Breaking News! Hand Count; May vs. Shall
Arizona law on counting ballots (votes) is unambiguous, counties MAY count by hand
Prescott, AZ January 20, 2024… The Election Fairness Institute (EFI), an IRS-approved Sec. 501(c)(3) public interest, non-profit, based in Phoenix, AZ. Click the link for more information on EFI. In a nutshell, our mission is to identify defects in the election process, develop solutions to correct those defects, and publish our findings for all to see. EFI is a non-partisan organization that helps all who have an interest in election security, transparency, and integrity. We are completely crowdfunded and do not accept government money for any reason.
An important legal challenge was filed in Arizona on January 12th to resolve the hand count of ballots authority question in Arizona. The current state government executive branch is mired in ethical compromise questions that just won’t go away, such as a governor who presided over certification of her own questionable election, and an attorney general who threatens anyone who seeks security and transparency where both appear to be nascent.
I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, let’s level set with context.
The move away from machine tabulation…
Around the nation, county boards of supervisors and commissioners who oversee elections officials have been abandoning machines that count —or perhaps calculate— vote totals for elections involving all levels of government, in favor of hand counting. At the heart of the matter is the notion that these machines are in essence “black box ballot tabulators” because there is zero transparency when it comes to inspecting the machine code that drives the machines. They are black boxes because the people are not permitted to see inside them and audit the machine code to verify there is no vote flipping function and back door to alter the machine count.
We know that the machine code exists because one writer of the code, Whistleblower Clint Curtis, has testified in both legislative hearings and legal proceedings, under oath, that he wrote such code. This fact now in evidence cannot be disputed because evidence of it has been found in various machine audits around the nation, including Mesa County Colorado, by Mesa County Recorder Time Peters.
The “Defend Democracy” crowd actually litigates to undermine transparency…
If a jurisdiction uses machines, the only way to know if the machine count is accurate is to complete a 100% paper ballot side-by-side comparison with the machine results after the machine is done counting. A sample will not suffice for obvious reasons.
Marc Elias, the American Democratic Party elections lawyer, who founded Democracy Docket, an organization allegedly founded to focus on voting rights and election litigation in the United States, has cost taxpayers millions of dollars fighting transparency. They are not fooling anyone, when they fight to prevent the examination of the machine code that drives the tabulation, suspicions escalate and the question of accuracy arises.
But wait a minute, his lawsuits affect both Republicans and Democrats, so we are left asking why this guy and his ilk are so dedicated to preventing inspection of the foundation of the system. They claim that “audits” undermine voter confidence in elections and the process of counting the vote. Nonsensical gibberish.
Serious conflict of interest…
There are individuals in the Arizona state government executive office who had serious conflict of interest issues in the 2022 election. And then some have a conflict of interest after the fact. Kris Mayes, the Arizona Attorney General is one of those. There are two instances of her misbehavior that have caught national attention. One is to indict Cochise County Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd for taking great care to exercise their prerogative for due diligence concerning machine count results.
The second instance is the subject of this posting. Mayes threatened the Mohave County Board of Supervisors with “civil and criminal” prosecution if they dared proceed with moving away from machine tabulation, and to hand count of paper ballots, by precinct on Election Day. Mayes misrepresented the Arizona statute and in doing so used her office as a political thug-shop to put down legitimate action by an elected body, an action that should result in disbarment.
Prayer for Declaratory Judgement…
On January 12th, 2024, Mohave County Supervisor, Ron Gould filed suit against the Arizona Attorney General in the Maricopa County Superior Court. From the filing document…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Mark Finchem's Inside Track Substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.