Reclaiming Trust: How Transparent Elections Can Save Money and Strengthen Democracy in Arizona, and Across America

Audit Smarter, Not Harder: The Case for Abe or programs like Abe By John Brakey, Director AUDIT USA.

Democracy thrives on trust. I urge you to watch a 16-minute video titled "Reclaim Trust: How Transparent Elections Strengthen Democracy," featuring ABE (Auditing Breakthrough for Election Transparency).

Sent by email. Thursday, December 12, 2024

Link to this Doc: https://bit.ly/4gtCK89

Open Letter to the Pinal County Board of Supervisors, Recorder, Clerk and Election Director:

We at AUDIT USA believe that electoral vigilance is both the duty and privilege of every citizen striving for a truly representative government.

For more than two decades of unwavering advocacy, we continue to fight for elections that are transparent, trackable, and verifiable by the public.

On July 18, less than two weeks before the July 30, 2024, Primary Election conducted by Pinal County, I met with County Supervisor Stephen Q. Miller, County Recorder Dana Lewis, and Tom Bean, former Chair of the Pinal County Democratic Party. Former AZ Secretary of State Ken Bennet joined us by Zoom. In the meeting I demonstrated the ABE audit system- Audited Ballot Elections - developed by my organization, AUDIT USA.

As I explained to you at that time, ABE is a software program, based on Microsoft Excel, that AUDIT USA is offering to election departments at no cost to verify election accuracy, utilizing a county's existing ballot images and Cast Vote Record.

For 20 years, election experts and citizen volunteers have joined with AUDIT USA to help make U.S. elections transparent, trackable, and publicly verified. AUDIT began as AUDIT AZ and has a 20-year history of court challenges and education of public officials, all with the goal of improving transparency, trackability and verifiability in U.S. elections.

Link to article above from New York Times Nov.23, 2024

AUDIT AZ has been responsible for many election improvements in our state. But across the U.S., a crisis of confidence in election results is now general and increasingly dangerous. Election workers and candidates have been threatened. Voting places have been disrupted.

Out of approximately 244 million eligible voters in 2024, only 155.5 million participated, resulting in a voter turnout of about 63.7%. This significant gap underscores a crisis of confidence in our electoral system—one that we cannot ignore. usnews.com

At our meeting on July 18, I explained that AUDIT USA was offering ABE to Pinal County at no cost. ABE operates independently and only requires that the county make the CVR (Cast Vote Record) database available along with the ballot images from the election being reviewed. These files are carried from a USB drive to a free-standing computer at the elections office, not connected to the internet.

With the goal of using ABE to verify the results of the 2024 General Election, Ken and I submitted a Public Records Request to Pinal County for the ballot image file and Cast Vote Record. Our initial request was filed on November 27, 2024, after the election results were certified. We filed a revised request on November 30, 2024. As of today, 12 days later, we have yet to receive a response.

Shortly after our first filing, I learned that Pinal County had paid $150,000 to the law firm Snell & Wilmer to produce an "Evaluation" of the county’s July 30th Primary Election. Its purpose was to reassure voters that the election had been conducted properly despite allegations that the Sheriff’s race had been tampered with. These allegations came from one of the candidates in the Sheriff’s race who was at that time a member of the Pinal County Board of Supervisors.

Snell & Wilmer’s report was extensive, but the process never included inspection of even one ballot from the Sheriff's race. This was due to state law limitations in A.R.S. 16-602, Arizona’s post-election hand count audit law.

From our reading of the report, it references “Logic and Accuracy” (L&A) testing thirty-six time. Link to a short video explaining important information about L&A testing.

However, it never mentions ballot images or the importance of the “Cast Vote Record” (CVR) database, which is a vital tool for auditing elections, easily proving that the system has recorded each voter’s choice accurately.

Two days before I met with Pinal County, Ken Bennett and I met with Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, together with AUDIT USA attorney Bill Risner and AUDIT USA co-founder Arlene Leaf. At that meeting, on July 16, Secretary Fontes stated that A.R.S. §16-602 does not prevent a county from reviewing digital records such as ballot images or the CVR database, as long as it is done at the elections office. From that meeting, we understood that the Boards of Supervisors have the authority to use digital records for election verification and analysis. However, they are restricted by law from reviewing hand-marked paper ballots outside of the official hand-count audit process without a judge’s order.

