Hope on the Horizon: Fast, Simple Solutions for Election Transparency and Verification of Results:

ABE Makes Election Verification Easy—And It's Free if You Already Have Microsoft Office Excel and simple to Use. Try our beta version to learn more.

Op-ed by JOHN R. BRAKEY - TUCSON, AZ: In a significant step towards election transparency, AUDIT USA is thrilled to announce the launch of a free, groundbreaking tool that empowers everyone—media, election officials, candidates, and the public—to easily verify election results. This innovative software offers a simple, user-friendly way to independently confirm the accuracy of any election, ensuring that transparency is accessible to all.

Our Tool Is Built on A Simple Principle: Anonymous election records are public, in most states, citizens should have the right to verify these digital records safely and securely. Transparency is the foundation of trust in a democracy, and this tool provides an accessible way for citizens to audit elections by precinct, helping to ensure that trust is both earned and sustained in a true democratic republic.

We call this tabulation verification tool ABE, which ensures elections are transparent, trackable, and publicly verified.

How ABE Works: ABE cross-references two critical public election records: ballot images and the Cast Vote Record (CVR) database. In modern elections, paper ballots are scanned, and their digital images are used to count votes. The CVR database shows how the voting system interpreted each voter’s selections. ABE makes it easy for users to verify that the system correctly counted every vote by linking each ballot image to its corresponding CVR entry. The tool allows users to sort and filter records by precinct, election contest, overvotes, undervotes, and write-in votes, ensuring that any discrepancies between the ballot images and the CVR are quickly identified.

ABE, “A Better Election,” organizes and cross-references precinct-level data, which helps ensure accurate election verification. “Precincts are the building blocks of election integrity,” Brakey added. “ABE simplifies the process of auditing elections by utilizing documented data that further enhances transparency. ABE operates on a Microsoft Office Excel platform by using the county’s Election System database, known as the Cast Vote Record (CVR), which is a spreadsheet consisting of rows and columns.”

Security You Can Trust and Verify: We prioritize the highest level of security in our system, ensuring that tampering with digital records will find it an impossible task. The original ballots are securely stored by the county and what is the value of hashed Digital Images in creating a system of redundancy which makes tampering virtually impossible. The power of ABE is its ability to present election data backed by solid verifiable evidence. ABE simplifies the verification process by organizing and generating a separate Cast Vote Record (CVR) database with ballot images for each precinct. With well-documented historic voter demographics often publicly available validate election outcomes with historical voting patterns. Video on hash-check protected.

ABE: A Tool for Everyone: Named in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s commitment to transparency, ABE is currently designed to verify results from Election Systems & Software (ES&S), which supplies voting systems to about 60% of U.S. districts. Plans are already in place to expand its compatibility with other major voting systems, such as Dominion.

Expanding Trust: AUDIT USA is confident that ABE will play a key role in curbing misinformation and preventing misinformation by making election results fully transparent.

It will be far more difficult to spread false claims of election fraud when everyone can independently verify the results. Trust in election outcomes is essential to reducing division and unrest in our country.

Ready to See ABE in Action? Watch our 19-minute demonstration video to witness how ABE can transform election audits:

Put ABE to the Test: Readers are invited to try ABE themselves by evaluating the 2022 General Election in Somerset County, MD. Download everything you need from this WeTransfer link, including step-by-step instructions for using ABE. (Reusable link for updates on ABE: https://bit.ly/4dBomce )

Ellen Theisen, an independent, well-respected Excel and Word Programmer since 2008, worked with AUDIT USA to develop ABE. Theisen has created custom programs for 93 companies, working on multiple projects for many of those companies.

Why Offer This Tool for Free? “We’re doing this because we care deeply about our country, our families, and the integrity of our democracy,” said John Brakey, co-founder, and director of AUDIT USA. “For two decades, we have seen that distrust in election outcomes often stems from people only trusting results when their candidate wins. We believe that everyone, no matter who they voted for, should have the ability to see for themselves that the results are accurate.”

AUDIT USA is a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)3 organization, founded originally in 2005 as AUDIT AZ. The organization has long advocated for the use of ballot images to help confirm election results, with the knowledge that images can always be compared to the original paper ballots. ABE takes election verification to the next level, providing a means for anyone to verify the results of an election.

The Importance of Election Audits: The Federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), on its website, provides a description of the election audits conducted in each state and explains the importance of those audits: “Election audits ensure voting systems operate accurately, that election officials comply with regulations or internal policies, and that discrepancies are identified and resolved in an effort to promote voter confidence in the election administration process. There is no national auditing standard, and methods can vary from procedural, traditional, risk-limiting, tiered, or a combination of these types.”

