Black Box Voting : Latest Investigations from Black Box Voting: 3-19-08 - Tightening the net: An indictment of the Sequoia voting system security & legality ------------------------------
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Posted by Bev Harris on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 - 2:02 pm:
Jim March, John Brakey and Michael Shelby have pulled a coup in Arizona.
They have studied and reported on the presidential primary election in the largest county in that state, Maricopa, with 56% of the AZ vote.
The report they've published sets new ground in how to monitor the security and sanity of an election.
THERE ARE THREE REASONS TO READ THIS REPORT:
1) Appendix A is a scathing indictment of the security and legality of the Sequoia product line. Taking advantage of material that wasn't available to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's top-to-bottom review team, they've shown that Sequoia must now be considered the least secure and most illegal black box voting system in America - "dethroning" Diebold. Appendix A is a standalone section that can be read independently of the full report.
2) Also of national interest: this report forms a blueprint on how to do central tabulator observation missions, whether as a citizen or partisan representative. By carefully observing the hardware being used and asking pointed questions and public records digging, they've shown that it's possible to pierce the veil of secrecy over election (mis?)conduct.
Findings include the outsourcing of the entire mail-in vote process including the use of a private company to print, mail out, -=receive=- and scan the ballot signatures ... all by a private company outside of the scope of public records access and proper accountability.
3) For any Arizona voter, the report is a must-read to see just how badly an election can be run in the 4th largest county in America! It's also a message of hope - they can't get away with running a system this sloppy without getting caught.
The barriers these three faced in producing this document were unbelievable. Arizona is one of the states where the rights of the citizenry to observe and control their own elections are not recognized by the government. Instead, you must be a political party election observer in order to observe. Turned down as observers by the Maricopa Republican and Democratic parties after a slander campaign by the county elections department to both of those party chairs, March and Shelby were credentialed as observers by the Maricopa Libertarians...who by statute have observer rights. But since the Libertarian Party wasn't on the ballot, the county attempted to deny them credentials, which was reversed by a judge on election day in an emergency hearing called by attorney Michael Kielsky - the LP STATE party chair.
Based on what's come out in this report, the nation owes a debt to the Arizona Libertarian Party.
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