Frequent commenter J.T. Waldron has this to say about the poll tapes from the RTA election:
The Tucson Weekly has afforded me this opportunity to post on The Range about the missing RTA poll tapes. What are poll tapes and why do they matter? Poll tapes are receipts that are printed in each precinct at the end of the election night. They contain the vote totals that indicate the results for that particular precinct. Once printed, election workers verify the authenticity of the poll tape and its totals by signing the bottom of each poll tape. For this reason, poll tapes could serve an important auditing function, especially in conjunction with examining the ballots.
Read the rest at the Tucson Weekly
Nice! A good summary. Any chance the Pima Dems will sue to get the ballots themselves so they can do a forensic check?
ReplyDeleteThis may have to do with the case concerning prospective relief by courts. The question in this case is "when the executive and legislative branches fail to provide adequate remedy if an election is fixed, does the court have jurisdiction to provide prospective relief?"
ReplyDeletePerhaps the ballots can be examined as a means of adding weight and demonstrating the need for some type of relief by the courts in Arizona.
Prospective relief would likely be achieved by ordering a list of procedures or a course of action that would ensure fair and accurate elections in the future.
The Democratic Party pulled out of this pursuit because reigning party machine loyalists were willing to abandon this important judicial pursuit to protect Terry Goddard. Fortunately, a well-written appeal in this matter was filed by the remaining party in this lawsuit, the Libertarian Party.
There is a laughable exchange going on at the "Blog For Arizona" site that illustrates the hysterical knee-jerk cover some Democrats are providing Terry Goddard. Check it out:
http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2010/07/why-elections-matter-the-economy-always-does-better-under-democrats.html#comments
Hm, maybe "prospective relief" to the court is a crowd of villagers with torches? I can't believe it's in question that the court can't get these records for the Dems or Libertarians now so they can just look at them. This is crazy! Would it be too much of a hassle for the Libs or Mr. Risner to get the court in the ongoing case to go with them down to Iron Mountain for thirty minutes or an hour or so to perform a visual check of the ballots to verify that all of them were not printed on a laser printer? I mean, really, that's all it would take, right? Does the county's "private property rights" of their election records trump that? No way! When is the court going to get tough on the county and say " this is not at all an unreasonable request, do it! THE JUDGE HAS SPOKEN!" Okay, maybe not that last part.
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