Pima County Circumvents It's Own Election Integrity Commission to Get a Waiver that Removes Proper Audit of County Elections

J.T. Waldron

A key document has surfaced in a recent lawsuit in Pima County, Arizona, that suggests much more activity affecting the reliability of elections took place in secret meetings with Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett. When the 2011 revision of the state elections manual added a sentence requiring presorting of early ballots by precinct, the County secretly went to the Secretary of State and got a waiver, without any disclosure to their own Election Integrity Commission. This activity certainly falls within the purview of the Commission and presorting had been frequently discussed by the Commission.

Although Bennett is familiar with Pima County's Election Integrity Commission, he may or may not be aware that the meetings took place without the knowledge of the other Commission members. Pima County employee John Moffatt and staunch county supporter Benny White were the two members of Pima County's Election Integrity Commission (EIC) that sought changes to the Secretary of State’s Election Procedures manual. One key substantive auditing provision, to sort early ballots by precinct, was removed without the knowledge of the rest of the EIC.

The letter from the Secretary of State, dated June 29th of 2012, acknowledges the request made by Pima County Elections Director Brad Nelson to avoid presorting early ballots by precincts and grants an exemption for the upcoming Fall election. At no point was this change mentioned at any of the commission meetings. Retired NSA analyst Mickey Duniho, Computer expert Tom Ryan, and Black Box Voting member Jim March are among the members of Pima County's EIC that strongly recommended presorting the early returns by precinct.

The process for revising the Secretary of State’s Election Procedures manual begun in 2011 when Ken Bennett formed a commission consisting of Pima County employee John Moffatt and Benny White. Although Brad Nelson is the recipient of the exemption, it is unknown whether he participated in that committee. During the time in 2011 when that committee was meeting, John Moffatt and Benny White regularly reported to the Pima County Election Integrity Committee about the changes that were being recommended. At no time did they mention the Secretary of State's intention of requiring presorting of early ballots by precinct. At almost every EIC meeting, however, Mickey Duniho and other members frequently discussed with the board the importance of presorting early ballots by precinct before conducting the hand count audit.

Citizens filed a lawsuit against Pima County and held a hearing earlier this week over presorting early ballots along with other auditing procedures provided by Arizona Statutes. They filed this lawsuit absent any knowledge that this provision was added by the Secretary of State and later exempted at the request of Pima County. Had it not been for the current lawsuit to get Pima County to follow existing election laws, we would have never discovered this activity taking place behind the backs of the rest of the Election Integrity Commission. Such trickery seems to involve far more work and effort than actually negotiating the logistics of presorting early ballots by precinct.

It appears that County Attorney Chris Straub has reported this change and the accompanying waiver to the court in this recent trial. This disclosure is likely required to avoid potential sanctions, even possible disbarment, for withholding information from the court that is pertinent to the case.

Those who knew that the Election Integrity Commission was being circumvented are obviously Benny White and John Moffatt. Brad Nelson and Chuck Huckelberry would also have a difficult time claiming ignorance over withholding information and secretly obtaining a waiver from Ken Bennett to avoid compliance with the new rule. Every EIC meeting has transcripts and are sufficient to show that Moffatt and White were falsely representing what took place with the Secretary of State.

Was Benny White's role in working with the Secretary of State to enhance the impression of the EIC's participation in the revision of the Secretary of State’s Election Procedures manual? Pima County has no doubts over Benny White's loyalty to those currently entrenched in Pima County's bureaucracy. In 2008, he provided false testimony and slandered John Brakey to the Pima County Board of Supervisors when Brakey was falsely arrested while serving as an elections observer (see below). Brakey has so far refrained from suing Pima County over his false arrest, which was requested by Brad Nelson. Despite what we had previously predicted, Benny White indeed testified in the hearing earlier this week. You could see the difficulty in getting a direct answer out of him as he's asked his position over presorting early ballots by precinct.



Discovery of this "runaround" by the county sheds new light on the dynamics of last week's emergency meeting proposed by Mickey Duniho. Here they are spending hours discussing the importance of presorting the early ballots. Benny White left early because he claims to have a conflict of interest with the upcoming court case. Absence makes withholding information a lot easier. Brad Nelson has the easy excuse of being busy during the election season (It's also the excuse Pima County uses for not complying with state election laws). Pima County employee John Moffatt is left to sit through the whole meeting discussing a subject that he knows has been "managed" behind their backs. It's his job.



Here is Benny White lying to the Pima County Board of Supervisors:



With all the scurrying behind the scenes, one has to wonder what part of the election do they plan to alter?

