The Pima County (Tucson) board of supervisors voted to release computer records from a disputed 2006 election after "raucus" citizens demanded the action in a board meeting Jan. 8. The Democratic Party had sought the records in a suit against the county alleging irregularities in a vote that passed a regional transportation plan, including a sales tax, that had been defeated several times previously. The suit pointed to problems with results from the Diebold voting machines and to unusual processing activities by a county technician following the election. The county fought the Democratic request for the records but in December a judge ordered it to release of some of the databases sought. At the meeting Tuesday, the board voted not to appeal the ruling and to release more of the databases than were covered by the judge's ruling.
More below.
Here's a description of the meeting from the Blog for Arizona:
...Providing the entire series, rather than only the final election file as ordered by Judge Miller's ruling, allows forensic experts from the parties to verify that database contents that should not vary during the counting of an election have, in fact, not been altered...It also allows further investigation of forensic methods by which to test and verify that elections insiders have not acted improperly in running the election...
After a near yuppie riot...the motion was finalized as a release of all database files pertaining to the 2006 primary, general, and RTA elections. The motion passed unanimously.
This was a very contentious meeting with some very vocal citizens. John Brakey courted ejection or arrest several times in order to keep the Board focused on the issue and to vindicate the people's right to be heard. There were continual interruptions of the proceedings with applause, jeers, and chants...
The John Brakey who courted arrest is co-founder of AUDIT-AZ and the Election Defense Alliance (EDA) Co-coordinator for Investigations. He did much leading up to this meeting to push the issue and the background is presented in detail on this site: EDA
Here's the gist of the hacking argument from EDA allegations:
The actions of Bryan Crane on the morning of 5/11/06 have been rehashed ad nauseum. Yet the fact remains that the official story (at least the version in court on the witness stand) has Crane making two mistakes rapid-fire on the morning of the 11th: He over-writes the previous day's backup file (ignoring GEMS' warning about same) and then prints TWO copies of the summary report within 10 minutes of each other -- and again, for each summary report he has to confirm his selections manually. Either mistake would be remarkable. Both happening within minutes? It looks like hacking. Period. The appearance is that bad data from outside the shop was brought in, uploaded, then an over-write of the previous day's good data with the bad occurred. And then two summary reports were printed moments later -- to confirm a successful hack and/or in order to prove to parties unknown that the hack had occurred? In his court testimony, Crane lied about how he performs backups.
The databases should be released in the next few days. Stay tuned.