TUCSON'S $2-BILLION RIP-OFF-CUM-ENFORCED-HISTORICAL-NEIGHBORHOOD-DEMOLITION: THE REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY (RTA) -- PAID FOR BY 1/2% SALES-TAX HIKE -- WAS SUPPOSEDLY VOTED INTO LAW, WHEREAS ALL EVIDENCE POINTS TO RIGGING OF THAT ELECTION BY PIMA-COUNTY ELECTION DEPARTMENT OFFICIALS.

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Neighborhood Call to Action, RTA's Broadway Corridor Project, Steve Kozachik Press Conference 

http://youtu.be/1vztrSrlYx8

Published on May 1, 2012 by AUDITAZ

Press Conference April 30, 2012 This is a critical point in the efforts to get the RTA to abandon it's outdated plans for widening Broadway Blvd to 8-lanes and instead allow the Citizen's Task Force to provide meaningful input to re-scope the project in a way that is within budget and compatible with the surrounding neighborhoods and our desired future for this corridor. * Council member Steve Kozachik has recently called for reconsidering and down scoping the costly and unnecessary Broadway Project. The 1987 plan to widen Broadway is outdated in view of conditions in the street itself as well as up-to-date thinking about sustainable transportation and livable cities. * Wasting $71 million taxpayer dollars we simply do not have, widening the Street to 150 feet would destroy over 100 local businesses and historic properties, lifeblood of our local economy and tax base. Up-to-date infrastructure improvements such as bus pullouts, turn bays, and properly timed lights would better move traffic while encouraging bus ridership, biking and walking along a safe and pleasant street. * Broadway Coalition call on our elected officials on the Board of Supervisors and the Tucson City Council to reconsider this costly and unnecessary project and find a sustainable solution that will better meet Tucson's needs now and in the future. Speakers last evening at the press conference: 

1) Ward 6 Councilmember Steve Kozachik 

2) Mark Kerr, aide to Ward 5 Councilmember Richard Fimbres 

3) Colby Henley, President of Rincon Hts. Neighborhood 

4) Jessica Shuman, business owner of Kismet, 2627 E Broadway 

5) John O'Dowd, President of Sam Hughes Neighborhood Assn. 

6) Sid Hirsch, business owner of Hirsch's Shoes, 2934 E. Broadway 

7) Rev. Stuart Taylor, Tucson Bus Riders' Union, 

8) Demion Clinco, Pres. of Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation 9) District 5 Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias

Blogger's Note: At 37:30 on the video above is grafted in a discussion of election fraud in Tucson comprising and interview with Tucson election lawyer Bill Risner and stolen-election sleuths John Brakey and Jim March. John and I were two of the co-founders of AUDIT-AZ (aka Americans United for Democracy, Integrity, and Transparency in Elections). Interspersed in this extension are some video clips of computer expert Harri Hursty hacking the memory card of an Diebold optical-scan voting machine with the aid of a device known to have been purchased by the Pima County Election Department. Here below is another recent video, which within the first few minutes of watching should convince you that Attorney Bill Risner has gone to court seeking "prospective relief" from insider rigging of future elections (the full context of this video can be found here). In spite of numerous court cases lIke these, little prospective relief has been obtained ...while the "mainstream" media refuses to recognize such cases as worthy of mention on the evening news.

Monday, March 5, 2012 

Arizona Election Fraud: Attorney Bill Risner's Argument Reaffirms the Need for Election Integrity

http://youtu.be/TBgP_UEeluk

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IN TUCSON ALL POLITICAL PARTIES UNITE IN FIGHTING ELECTIONS RIGGED BY INSIDERS

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Original Here

Audit AZ takes transparent election fight to court

fox11az.com

Posted on January 13, 2012 at 11:15 AM

Updated yesterday at 11:23 AM

TUCSON, Ariz. -- A non-partisan organization in Tucson is on a mission to make sure future

Pima County elections are done fairly.

Audit AZ says its long battle with the county, stemming from voting irregularities in a 2006 election for the Regional Transportation Authority, is finally going before a jury.

It's an essential part in our election process.

Technology is used to compile voters lists, draw electoral boundaries and count the ballots.

But some Tucsonans say it's getting in the way.

"We want the court to order certain things that would prevent Pima County from cheating again in the future," said Bill Risner.

Bill Risner is a lawyer representing Audit AZ, Americans United for Democracy, Integrity and Transparency in Elections.

It's working to prove the county used voting machines to rig a 2006 election that passed a 20 year RTA project and half cent sales tax to help fund it.

"It seems they pretended it passed, when it didn't," said Risner.

The case is now heading to a jury, but the county says it doesn't stand a chance.

