Courts & Law

Pima County Election Integrity activists seek accurate audit of ballots

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Two election integrity events occured in Pima County on Friday.

First, the Pima County Election Integrity Commission held an emergency meeting on Friday at the request of one of its members, Mickey Duniho, a retired National Security Agency computer programmer, over concerns he had about a paper published by Francois Choquette (Aerospace Engineer, Statistics, California) and James Johnson (Senior Quantitative Financial Analyst, California), which outlined anomalies found throughout the United States in the Republican Presidential Primary that always favored Mitt Romney. The favoritism correlated strongly with precinct size, and did not correlate with any other logical choices (such as population density, income levels, race, etc).

The paper asked readers to confirm their analysis and report on their findings. Mickey Duniho analyzed the 2012 Presidential Preference Primary in Pima County and confirmed the analysis. Pima commission to discuss chance of election fraud in larger precincts:

[Duniho] was replicating earlier studies done by California researchers Francois Choquette and James Johnson, an aerospace engineer and a financial analyst. The researchers argue that their analysis of the recent Republican primary shows Mitt Romney making strange vote gains in most states' large precincts.

Duniho – formerly a Republican election observer in Maryland, a supporter of Democrat-backed lawsuits against Pima County's Elections Department and now a registered independent – said that his results seem to parallel those of Choquette and Johnson, who tried to account for their findings using demographics.

He is now collecting demographic data by precinct to try to explain his results with other factors, such as whether a precinct is rural or the affluence of the precinct's residents.

Duniho suspects that the patterns he found show a 10 percent flip of votes in favor of the Republican candidate in the 2010 race between Raúl Grijalva and Ruth McClung and the race between Gabrielle Giffords and Jesse Kelly the same year, as well as votes switched to benefit Romney in the Republican primary.

"The problem is figuring out what the statistical evidence does mean," Duniho said. "The computer is a black box. It is very easy for the guy who wrote the program to do just about anything."

At the emergency meeting on Friday, the Pima County Election Integrity Commission voted unanimously in favor of Mickey Duniho's recommendations to the Pima County Board of Supervisors, which must still act on the Commission recommendations.

Automated vote flipping for Romney: Crony capitalism at the ballot box? (video)

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Vote

by Pamela Powers Hannley

Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but the US needs serious election reform.

It should have happened after President George Bush and Florida's hanging chads stole the 2000 election. Remember, that was the year that Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote by 271 vs 266, with one abstention. 

For decades, people have grumbled about the Electoral College and how out of date it is. In more recent elections, layers of complaints have been heaped on the pile– complaints about the long, drawn out campaign season; the stupid primary/caucus system; the over-reliance on the opinions of voters in two tiny white states (New Hampshire and Iowa); the unending and increasingly nasty commercials; the evil robocalls and push-polls; the lies and spin (which the current Republican presidential ticket has taken to new heights); hackable electronic voting machines; and– this year in particular– the obscene amount of secret, dirty money that is being poured into the elections. 

Is anyone ready for real reform yet? Do you need more evidence that our "democracy" has been stolen by crony capitalists and big money?

Well… here you go, then…

Rigged Elections for Romney? from The Agonist…

A group of independent researchers caught a pattern of apparent vote flipping during the 2012 Republican primaries that consistently favored Mitt Romney. A form of election fraud, vote flipping occurs when votes are changed from one candidate to another or several others during electronic voting and vote tabulation… [more]

More examples of our broken system, some reform ideas, and a video after the jump.

Election integrity event: ‘Will your vote count?’ (video)

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by Pamela Powers Hannley

Information on tonight's election integrity event from the organizers…

Tonight, Wednesday, October 17, Bear Canyon Library, 6:30pm- 7:45pm. East Side Republicans will host a Point/ Counter Point on Election Integrity "Will YOUR Vote Count" speakers will be [Pima County election fraud lawyer] Bill Risner & Benny White.

Come ask questions, listen to the experts and know what to look for if you are a poll worker."

Election Fraud, Culture of Corruption in Pima County, why Early Ballots shouldn't be counted before Election Day and what all this means to us votes and more. 

 Address to Bear Canyon Library: 8959 E Tanque Verde, 85749 Tucson, AZ.

The event will filmed and available on Facebook at the AUDIT_AZ  page. 

For more background, check out the audio clip of Risner after the jump.

GOP war on voting: U.S. Supreme Court rejects petition from Ohio on early voting

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Posted by AzBlueMeeanie:

Another victory against the GOP war on voting. The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a petition for certiorari from Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted to review the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals order to make early voting available to all voters on an equal basis on the final weekend before election day in Ohio. High court won't block early voting in Ohio:

The Supreme Court sided with Democrats on Tuesday in refusing to
block a decision over disputed early voting days in the battleground
state of Ohio, giving President Barack Obama's campaign a victory three
weeks before the election.

The court refused a request by the
state's Republican elections chief and attorney general to get involved
in a battle over early voting on the three days before Election Day.

Obama's
campaign and Ohio Democrats sued the state officials over changes in
state law that took away the three days of voting for most people but
made exceptions for military personnel and Ohioans living overseas.

Democrats
in their lawsuit cited a recent study saying nearly 105,000 people
voted in the three days before the election in 2008. They argued
everyone should have the chance to vote on those days. And they said
eliminating the opportunity for most Ohio residents to vote in person on
those days, while giving military or overseas voters the chance to do
so, leads to unequal treatment.

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On Oct. 5, a federal appeals court reinstated voting on the weekend
and Monday before the election and returned discretion to set hours on
those days to local boards of elections.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court last week.

* * *

Shortly after the high court's decision, Husted ordered uniform hours
across the state. The hours are from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Nov.
3; from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 4; and from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on
Monday, Nov. 5.

Bob Bauer, general counsel for Obama for America, praised the Supreme Court's decision.