Pinal County knew that using ABE was a no-cost option to review ballot images —and compare them to the Cast Vote Record (CVR) database in the Sheriff’s race. This comparison would have confirmed whether the votes cast were accurately recorded. But they chose instead to hire Snell & Wilmer to conduct the $150,000 evaluation that never looked at one ballot or ballot image..

In the Sheriff’s race, reviewing all ballot images using a program like Abe would have taken about the same amount of time as reviewing just a few paper ballots manually. Abe could also have sorted all ballot images by Pinal County’s 109 precincts, allowing for a straightforward comparison to voter turnout numbers—ensuring a faster, more transparent, and accurate audit process.

Neither Snell & Wilmer nor the Pinal County Board of Supervisors, acting as Board of Elections, could include the Sheriff's race for inspection or hand-count audit because , A.R.S. § 16-602 . limits auditable races to federal and state contests.

A 2023 opinion by the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed that counties cannot look at more paper ballots than designated in the law. Although the appeals court ruling pertained to a different election jurisdiction, Cochise County, and that county’s desire to hand count all paper ballots in the election, the ruling also had the effect of affirming the exclusion of county races and county ballot measures because they are not specified in the law.

In 2006, then-State Representative Ted Downing, who was working with AUDIT AZ, co-sponsored an innovative bill, SB 1527, which eventually became Arizona’s post-election hand count audit law, A.R.S. § 16-602. The original intent of the bill was to include audits of county-level races. However, as detailed in Downing’s testimony, county races were excluded due to political compromises made during the drafting process. Some county election officials, including Karen Osborne (Maricopa County Elections) and Brad Nelson (Pima County Elections), strongly opposed county races to be included in the audit. They threatened to block the bill entirely if county races and county ballot measures races were not removed from the audit process. Downing recounts how SB 1527 was ultimately watered down to secure its passage. For more details, watch Downing testimony in the reference video.

In addition to electing county officials, county ballot measures control county budgets. Billions of dollars of taxpayer money are at stake, the allocation of which is decided in county ballot measures statewide. By completely excluding the auditing of ballot measures, A.R.S 16-602 invites corruption.

Pinal County had the option of using ABE to analyze the results of the Sheriff’s race, which would have cost it nothing. If the county had used ABE to review ballot images and the Cast Vote Record, it could have proved election accuracy to the public. It also could have proved to the candidate in the Sheriff’s race who had alleged that the results were rigged, that he had lost (or won) fairly.

The story of Audit USA's challenge to lack of transparency in a contested 2006 Pima County bond issue election worth $2 billion is told in the documentary movie Fatally Flawed. A bond issue such as the one that is the subject of this film cannot be audited under Arizona’s current audit law. Video clip Fatally Flawed.

Additionally, Attorney Bill Risner’s Statement of Facts on the RTA case in January 2012 and his Resolution to the Arizona Democratic State Party Meeting, which passed in January 2010, are essential reading, illuminate the challenges of making elections transparent, for anyone seeking to further their understanding of systemic flaws in our election process.

As AUDIT USA attorney Bill Risner and AUDIT USA co-founder John Brakey have aptly noted, “Nothing is fixed until we know why it broke.” AUDIT USA's work is founded on facts gathered through rigorous analysis and numerous court cases. Attorney Risner's efforts helped to uncover the depth of Arizona's election problems and collected critical evidence that forms the foundation of AUDIT USA's work. This in turn led Audit USA to develop the software program - ABE, or Auditable Ballot Elections - to increase the transparency of our elections.

Among ABE's unique attributes is the ability to hyper-link each ballot image to its corresponding row in the Cast Vote Record. ABE combines technology with human analysis to verify that the Cast Vote Record accurately recorded the votes on each ballot image. This combination of human eye and technological organization of data is called a "hybrid audit system” by Audit USA co-founder John Brakey.

