Guest Blogged by David Safier of Blog for Arizona

If a judge’s ruling in Pima County, Arizona, stands, ballots from the long-contested 2006 Regional Transit Authority (RTA) election will be destroyed, and there will never be a definitive answer as to whether or not the election may have been rigged, as critics have charged.

It’s too late for the actual results of the election to be changed, but knowing whether the election was tampered with is critical to guaranteeing the integrity of future elections, according to local Election Integrity advocates who won a landmark lawsuit, resulting in the unprecedented release of terrabytes of Diebold databases. The databases, containing information on how voters voted, were found by the judge in the suit, to be public records.

Yet, the same people who ran the '06 RTA election are still in charge of elections in Pima County, and the same election software is still in place. If one election was rigged, there is little stopping them from rigging others in the future.

The RTA bond measure was reportedly passed by voters in 2006, but Pima County Democrats and Libertarians believe there is substantial evidence the measure actually went down and the results were flipped in the vote counting computer. The optical-scan paper ballots themselves have never actually been counted. They’re sitting in sealed boxes in the County Treasurer’s office, and may soon be destroyed. The Democrats and Libertarians went to court last month, asking the judge to save the ballots, so they may actually be counted in the future.

In his ruling, however, Judge Charles Harrington's claims he has no jurisdiction in the matter...

Guest Blogged by David Safier of Blog for Arizona

Just in time for the elections, the Pima County, Arizona, Election Integrity Committee has developed computer tools to examine election databases created by the Diebold/Premier system. The EI group is offering to examine data from any jurisdiction in the country that uses Diebold's faulty GEMS (Global Election Management System). GEMS will tabulate about half the nation's votes on November 4th...

Guest Blogged by David Safier of Blog for Arizona

Arizona's election watchdog group, Audit AZ, went to the state Attorney General in its efforts to learn the truth about Pima County's 2006 RTA (Regional Transportation Authority) election. Attorney Bill Risner handed Arizona AG Terry Goddard a letter detailing the evidence suggesting that the RTA election was flipped. The clearly written letter is accompanied by dozens of documents as well as video links to depositions and testimony from the 2007 court case Risner won for the Pima County Democratic Party. As a result of that case, every political party in the county has access to Diebold's database files, recording how voters voted, from previous and future elections.

In May, 2007, on the heels of questions about the results of the '06 RTA election following polls and previous elections in which similar initiatives were rejected by voters, the Arizona Attorney General's office launched a criminal investigation into the RTA election. The software quality assurance firm, iBeta, was given computer databases to look over which indicated the vote counting might have been tampered with. Though iBeta saw instances of possible tampering, it decided they were simply the result of "human error." Using tortured logic, iBeta said the signs of possible tampering were evidence that there was actually no tampering, since anyone who knew how to manipulate the data would also know how to cover their computer tracks and leave no evidence behind.

Risner's letter explains how the direction of the AG's investigation was, incredibly, set by the suspects themselves, members of the Pima County Elections Division. Those officials, Risner details, purposely turned the investigation away from the very evidence which could have proven their guilt in manipulating the results.

Those very same officials are named in a startling new affidavit from a former county employee who recently came forward to allege he was told by a Pima County election official that they had "fixed" the RTA election...

Guest Blogged by David Safier of Blog for Arizona

The Pima County, Arizona, Diebold vote tabulation system was manipulated to "pass" a 2006 ballot initiative when, in fact, the measure was actually voted down, according to a startling new allegation revealed today by the election watchdog group Audit AZ.

The long-running election integrity battles in Pima flared up again this afternoon as an explosive affidavit from a former county official was released at a press conference held by the tenacious local organization. On the heels of several recent Audit AZ court victories, resulting in the unprecedented if long overdue release of mountains of previously "proprietary" Diebold election databases, today's presser was well attended by much of the local media.

The conference was held as news comes that the ballots for the 2006 Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) election are set to be destroyed, according to a letter sent by the Pima County Treasurer to the Chair of the Pima County Democratic Party, Vince Rabago. The June 2008 letter, posted at the end of this article, says that Rabago has the right to request that the ballots not be destroyed, which would save them temporarily. Bill Risner, the lawyer for the successful suit to obtain copies of the county's election databases, said at the press conference that the State Attorney General needs to step in and not only demand that the ballots be saved but order that they be counted to see if the total agrees with the "official" numbers that came out of the election department's computer given the extraordinary new allegations.

The potentially explosive new piece of information introduced during the press conference was a sworn affidavit from Zbigniew Osmolski, a former Pima County employee, stating that Bryan Crane, the computer operator at the Pima County Elections Division, told him, during a conversation in a bar, that the RTA Election was "fixed...on the instructions of his bosses."

According to Osmolski's affidavit (posted in full at the end of this article):

The affidavit is the latest in a series of red flags concerning the RTA election. Other red flags include: (1) This was a sales tax increase, the type of vote that usually fails, and it looked like it was going down in the days prior to the election; (2) The database on the vote counting computer was erased and replaced a day into the early ballot scanning; (3) Unauthorized vote total summary reports were printed during the counting; (4) A tape of the original ballot layout stored with the Secretary of State --- which could have indicated if the vote was flipped --- was sent back to the County, which lost it; (5) An investigation into the election completed by the Attorney General's office was cursory and inconclusive.

A video of the press conference is now available here...

The Osmolski affidavit and County Treasurer's letter concerning the impending destruction of the ballots from the RTA election follow below...