At AUDIT USA, we have been studying election procedures and election audits for 20 years. While the vast majority of election officials in the U.S. are honest, hardworking individuals running excellent elections, we are aware that most of the audits that are currently conducted are not adequate to expose machine errors or fraudulent activity. I was an independent observer at the flawed Maricopa County Audit conducted by the Cyber Ninjas after the 2020 election. I saw firsthand how audits – whether well intended or not – can go terribly awry.

Our hope is that ABE can assist election officials quickly and easily confirm election results by doing random digital precinct audits, as well as providing the same ability to political parties, candidates, academics, researchers, and the public. As AUDIT USA Attorney and Co- Founder Bill Risner wisely said: “Verification and transparency are the foundation of confidence. Confidence is the destination, and the way to get there is through transparency and verification.”

Systems like ABE represent the future of publicly verified elections. We invite you to watch this informative video, where former Secretary of State, Senator Ken Bennett (R), and current Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) discuss key components of the transparency ballot image bill. This conversation took place during the Arizona House Election Committee hearing on February 8, 2023, focusing on the importance of ballot images audits. For easy access to this video and others, please refer to the brochure on ABE.

This approach provides a simple transparent and reliable verification process. As highlighted in my Op-ed "Digital Ballot Images: Key to Trustworthy Elections & Bridging Our Great Divide." https://bit.ly/49JEruP It is time to pull back the curtain and let transparency shine in the digital age. Transparency and facts are crucial to countering the cynicism that threatens our Democratic Republic. Achieving this is possible by filing public records requests for two essential items: Ballot Images and the Cast Vote Record (CVR) database, which should be accessible in many states.

Our innovation is simple yet powerful—we’ve developed a macro that knows exactly which buttons to press in Excel. You only need to tell it where the data is and what you want to view.

The ABE Beta download:

Our goal is to empower voters by providing verifiable, precinct-level data that ensures election results are both accurate and trustworthy. If anyone on your team is familiar with Microsoft Excel, they’ll find ABE’s program incredibly user-friendly. In under an hour, they can start comparing precinct ballot images to official tallies in the CVR database, verifying that everything matches. This is what we’re offering—transparent, verifiable elections.

The stakes have never been higher. We’re seeing increasing disillusionment and mistrust in the electoral process. Our tool gives voters the ability to verify election results directly, helping restore faith in our democratic system. We believe this is the most effective way to ensure election integrity and accountability. Basically, no more Wizard of Oz type system.

Senate Bill S.B. 1324, which later became House Bill HB 2560, , successfully passed both legislative chambers with bipartisan support, but was vetoed by Governor Hobbs. This decision was largely influenced by a campaign from Common Cause Arizona, which appears to have been driven by a misunderstanding of the bill’s intent and impact, as well as a lack of engagement. Despite our best efforts, they refused to even discuss the matter with AUDIT USA or with Senator Ken Bennett.

Contact:

John R. Brakey, Director AUDIT USA  

520-339-2696  

JohnBrakey@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/AUDIT.USA/                  

www.AUDITelectionsUSA.org              

https://www.youtube.com/@AUDITAZ

Brochure on ABE: https://bit.ly/3Svn7n4

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Democracy in Peril: A Well-Orchestrated Decline?

Many people attribute the root of our current political crisis to polarization and tribalism, driven in part by social media algorithms. This "Mirror Effect" intensifies the divide:

Republicans view Democrats as an existential threat, and vice versa. However, polarization may be a symptom rather than the cause. The real cause could be a well-funded, strategic takeover of key institutions—the GOP, the Supreme Court, state legislatures, redistricting processes, and Congress—with the ultimate goal of establishing rule by the wealthy.

This theory, supported by Occam’s Razor, suggests that the decline of democracy is not accidental, but intentionally engineered by powerful elites. Occam’s Razor is a principle that favors the simplest explanation, with the fewest assumptions, when presented with competing hypotheses. In this case, instead of attributing the erosion of democratic systems to a complex web of unrelated factors like polarization, tribalism, or chance, the simplest explanation is that it is a coordinated effort by those with wealth and influence to concentrate power. Whether through dark money or carefully crafted political strategies, these forces are systematically dismantling democratic structures to serve their interests.

Without democracy, progress on critical issues like climate change, public health, racial justice, and economic inequality will be nearly impossible—especially in an autocracy.

The rise of election denialism, aligned with climate and racism denialism, reflects this troubling trend. These denialist movements form a triad of attacks eroding the foundation of democracy

With over two decades of experience in election transparency and integrity, I, John Brakey, have witnessed firsthand that while the scale of each presidential election has grown since 2000, the quality has not. This gradual decline threatens the core of our democratic process.

In a world that feels increasingly unstable, the work for transparency, justice, and democracy can be a lonely one. But it is a fight we must continue if we are to preserve our Democratic Republic.

After all, if you don’t like this system, I can guarantee you’re not going to like the one being proposed with Project 2025.

John R. Brakey Director, AUDIT USA

johnbrakey@gmail.com Cell 520 339 2696