Audit_AZ

25/10/2024

HOPE ON THE HORIZON - Election Transparency Made Simple: 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: Link to this document: https://bit.ly/4hm2gxj

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. https://bit.ly/4h9qwmc 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: https://youtu.be/2BldESGZKB8

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: https://youtu.be/t2bUCf8wysk

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, ( https://www.eac.gov/election-officials/election-audits-across-united-states ) 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 (https://youtu.be/kXP17WLYqQE?t=137 ) 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. https://bit.ly/3Svn7n4

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 have 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:
Link to doc with two photos showing how easy ABE is to set up if you have Microsoft Excel: https://johnrbrakey.substack.com/p/election-transparency-made-simple

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 will 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 are 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. ( https://www.commoncause.org/arizona/press/advocates-urge-governor-to-veto-anti-democracy-bills/ )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
[email protected]
https://www.facebook.com/AUDIT.USA/
www.AUDITelectionsUSA.org
https://www.youtube.com/
Brochure on ABE: https://bit.ly/3Svn7n4
Senate Bill S.B. 1324:https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/56leg/1R/bills/SB1324P.pdf
House Bill HB 2560:https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/56leg/1R/bills/HB2560H.pdf

Introduction to ABE Ballot Image Audit system by Ellen Theisen 19 mins: https://youtu.be/t2bUCf8wyskHi, I'm John Brakey. Along with several other co-founder...

10/10/2024

John Brakey “I Study Elections. I'm Worried About Political Violence.” Dr. Pape is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who has studied political violence for 30 years. Dr. Pape's GUEST ESSAY NY TIMES, “I Study Political Violence. I’m Worried About the Election. If we had not recently witnessed some of the worst election-related violence in modern American history — the Jan. 6 riot, the attempted kidnapping of Speaker Nancy Pelosi before the 2022 midterms and the two attempted assassinations of Mr. Trump — it might make sense to take more modest precautions. But the past four years have shown that we live in a dangerous new world.

Our officials and our ballots may be in physical danger.

06/10/2024

Robert A. Pape’s Lecture on the Era of Violent Populism in American Politics and Why It’s Happening, hosted by UChicago Hong Kong Center for global audiences:

Sep 19, 2024U.S. Presidential Election 2024The Era of Violent Populism in AmericaHow a domestic clash over America’s identity is leading to the most dangerou...

10/03/2024

The Union of Concerned Scientists has unveiled an election science task force led by experts from across the country.

08/03/2024

PART ONE: Introducing a Groundbreaking New Tool to Verify Election Results Utilizing Abe's BIA System: A Key to Trustworthy Elections, Bridging Our Great Di...

24/02/2024

PRESS RELEASE
February 23, 2024
Groundbreaking new tool for verifying election results

Corte Madera, CA – Please join us either in person or by livestream for an extraordinary elections event! AUDIT USA (www.AuditElectionsUSA.org) will be introducing ABE, a ballot-image auditing tool that represents a significant leap forward in allowing the public and election officials to unofficially verify election results. AUDIT USA will be introducing this exciting new verification method in a presentation at the Sunrise Center in Corte Madera, CA on Monday evening, February 26, at 7 PM Pacific Standard Time. To attend in person or by Zoom, please register at this link:
http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/regform?llr=5z9f4xcab&oeidk=a07ek9etp75997b52e5
(The Zoom link will be emailed to you after registration).

The event will include three presentations. John Brakey, director of AUDIT USA, will give the opening introduction, followed by a presentation by Bennie Smith, a Democratic member of the Tennessee State Board of Elections, who will demonstrate the ABE ballot-image auditing tool. The third presenter will be Arizona State Senator Ken Bennett, a Republican and former Arizona Secretary of State, who will explain the ballot-image legislation that he has introduced in the current session of the Arizona legislature.

“We are calling our ballot-image auditing tool ‘ABE’ after Abe Lincoln,” Brakey said. “Lincoln was a believer in transparency, and we are highlighting his quote, ‘I have faith in the people. They will NOT consent to disunion. The danger is, they are misled. Let them know the truth, and the country is safe.’ Truth equals transparency, so the question then becomes, how can we make sure that the process of verifying our election results is a transparent process that everyone can believe in?”

“We firmly believe that this straightforward verification method will not only bolster voter confidence in election outcomes but also streamline results verification for the public and for election officials through an independent system that operates separately from the EMS (Election Management System),” Smith added.

The three presentations will be followed by questions from the public (those in attendance and online viewers), and a panel discussion with panel members John Brakey, Bennie Smith, Ken Bennett, and Lori Grace, the founder of the Sunrise Center and one of the first people in the U.S. to endorse the use of ballot images in the 2013 Humboldt County Election Transparency Project, a citizen-sponsored initiative to confirm election results.

The presenters and panelists will look at the reality that the United States is facing a repeat of profound civil unrest and likely election challenges in November 2024. The basis for much of this unrest is the fact that a large percentage of Americans do not believe the results of an election if their candidate loses. Our new auditing tool should help to increase voter confidence and decrease election challenges because anyone will be able to unofficially check election results for themselves.

We hope you will join us for this groundbreaking new approach to auditing elections and verifying election results!

For questions specifically about the ballot image audit tool, please email: [email protected]

CONTACTS:
John Brakey, Director Susan Pynchon, Director
AUDIT USA (AuditElectionsUSA.org) Florida Fair Elections Coalition (www.ffec.org)
[email protected] [email protected]
520-339-2696

Short link to event: bit.ly/3SDXTlS

Hear about a groundbreaking new tool for verifying elections. We, the people, can audit our own elections results from the comfort of our own homes. Tonight we will discuss wonderful tools developed by AuditUSA to create more voter confidence in the trustworthiness of our elections; therefore, more....