"Their accusations are pretty silly and ludicrous," said Chuck Huckleberry.

County Administrator Chuck Huckleberry says taking their fight to court is a waste of time and money.

"There has been a complete recount of all the ballots by the Attorney General, there has been a full investigation, there is no voter fraud," said Huckleberry.

But Audit AZ and its supporters believe in their cause. Since 2012 is such an important election year, they want a judge to order a change in the system as soon as possible.

"Because our system is used in other counties in other states, we'd like to do it sufficiently in advance so it would be the most good for the people," said Risner.

To fix the election process, Audit AZ is proposing an independent graphic scanning of all ballots.

The images would be posted on a public website after the polls close, so anyone could count the ballots.

No One Tolerates Stolen Elections ...Except Those Who Profit from Them, Part II. The Judge

KOLD TV newscaster Bud Foster (left) interviews attorney Bill Risner

The (Non) Results of Monday Morning's Superior Court Hearing in Pima County, AZ

Evidence abounds that in all likelihood the 2006 RTA ballot initiative (committing Pima County, Arizona, voters to pay via sales taxes $2 billion for improvements in local streets) was rigged [see here and references therein and/or my earlier OEN report]. In 2007, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard finally responded to pressure from Tucson election-integrity activists by initiating an investigation ...to be jointly carried out between his office and the Pima County Election Department (listed in the complaint as the suspects!). Not surprisingly, the alleged perps ignored the devastating evidence of rigging offered them by activists John Brakey, Jim March, and Bill Risner and with the tacit support of the AG's Office rigged the investigation of themselves to produce (surprise!) no incriminating results [see my condensed history].

But the Pima County Democratic Party represented by attorney Bill Risner continued to press the issue in the courts, adding more and more evidence that the RTA initiative passed only due to vote flipping carried out by the Pima County election-computer operator Brian Crane, and they demanded that the actual paper ballots be recounted to prove or disprove this conclusion. It eventually became apparent that the only official in Arizona with the authority (and obligation) to order such a recount is AG Terry Goddard (a Democrat) ...who repeatedly insisted that there is insufficient evidence to justify such a recount and/or that voter "curiosity" is insufficient reason to let the voter know whether or not his/her vote had been stolen.

Last week, the Pima Republican Party aligned itself behind the Democratic Party's lawsuit, which had already been joined by the Libertarian Party. And this Monday morning representatives of all three parties were in the courtroom of Pima County Superior Court Judge Charles Harrington to jointly press their demand that the RTA ballots be recounted.

What actually happened in that courtroom Monday morning was beyond bizarre. The judge pointed to some obscure point of law, which he argued excused him from hearing further arguments and thus concluded that the suit should be heard by the Appellate Court (see my last paragraph for a glimpse of what was actually going on beneath the surface!). In the ensuing brief discussion it came out that AG Goddard had just issued a secret order to take custody of the RTA ballots. Apparently, the secrecy was intended to keep only the plaintiffs in the dark, since the judge whimsically wondered out loud if this secret order was the same one he heard in the local news.

It seems that Goddard's plan is now to remove the ballots from a vault where they were totally secure and to transfer them to Maricopa County (where citizen poll watchers during the 2008 general election witnessed election officials routinely flouting election laws, especially regarding ballot chain of custody – and where the election department owns a ballot printer capable of spewing out brand new ballots matching any template used in the past). While Goddard has pledged that "...strict security measures will be taken to secure the ballots and the investigative process," he has yet to invite authorized representatives of the three major parties to witness the transportation and storage of these ballots. AND their protracted storage in Maricopa County is a clear and present invitation for someone there to tamper with them.

So Monday morning's court hearing before a full house of concerned citizens ended practically before it started. From the plaintiff's view point, the only good thing to transpire was the presence of the Tucson Channel 13 (KOLD) news team headed by veteran newscaster Bud Foster, who spent the better part of an hour interviewing Bill Risner outside the courthouse, before demanding that a Republican put on the microphone to assure balance in his newscast. Republican 2006 CD 8 congressional candidate Randy Graf promptly stepped forward and essentially seconded all of Risner's concerns about the integrity of Pima County elections. Unfortunately, Bud Foster's excellent news broadcast that evening was quickly removed from the internet (I wonder why?). However, they can't suppress these parts of the same interview filmed by independent videographer J.T. Waldron.