ABE can also separate the data by precinct, allowing useful analysis of voter turnout numbers by precinct, voting trends and precinct history. Election results can also be sorted by contest; by undervotes - all votes that had supposedly no votes for a particular contest; or by overvotes - contests where the voter selected too many choices. Voter intent can be seen on the ballot image by the human eye and compared to the voting system’s interpretation of voters’ marks on the Cast Vote Record.

AUDIT USA recommends that counties enable the inkjet-printer feature that is already included in most high-speed digital ballot scanners. This feature will print an identifying number on each anonymous paper ballot as it is scanned, allowing for easy correlation with its ballot image.

Utilizing ballot images and cast vote records to review election results will signal the end of the "black box" election era by creating a level of redundant transparency. Further public trust could be gained by allowing ballot image files and the Cast Vote Record to be posted online for citizen review. This is already done in Georgia, San Francisco, and Maryland.

An article published in the Washington Monthly extensively quotes Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes about the value of post-election review of ballot images and the Cast Vote Record, and the increase in public trust in election results if ballot images and Cast Vote Records are posted online:

The following are excerpted from 3 paragraphs from this article:

“One of Fontes’s most revolutionary policy pursuits is straightforward: He believes that in every election, during the most disinformation-prone stage—immediately after the votes are counted but before the winner has been certified—election officials should publish digital images of every ballot cast. Those images should be uploaded in a form that’s easy to read and sort, so rival campaigns, grassroots groups, press outlets, academics, and individual citizens could judge the results of an election for themselves, rather than having to rely on an official’s word. Those who continued to spout groundless theories of malfeasance or fraud could also then be checked by other outside groups and individuals with direct access to the same ballot images.”

“This push toward radical transparency represents a sea change for U.S. election management. For most of the last century, officials have simply asked citizens to trust that a count is correct, that the systems in place were credible. That era is over, Fontes said. Public trust in government institutions is now at a near-historic low; just 20 percent of Americans say they’re very confident in the country’s elections, according to a January 2022 ABC/Ipsos poll. The modern American public needs more proof, Fontes said, and ballot images are the key. ‘The principle that a person can walk into a county treasurer’s office and ask for the budget and be shown where the money from the county is actually being spent is almost exactly the same,’ Fontes said. Except that this is actually better, because this is the real representation. It’s as if you walked into the county treasurer’s office and got copies of all of the canceled checks.’”

“Fontes recalled that in Mongolia, 98% of the voters reported very high confidence in the outcome of elections. Fontes asked the guy what the country's trick was. He said, ‘Well, this place actually publishes their ballots online, by precincts, so that the population can go through it their doggone selves’ Fontes said.” Excerpt from Washington Monthly “Show me the ballot” by Steve Rosenfield October 29th, 2023

ABE offers a modern solution for verifying elections without altering existing laws. By using ballot images, ABE provides stakeholders with definitive proof that votes are accurate and best counted at the precinct level—the foundation of election integrity.

By embracing tools like ABE, Pinal County has a unique opportunity to lead the way in election transparency, reduce reliance on costly consultants, and rebuild public trust.

Democracy thrives on trust. I urge you to watch this video titled “Reclaiming Trust: How Transparent Elections Can Save Money and Strengthen Democracy in Arizona and Across America.” It highlights the importance of auditing smarter, not harder, and makes the case for using ABE to enhance election transparency. Watch here: Reclaiming Trust Video - long verision 33 minutes

In closing, I hope we can collaborate, including on necessary legislative improvements. Arizona’s audit law, ARS §16-602, needs a complete overhaul to allow the use of ballot images and CVRs for verifying election results. These records should also be posted online after every election to maximize transparency and build voter confidence.

Other jurisdictions, such as Maryland, Georgia, San Francisco, and some counties in Wisconsin, already post these records online. Arizona should follow their lead. Furthermore, the hand-count audit provisions in ARS §16-602 need to be expanded and strengthened to ensure these audits are meaningful, not just performative.

If my directness has offended anyone, I sincerely apologize—it stems from my passion for this critical issue.

Ken Bennett and I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to tour your new $29 million election facility and discuss elections together.

Best regards,

John R. Brakey

Director, AUDIT USA

Cell: 520-339-2696

Email: JohnBrakey@gmail.com

Substack Page: https://johnrbrakey.substack.com/

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

For more info: Download ABE and run the Beta for yourself go here: