CALL TO ACTION TO HELP SUPPORT ELECTIONS WE CAN TRUST.

For 12 years AUDIT-AZ has been working to make elections more transparent, trackable and publicly verified.  We have been involved in 11 legal actions throughout Arizona.  Most have been in Pima County.

We are going to court again on Monday, May 8, and request your attendance to support the work and let the Judge know this is an important issue for many citizens.  We would love to fill the courtroom.

Monday May 8, 2017   10:30 A.M

Pima County Superior Court, Judge Richard Gordon's Courtroom #586

110 West Congress St. Tucson, Az.85701     Fifth Floor

Case name:  Hernandez/De La Fuente v. Pima County

For background to this litigation.  In November 2015 Pima County replaced its Diebold vote counting machinery which was older and vulnerable to hacking with a new system ES&S DS850 which scans each ballot in order to count the votes.  To be brief the system has the capabilities to be totally auditable and available for public verification.  However, Pima County has chosen not to use the system to its full capacity.

 In a nutshell, how it can work…the ballot goes into the machine, a digital image is created which is assigned a unique number.   It can create a CVR (Cast Vote Record) where each ballots choice is recorded on a line as in an Excel report.   In the optimum situation of use, the machine, when an ink cartridge is installed, can assign another unique number to the original ballot.  These are coordinated in the Ballot Table.  By clicking on a number in the CVR one can see the vote spread and it would also be possible to verify the vote by seeing the original Ballot. The system is created so those digital ballot images could be put on line for public oversight.

However, Pima County has chosen not to do this. In the first 3 elections of use, the November PC Bond election, the March 2016 Presidential Preference Election,  and the Public lands Prop#123 referendum the Election Department secretly destroyed the ballots even though they  told the Pima County Election Integrity Commission they had saved them. 

This is when AUDIT AZ came to action. After filing records requests to verify that the ballot images had been destroyed, we went to court for a TRO (temporary restraining order) to save the images from destruction for the August 2016 Arizona State Primary election.  Pima County did not destroy the scanned images but they did not put in or turn on the ink cartridge to put the numbers on the original ballots and thus complete the systems full capacity and ultimate verifiability. This is the same situation for the Presidential election, November 2016.

At our next hearing, we prevailed as Judge Gordon ruled that the scanned images are indeed public records and should not be destroyed'

This coming Mondays hearing is CRITICAL.

 We want Judge Gordon to make these scanned image public records available to the Public.  Pima County, on the other hand, has a motion to dismiss.  Pima County has been working very hard to halt making these scanned images available to the public.  They have even gone to the state legislature and introduced a striker bill (#1094) that makes the scanned images as hard to see as the original ballots.  It was rushed through; the Legislators were not informed of the issues and saw it as an innocuous housekeeping bill.  It passed but does not go into effect late July or August.

IT REALLY IS THE TIME OF 'WE THE PEOPLE', PLEASE COME TO THE COURT HEARING AND HELP THE FIGHT FOR HONEST ELECTIONS WITH YOUR PRESENCE.

Tell your friends.  Become informed.  This is a National Fight as already 40% of the nation's votes are counted on these ballot scanning machines by 2020 85% will be.  Auditable, tractable, publicly verified elections are possible. Trustworthy elections are basic to de-corrupting our Democracy.

AIDIT-AZ can be contacted at John Brakey……(520)339-2696


This report out next week!