While he was still the 13-year Monterey County, CA, Registrar of Voters, Tony Anchundo once told us live on air that “There is obviously going to have to be some trust and faith in the elections official, or in this case, it’s me.”
On Monday, the disgraced Anchundo reported to jail after pleading “no contest” last December to 43 criminal counts of forgery, misapplication of funds, embezzlement, falsification of accounts, and grand theft:
Anchundo Stole More Than $80,000 In Tax Dollars
SALINAS, Calif. — Tony Anchundo checked into the Monterey County Jail Monday morning, beginning his nine-month jail sentence for embezzlement.
The former registrar of voters plead no contest to stealing more than $80,000 of taxpayer’s money.
And last month, a judge suspended a five-year prison sentence, ordering him to jail instead.
Anchundo could apply for home confinement or a work alternative program after serving 90 days.
He’s also been ordered to repay more than $100,000.
We’ve said it before, but obviously it bears repeating (particularly to the members of CACEO – California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials and the shameful Santa Cruz Sentinel): Trust no one when it comes to your elections. You should never have to. Especially those who tell you they should be trusted.
While it should be self-evident by now, it’s our duty to remind you (and the CACEO and the Santa Cruz Sentinel as previously owned by former CA SoS Bruce McPherson) that our country and Constitution and Rule of Law were not built on trust. They were built on checks and balances. The best elections officials in America (if not necessarily the CACEO) will tell you as much:
- Leon County, Florida Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho said in a speech last May: “Trust no one. If it can’t be verified, it can’t be used.”
- Yolo County, California Registrar-Clerk Freddie Oakley wrote last June in response to many of her colleagues: “They also argue that, ‘We have to trust our poll workers…’ To this I can only say…only if they are incorruptible.”
On that note, no American should have to trust in an electronic voting system which counts votes in secret, as never verified by the voter or any human being. Doing so makes as much sense as “trusting” in Tony Anchundo — object lesson #1 in all that is wrong with trusting anyone or anything in this regard.
See the notice below on how you can (and must!) take action now to make sure Congress finally gets the message!
DEMAND A BAN ON DRE/TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING!
– Email Congress!
– Call your members!
See www.BradBlog.com/Holt for more details, coverage, talking points & information on all of the above!
Unfortunately the election boards in this country seem to attract this sort of fellow or at least somebody who’s willing to look the other way.
Thanks to Brad for getting that quote from Tony. It’s just a classic!
Their kind are going to jail, and our kind are being freed from jail (Josh Wolf, the blogger, is free).
Keep the faith baby 😉 …
Having to accept, on faith, the words of election officials about election results, (without verification up the yinyang), is about as sane as trusting an oil baron, on faith, about peak oil.
Change ‘fomer’ to ‘former’ in your headline.
“Trust me”…where have I heard that before? hmmmmmm
Oh yeah! Bush & Cheney!
The most feared words in the English language: “Trust me, I’m a Republican here to count your votes.”
Why did they reduce his sentence?
The only problem is, unless you can get people you have reason to trust to park their butst watching the ballots being cast, being counted and parking their butts on top of the ballot box until the challenge period elapses, you’re going to have to trust someone, who will it be? Whoever the elections board puts in charge of it, as you won’t have a choice.
So, I can’t pass this up, is it shameful for the Sentinel to use phrases that aren’t “EI Correct” and in the end try to get everyone to vote with a paper ballot? Isn’t that what some people would like to vote on? Or should they toe the independent press/blogosphere spin line and denounce, denounce, denouce? I’m just asking.
MarkH wrote:
“Why did they reduce his sentence?”
How the hell do you think the judges got “elected”?
Meanwhile as “Rome burns” the earth burns.
Some pilots and other famous folk think that it is not only election officials that want us to live with faith in them.
Yeah, well…..The new guy is Claudio…Tony’s associate. He just stripped us of our polling place after we outed the fact that we have the Sequoia machines for an entire week: alone, unsupervised, un-signed for. Our store was walking distance for 500 poor and minority voters….the new polling place is over the mountain six miles away. The workers used to sit in a nice, empty restaurant next to a wood-stove; now they are in an open garage bay at a fire-station.
Makes sense to me!