instead could be met if given a choice- a choice the RTA is all about denying instead.
The alternative is beyond reflexive imagination and certainly not seen on TV or even anywhere in America. It is not half million dollar buses stopping every block to let in people oppressed enough to get on for so little benefit. It is not more demolished instead of maintained overpasses, on the pretense of them being insufficiently wide, when for far less we could have far more overpasses with all of them maintained far better.
The six million dollar man has been replaced by as many billions chasing cave man misnomered SPORT/UTILITY parasites that fatten us to suck a teeny drop of our blood across a life and leave us to rot too soon in the dust. These are the people who paid for the mailings, the falsified ‘data’, the utterly absurd reports about how much fuel and productive time would be wasted if we didn’t all have to continue to drive our planet further over the edge, hands on the wheel, like in some sort of not old enough to drink turbulence unbrained antierotic horriforgical cataclysm that makes the first and second coming pedisterical and if only a glimpse of it could be shared here a done deal not needing to be suffered because quite enough have died too horribly, too soon, without sin.