Arizona Citizens' Election Integrity Lawsuit Explained by Attorney Brad Roach and Republican Candidate Bill Beard

From left to right:  Attorney Brad Roach,  John Brakey,
Bill Beard, Chris DeSimone 

KVOA Wakeup Tucson at 7:00 AM Mountain Time on 1030 AM radio

Stay tuned for the final clip containing Pima County shill Benny White refusing to
participate in the Elections Integrity Board's emergency meeting scheduled to discuss former NSA employee Mickey Duniho's analysis of past elections. White mistakenly assumed that the meeting was going to discuss the pending lawsuit requiring Pima County to follow existing election laws. One can assume he is also mistaken in thinking he can be a co-defendant in that case because he ultimately would be acting against significant members within Pima County's Republican Party who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.




NSA Analyst Mickey Duniho's presentation to the Pima County's Election Integrity Board will be posted later this evening.

Pima commission to discuss chance of election fraud in larger precincts

Arizona Daily Star
Carli Brosseau

The Pima County Election Integrity Commission is holding a special meeting today to talk about whether one member's statistical analysis of votes in recent elections shows evidence of fraud.

Under the group's bylaws, an emergency meeting can be held if at least five of the nine members call for one.

Michael "Mickey" Duniho
His presentation to the Election Integrity Board
will be posted on The Intercept today.

Mickey Duniho, a retired National Security Agency computer programmer, requested the meeting two days ago after he began plotting cumulative votes by precinct and noticing that outcomes seemed to differ by precinct size.

He was replicating earlier studies done by California researchers Francois Choquette and James Johnson, an aerospace engineer and a financial analyst. The researchers argue that their analysis of the recent Republican primary shows Mitt Romney making strange vote gains in most states' large precincts.

Duniho - formerly a Republican election observer in Maryland, a supporter of Democrat-backed lawsuits against Pima County's Elections Department and now a registered independent - said that his results seem to parallel those of Choquette and Johnson, who tried to account for their findings using demographics.

He is now collecting demographic data by precinct to try to explain his results with other factors, such as whether a precinct is rural or the affluence of the precinct's residents.

Duniho suspects that the patterns he found show a 10 percent flip of votes in favor of the Republican candidate in the 2010 race between Raúl Grijalva and Ruth McClung and the race between Gabrielle Giffords and Jesse Kelly the same year, as well as votes switched to benefit Romney in the Republican primary.

"The problem is figuring out what the statistical evidence does mean," Duniho said. "The computer is a black box. It is very easy for the guy who wrote the program to do just about anything."

At today's meeting, Duniho hopes to persuade the county Elections Department to sort early ballots by precinct before doing the hand-count audit required by law.

He has been advocating for that sorting, as well as for upping the percentage of ballots hand-counted, for about six years, arguing that his method boosts the chances of revealing fraud if it were to occur.

By law, Arizona counties must do a hand-count audit of 1 percent of early ballots and 2 percent of precincts in at least one federal and one state race. Pima County already audits more than required - 4 percent of precinct-cast ballots and 1 percent of early ballots. No local races are audited.

Some of the commission's members have argued strongly against holding the meeting and worry that it could unnecesarily increase fears about the vote count.

Benny White providing false testimony
to the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
about John Brakey's arrest while monitoring
elections in the Fall of 2008.

Benny White, a Republican election observer, responded to news of the meeting request with a sharply worded email.

"After reviewing the academic research involved with the links in the message, I conclude that the allegations being made are absolute nonsense," he wrote. "These academics don't take into account the fact that election results are the response by voters to campaigns and candidates. …

"I think there is a greater probability that fluctuations in the electrical voltage of the lines serving the election department have more to do with variations in election results than these alleged anomalies."

The county's technical consultant on election matters, John Moffatt, agrees that the data do not seem to show a vote flip in Pima County, but he does think the California researchers may be on to something with their findings in some other states.

Pima County employee John Moffatt speaks of
"witch hunts" in the past, but is responsible
for the incoherent rationale that required a suit
to obtain electronic public records. 

"It's worth paying attention to, and we took it seriously," he said. "My personal opinion is that it's another witch hunt, but our responsibility is to check this stuff out, not just blow it off."

He adamantly rejects allegations that county elections staff somehow tampered with any results.

The county's elections director, Brad Nelson, will not be at the meeting to approve a change of audit procedures because of family issues, but county workers involved in those processes caution that while it's theoretically possible to make Duniho's suggested change, it would be logistically difficult.

"That's a monumental task," Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez said. "It's kind of late to be changing the procedures in the middle of a major election."

The sorting machine needed to do the job efficiently would cost at least $125,000, said Chris Roads, deputy recorder and registrar of voters.

To do the sorting by hand would likely take two days, Moffatt said.

The window to challenge a vote count after an election in Arizona is five days after the canvass.