Now here is a bit of the story behind the story that led to the bizarre null outcome of Monday mornings's hearing: It seems that Judge Harrington had previously thrown roadblocks in front of the objectives sought by the Democratic Party's lawsuit and had shown himself to be inclined toward never deciding the case. However, the Democratic Party also has an additional pending lawsuit requesting the poll tapes of the RTA election (an additional form of evidence as to whether or not the ballots we counted correctly), which is assigned to Judge Javier Chon-Lopez of the same Superior Court as Judge Charles Harrington. Having a different judge for this case was good for the Democrats (and their like-thinking Libertarian and Republican allies) since, according to Bill Risner, Harrington had unequivocally refused to consider "the constitutional provisions and case law submitted to him." Hence, it was absolutely clear that Harrington would never allow those pleadings to be filed. Meanwhile, the dark forces working behind the scenes (read the AG's office) were maneuvering to have Harrington also hear the case presently assigned to Judge Chon-Lopez; in fact, they had filed a Motion to Consolidate the two cases before Harrington. It is for this reason alone that Bill Risner filed a notice of appeal before the hearing on Monday, i.e., in order to deprive Harrington of the opportunity to commit further mischief to the Democrats' case. The notice of appeal pertained to only a part of the Democratic Party's case, and so on Monday morning Bill explained to the judge that he could still go ahead and hear the other parts. Harrington, however, seeing the large crowd room, decided to use the Risner's appeal as a tendentious excuse to pass on a hot potato; thus, he claimed that he did not have jurisdiction to do anything and therefore was "compelled" to terminate the hearing.

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Updates: Anyone reading this at a later date wishing to know how this story is playing out in real time should hit the Election Defence Alliance home page, which has been featuring the continuing saga, now that Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard has sequestered the Pima County RTA ballots without a transparent chain of custody and is carrying out a recount in Maricopa County(!) with the general public barred from witnessing the count and only one approved representative each from the Pima County Democratic and Republican parties being admitted, but constantly hounded by armed officers from the AG's office.

No One Tolerates Stolen Elections ...Except Those Who Profit from Them.

BREAKING: Pima County (AZ) Republican Party Throws It’s Weight behind the Pima County Democratic Party’s Demand that the AZ Attorney General Preserve the Ballots from the $2-Billion RTA Ballot Initiative and Allow Them to Be Recounted, Given Extensive Evidence that the Official Count May Have Been Rigged.

In the 2006 General Election in Pima County, AZ, there was a ballot initiative to impose a half-cent sales tax to fund a 20-year $2-billion Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) plan. Contrary to expectation based on pre-polling and four previous rejections, the RTA initiative now appeared to have been approved by the voters. However, Tucson election-integrity activist John Brakey obtained by FOIA requests election-computer audit logs and with the aid of activist Jim March and Tucson attorney Bill Risner discovered evidence that the election computer operator Brian Crane had performed a series of operations that were extremely irregular. In fact, this particular sequence of operator interventions corresponded exactly to the pattern expected IF Crane had first read the results of the first week’s early voting and then, after finding voters were again rejecting the RTA, he wrote a program to flip the votes no-to-yes and overwrote the data base with this vote-flipping program. I’ve described this background in greater detail in an earlier post, including the incredible-but-true story of how Republican and Democratic Arizona State legislators got past their reflexive mutual suspicions and passed one of the better election-integrity laws in the country.

Still, the legal battle to secure additional election-computer data bases (for scrutiny by all major parties) AND a hand recount of the RTA paper ballots (to see whether or not Brian Crane actually committed election fraud) was carried forward in the courts by Bill Risner under the aegis of the Pima County Democratic Party with the backing of the Libertarian Party. Until about a month ago, the Pima Republican Party was part of the opposition – despite the fact that Democratic Attorney General Terry Goddard appeared to have been white washing the case against Crane and refused repeatedly to intervene to save the RTA paper ballots from destruction. Now the Republican Party is also in favor of preserving and recounting the RTA ballots. I strongly recommend that the reader download the recent letters to AG Goddard by the Pima Republican Party and, especially the one by Bill Risner. Bill’s open letter to Goddard dated 2-19-09 provides an excellent history of the matter, replete with technical details and authenticating footnotes.

It now appears that a Monday morning hearing at the Pima County Courthouse may decide this critical-for-American-democracy matter for better of for worse: For better if the RTA ballots are preserved and handled with a rigorous chain of custody until counted in full public view; for worse if the ballots are destroyed – OR if a single person or office is granted control of the ballots with no chain of custody for an extended period of time before either claiming their hand count agreed with the original official count and/or releasing what they claim to be the original ballots for public counting.

Monday’s hearing (Superior Court Judge Charles Harrington, presiding) will be at 10:00 AM in Room 478 of the Pima County Building at 110 W Congress Street, Tucson. Those of you who live nearby and have the time should come down for this historical moment. Those farther away should urge the news media to cover it.

Just remember…

“The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery."

- - Thomas Paine