by David Safier
If you don’t know him, Brad Nelson is the head of Pima County’s Elections Department. The quality and accuracy of our elections depend on his work. My experiences with Nelson tell me that our elections are in trouble as long as he’s at the helm. He can be described generously as ill suited for the job and less generously as totally incompetent. (Even less generously, though I don’t know this to be true, he can be described as someone who has participated in rigging elections and hides his actions behind a show of incompetence.)
I took part in the Saturday audit of the ballots of the recent primary. The ballots came from random precincts in the county. The idea was to count the ballots to see if the number agreed with the number that came from the vote counting machine for each chosen precinct. I watched Nelson in action. More about what I saw after I pause for an analogy.
I think Brad Nelson would make a good fireman. When the alarm sounded at the station, he’d be the first guy to slide down the pole and hop on the fire truck. At the scene, he’d rush into a burning building to pull out your pet dog (and if he abandoned his fire hose to do it, someone else could always take his place). He’s the guy you’d see on TV that night, his face covered with soot, a tired grin on his face and a scared puppy in his arms.
But Nelson would make a lousy fire chief. He’d route all the fire alarms to his cell phone. When a call came in, he’d grab a garden hose, call his assistant Mary, hop in his car, speed to the fire and try to put it out himself. When you saw him on TV that night in front of the charred ruins of the house, he’d admit that, yes, it might have been better if he used a real fire hose but he couldn’t find one, and a well organized crew of firemen might have done a better job putting out the fire, but there was no time to give each fireman a call, then give them an hour long training lecture, so he decided to try and put the fire out himself. He did the best he could, he’d say. Maybe he’ll do better next time.
I was a Democrat working at a table with two Republicans counting ballots (you always have members of both parties to guarantee a fair counting). We were given a sealed bag filled with ballots. It couldn’t be opened without breaking the seal — that’s the point. Inside the bag, we were supposed to find a piece of paper with a number written on it, the same number as we found on the seal. If the number on the paper and on the seal agreed, then we could assume the ballots hadn’t been tampered with.
We broke the seal, opened the bag and pulled out the piece of paper. The numbers didn’t agree. Let me repeat. The piece of paper inside the bag had a different number than the seal. That should be cause for concern, right? For all I know, the bag was opened in the dead of night, some ballots were removed, others were marked and put in their place, and the new seal was put on after the damage was done. Of course, there are perfectly legitimate reasons for the seal to be changed. The original could have gotten broken in transit, for instance. It happens. But for me to be certain the anomaly was legit, I should have seen documentation that explained why the seal was replaced, signed by an elections division official and members of two political parties. (Party observers are supposed to be present at all parts of the election procedures, so they would be available to watch what was going on and sign the document.)
Brad offered no documentation. He said something to the effect that, Well, maybe on election night the seal was broken or someone didn’t put on a seal so we had to put on a new one, or something like that. Did he know what happened? No, he didn’t, but that was a possibility. He smiled a What-can-you-do? smile and left.
Later that day, I asked Brad if he knew how many other tables had similar problems. He had no idea, he said, and that didn’t seem to bother him.
Chain of custody. That’s the gold standard for election integrity, just as it is for evidence in a criminal investigation. If there’s a break in the chain at any point, the ballots can be tampered with, and from that moment on, there is no way to be certain the ballots in the sealed precinct bag are the same ones the voters filled out.
The Election Integrity group has worked tirelessly (their patience simply amazes me!) to secure Pima County Elections, to make sure every step of the process is monitored and verified. But Brad Nelson, through a combination of carelessness and incompetence (and possibly corruption, though I don’t know that’s true) has frustrated their attempts at every turn. What I saw Saturday was a small sample of what goes on multiple times at every election Nelson oversees.
We will never — repeat, never — have guaranteed fair and accurate elections in Pima County so long as Brad Nelson heads the election process.