Break the Achilles Heel of the Electoral-Industrial Complex

Guest Blogged by Jim March

Folks, I’m writing to tell you personally about the most important election in America for election integrity: putting Brad Roach into the Pima County (Tucson) Arizona county attorney’s office. Why do I believe it’s the most important election in America in regard to the issue of Election Integrity? Click the cartoon above and/or read on…

If Roach is elected:

• He’ll have all the powers of a DA, including criminal subpoenas;
• He’ll also have control over the county’s civil lawsuit division including the ability to sue over fraud;
• HE GETS IT ON ELECTION INTEGRITY and is saying so publicly with a bit of humor. (See his must-view cartoon, part of which is linked above.)

As I write this, I’ve been involved in the non-partisan fight to reform elections since mid-2003. Many of you know who I am, perhaps through my work with BlackBoxVoting.org; we may not agree on every point but I don’t think anyone will disagree that I’ve been in the fight.

We’re not getting to the goal fast enough. The goal, the real goal, should be to expose what’s wrong with the current election oversight process. The National Assoc. of Election Directors (NASED) and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) — the Federal-level bureaucracies that have allegedly “managed” voting system testing and certification in succession, with largely the same staff overseeing the process in each body — have been a grotesque failures. Diebold (their election division’s new name, “Premier”, triggers my gag reflex), Sequoia Voting Systems, ES&S and others have subverted all citizen oversight and we can prove it down here in Tucson…except that we can’t get the issue into court.

We, the people, lack “standing”. According to the courts, it’s not us poor voters who have been ripped off, it’s the counties who’ve paid for these junk systems. There are supposed to be processes to allow citizens to sue on the government’s behalf, but the case in California along those lines was subverted by the state AG, and more recently the Federal-level system was closed to us by a Supreme Court decision.

So what do we do?

Well, we need to still cover the basics: more research, LOTS of watch-dogging during the election periods in particular, public records digging, exit polls, etc. You can bet that’s what I’m up to.

But while we do all that, let’s attack the weak spot: the structure will stand so long as nobody with the power to investigate criminal actions objects. So far not one criminal subpoena has been filed in relation to voting systems, and in several cases officials who could have done do something have covered it up. Think about that.

Brad Roach can change all that, and he’s promised to do so if he’s elected. He’s running against a 12-year incumbent who has been one of the main “blockers”, along with the Arizona state AG (Terry Goddard). One of the critical things at issue is whether the paper ballots from the 2006 “Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) bond race” in Pima County should be examined.

In this video, you can see local activists in Pima, including myself (a Libertarian), Democratic Party Attorney Bill Risner and Democrat John Brakey confronting the Democratic AG Goddard on his stonewalling. Brad Roach, a Republican, is also seen in the group confronting Goddard…

Like Sarasota FL in 2006 (where 18,000 votes simply disappeared on electronic voting systems in an incredibly close Congressional election) and Georgia in 2002 (when Diebold illegally inserted uncertified patches into the voting machines just before an election “upset” that unseated Rep. Max Cleland), the Pima County RTA race is one of those elections that just plain looks foul.

By a miracle, and citizen outcry, the paper ballots from the election in question still exist and a current court case is deciding whether or not they’ll be destroyed. While a hand-recount of the election is illegal under state election code, reviewing them to determine whether a crime was committed isn’t, so long as someone with the proper authority does so. Brad Roach will have that authority if he’s elected.

I ask two things:

• If you can, slip Brad Roach some money for his campaign. He needs it bad.
• If you can’t, at least DIGG or REDDIT up-vote this story at the buttons below (and please Slashdot this article if you’re a member over there!) as we must get this message to the computer-tech community and out beyond just the election integrity activists.

This is for all the marbles, folks. This one matters. Please help.

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Jim March is a member of the Libertarian party, a trans-partisan election integrity advocate, a board member at BlackBoxVoting.org, and currently active in the Arizona election reform movement led by AuditAZ.