Press Release - For Immediate Release
10.07.05

Secretary of State Jan Brewer ordered to appear in court for failure to perform duty to adopt voting equipment decertification standards

Secretary of State Jan Brewer has been ordered to appear in Pima County Superior Court on October 18, 2005 at 9:00am to explain why she has not complied with Arizona law that requires adoption of voting system decertification standards. This order is the result of a Complaint for Special Action filed on October 6, 2005 for plaintiff Thomas W. Ryan, head of Arizona Citizens for Fair Elections.

A.R.S. §16-442C states ” the secretary of state shall adopt standards that specify the criteria for loss of certification for equipment used at any election for federal, state or county offices and that was previously certified for use in this
state.” In response to a public records request , State Election Director Joseph Kanefield, in a letter to plaintiff dated September 9, 2005, stated that “based on a review of our records we do not have any of the specific records you request.” It is clear that the secretary of state has not complied with the statute.

With Arizona lacking standards for loss of certification, there is no criteria for determining that voting equipment should be evaluated for failure to accurately count every vote, as required in A.R.S. §16-446B(6). In a close September 2004 Republican primary election in LD20, optical scanners in Maricopa County produced a significantly different result when ballots were recounted; the recount resulted in nearly 6% more absentee votes read from the same set of ballots. The inability of these machines to repeat the count within a reasonably small error is convincing evidence that either

a) the ballots were mishandled between the original count and recount, or
b) the machines malfunctioned.

Election officials claim the ballots were handled properly. If this is the case, the machines are defective, yet Maricopa County has used them in subsequent elections. The optical scanners in Maricopa County use antiquated technology and should have been replaced or upgraded long ago, especially since similar equipment behavior was observed in the 2002 LD11 Republic State Senate primary election recount. The fact that there are no standards for decertification of the machines allows the County to continue to employ defective vote-counting machines.

The Secretary of State’s standards for decertification should include standards for equipment performance based on the most recent federal voting system standards and should provide a means by which Arizona voters can require that the machines be evaluated by an independent laboratory.