Sec'y of State Jan Brewer Ordered to Appear in Court

[lady lib]

Secretary of State Jan Brewer has been ordered to appear in Pima County Superior Court on October 18, 2005 at 9:00am to explain why she has not complied with Arizona law that requires adoption of voting system decertification standards. This order is the result of a Complaint for Special Action filed on October 6, 2005 for plaintiff Thomas W. Ryan, head of Arizona Citizens for Fair Elections.

A.R.S. §16-442C states ” the secretary of state shall adopt standards that specify the criteria for loss of certification for equipment used at any election for federal, state or county offices and that was previously certified for use in this
state.” In response to a public records request, State Election Director Joseph Kanefield, in a letter to plaintiff dated September 9, 2005, stated that “based on a review of our records we do not have any of the specific records you request.” It is clear that the secretary of state has not complied with the statute.

With Arizona lacking standards for loss of certification, there is no criteria for determining that voting equipment should be evaluated for failure to accurately count every vote, as required in A.R.S. §16-446B(6). In a close September 2004 Republican primary election in LD20, optical scanners in Maricopa County produced a significantly different result when ballots were recounted; the recount resulted in nearly 6% more absentee votes read from the same set of ballots. The inability of these machines to repeat the count within a reasonably small error is convincing evidence that either
a) the ballots were mishandled between the original count and recount, or
b) the machines malfunctioned.

Election officials claim the ballots were handled properly. If this is the case, the machines are defective, yet Maricopa County has used them in subsequent elections. The optical scanners in Maricopa County use antiquated technology and should have been replaced or upgraded long ago, especially since similar equipment behavior was observed in the 2002 LD11 Republic State Senate primary election recount. The fact that there are no standards for decertification of the machines allows the County to continue to employ defective vote-counting machines.
-snip-

LINK
http://www.azfairelections.org/statewide%20brewer%20court.htm

Well, well, well, this should be interesting to follow.

[NoodleBoy]

1. weeeeeeeeeeee. now if we could only line up a good candidate for SoS

I've heard of at least one person running, but he's not a very well known person. The fact that I can't pull his name out of my head right now reminds me of that. Anyway, hopefully he'll stir something up and get some press coverage or activist notoriety the way Slade Mead and Pederson have.

[jillan]

2. Have you heard any more about this?

I was over reading something at the Bradblog, and stumbled upon this.
Here's the link to the Bradblog.
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001914.htm

This is huge!
It has really bothered me that Az was in a tie before the election, and
** won by such a large margin.

How can we follow this story?
I never saw anything in the Republic(an).

[lady lib]

3. No, I haven't heard any more about it.

I would continue to check bradblog, the election reform forum on DU, and I would Google Brewer's name every few days to see if anything come up.

[Hello_Kitty]

4. I'm going with option (a) on that one.

There were some serious shenanigans going on with that IMO. That's my legislative district and no way in hell did that Huppenthal freak win legitimately.

[NoodleBoy]

5. uh... yes there is

that district, as far as I know, is 65% Republican, and the nutjob base was intensely activated because the state Republican party dumped $150,000 into the primary and that was the only district in which a Republican 527 group was formed to oppose another Republican, Slade Mead.

[Hello_Kitty]

6. I know. It's my district.

I live in Ahwatukee, right near Slade Mead (who has changed his affiliation to Democratic and is now a PC in his precinct :woohoo: )

You are right about the challenge to Slade but there are rumors of fraud as well. Enough to be challenged with the Secy of State. Not that THAT would do any good, but still.

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

7. I found and saved her copy of the manual on Diebold GEMS central

tabulator as well as for E&S machines.

Have we heard anything more on the certifying thing?

Do we have a candidate?