Thursday, November 02, 2006

RECAP OF HACKING PROTECTION

RECAP (Hacking Protections & Audit):

1) The “6:59pm report” can catch early vote manipulation, especially if it is outside interference not controlled by the elections department staff.

2) The 2^nd chance of catching any misdeeds is the SB 1557 2% audit, which is especially effective at catching precinct-level manipulation as per Hursti. Also will need luck if the races hacked are picked (one in 4 races are picked by lottery).

3) The 3^rd chance is the Audit Board that makes up the canvas. Anything that slips past the above two steps may be caught here. Coconino Election Director Patty Hansen said; “It wrong, we should not be auditing ourselves and performing the canvas”. The Audit board should be able to verify the election results by matching the precinct results with the GEMS report. This can’t be done with the mail-in ballots that were run on central count scanners. But with the backup of the 6:59pm pre-modem report a comparison now could be made of the mail-in votes comparing before and after the key vulnerability point when the modems are active and the county has enabled outside interference for the sake of results expediency. Small counties do not need central count scanners. We must push into sorting and using precinct scanner that produce a tape, but that won't happen this election. See also SOS PROCEDURES MANUAL pages 153/154 - audit board instructions. Larry Bahill, former Pima County Election Director knows better than anyone else how this works.

4) And only if our A CANDIDATES PLEDGE OF TRUST TO VOTERS--NO EARLY CONCESSION (letter attached) will we have the time needed to sort this out. The post-election audit boards may not start their work for up to 10 days post-election. That may be the first time the 6:59pm reports are looked at, if the elections officers delay public records reporting of that data. They cannot withhold that data from their audit boards.

We ask your assistance in making all these things happen. We want a formal request to every election official in the state asking them to make a backup of their election data just before they turn the modems on at 7:00pm election night, and print a vote summary at the same time to be held until after 8:00pm.

We need to coordinate SB1557 recount efforts in each county and get notified immediately by county Party people if the any party try veto, so we have enough time to coordinate with the LP. We need audit boards in every county containing trustworthy party-appointed people whom we can advice and mentor on the use of best-practices audit tools such as the 6:59 reports.

And we must get the message across to candidates: don't concede until the process and our votes are completely inspected. This isn't “being a sore loser”, it's protecting our votes and must be spoken of in exactly that fashion: finish the process, protect our votes, protect our Democracy.

Thank you in advance for your kind support of this ground-breaking effort here in Arizona, and for helping make this state a model for the nation in intelligent party oversight of the Democratic process.

John Brakey

Jim March
Posted by Protect Democracy :: 11/02/2006 01:12:00 PM :: ---------------oOo---------------