15/12/2023

VIRTUAL EVENT Sunday, December 17, 2023 at 4:00 PM ET -2PM AZ

10th Anniversary of A Time to Break Silence: Election Transparency, Voting Rights & Music to the Messages of MLK & Langston Hughes Ahead of the 2024 U.S.

Presidential election next year, the themes at this year’s event include voter suppression, the connection between voter suppression and systemic racism, how to improve election transparency through the retention of ballot images and poll tapes, and how to make vote counting a more public process.

REGISTER HERE
HEAR FROM ELECTION TRANSPARENCY AND VOTING RIGHTS EXPERTS AND ACTIVISTS: https://www.atimetobreaksilence.com/events?ct=t(ATTBS-2022_CF_COPY_01)&mc_cid=923db41d44&mc_eid=1df2f09cd6

Please note: Ray Lutz, Jason Flatley, and John Brakey will speak live and we will play clips from talks given by Lynn Bernstein, Bennie Smith, Emily Levy, Paul Smith, and Jawharrah Bahar at our event last year.

Ray Lutz - Executive Director at Citizens Oversight, a non-partisan organization which has been involved in election oversight, including audits and procedural review, since 2005. In 2019, announced an important project to create Ballot Image Audit service Audit Engine, which can be used by election officials, campaigns, candidates, and oversight groups, to audit any election that uses hand-marked paper ballots and scanners that create ballot images. They are now working to deploy this solution nationally.

Ray Lutz founded "Citizens' Oversight Projects" (COPs) to empower citizens to provide oversight over our democracy. With Masters of Science degree in electronics engineering from SDSU, he specialized in the office equipment industry, founding the Multifunction Products Association (MFPA) and drafting national and international standards, including a role as technical liaison to the United Nations sponsored International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Most recently (2008-present) Ray has been involved in election integrity issues, including a recent successful election audit fraud lawsuit against San Diego County. Also, Ray has been an intervenor at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) regarding the shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station (SONGS), how the $3.3 billion plant shut-down costs would be distributed, and to stop the proposed nuclear waste dump in the area. As of 2019, Lutz directed COPS to focus on the development of Audit Engine, a ballot image auditing platform that runs in the cloud, harnessing the power of up to 10,000 virtual machines running in parallel to fully retabulate election results based on the official ballot images, including OCR (optical character recognition) of voter-verifiable text on summary cards printed by Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) and therefore avoiding unverifiable barcodes.

Jason Flatley - Head of Design and Product Development at America Counts, the flagship initiative of Democracy Counts, Inc., a nonprofit, non-partisan election integrity organization. Their open and easy-to-use nonpartisan election audit tools crowdsource the collection of data about vote counting and reporting. When the data is consistent with the official results it increases our trust in an election’s accuracy. When there are discrepancies between the data and the official results, the results can be challenged and the underlying issues rectified. Accuracy and trustworthiness are both improved. The spread of independent people-powered election audits will increase the accountability of election officials and electoral systems, enhance the legitimacy of winners, improve the representativeness of government, and strengthen our social fabric. This is a big win for representative democracy.

Jason brings ten years of experience leading big analytics projects in the insurance space, as well as graphic design and video production skills. He is responsible for building America Counts’ brand and for leading the development of its apps.

John Brakey - Director and Co-founder of AUDIT Elections USA a non-partisan organization advocating for hand-marked paper ballots and making ballot images a public record

Lynn Bernstein - Founder of Transparent Elections NC, trained international election observer, National Voting Rights Task Force member

Bennie Smith - Tennessee State Election Commissioner and software developer known nationally for his research uncovering an extraordinarily high-risk tampering mechanism and examination of election system vulnerabilities covered by Bloomberg's Cyber Security Segment

Emily Levy - Founder and Director of Scrutineers, a non-partisan election protection group training volunteers to observe the processing and counting of votes and the place where volunteers, activists, and seasoned election experts come together to protect the US elections from interference, discrimination, and errors.

Paul Smith - Castleton Festival Board Chair, Senior Vice President of Campaign Legal Center, works directly with Campaign Legal Center's talented team of litigators to protect and advance American democracy through innovative litigation strategies, and has argued several voting rights cases at the Supreme Court, including Vieth v. Jubelirer and Gill v. Whitford, involving partisan gerrymandering and LULAC v. Perry, involving the legality of Texas’s mid-decade redrawing of congressional districts

​Jawharrah Bahar - As Director of Outreach at Free Hearts, an organization that educates, advocates, and supports families impacted by incarceration, Jawharrah has contributed to legislation, spoken at community events, participated in local advocacy campaigns, and raised community awareness through social media videos. Jawharrah will tell her story of disenfranchisement, her long and costly struggle to get her voting rights back, and what could be done to help others who have been deprived of their right to vote.

​HEAR MOVING MUSIC TO THE INSPIRATIONAL WISDOM OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., LANGSTON HUGHES AND AFRICAN PROVERBS

​John Wubbenhorst - John is a unique musician having grown up playing the western flute along with many other instruments and found his ultimate instrument in the haunting and beautiful bansuri bamboo flute from North India. After decades of study with maestro Hariprasad Chaurasia, John has developed an approach that features the bansuri with its roots in Indian music but also reflects John's lifetime of musical experiences in jazz, western classical and ecstatic forms of music in many genres.

Tom Teasley - World Percussionist and Composer, Artist-in-residence at Castleton Festival, DRUM! Magazine Drummie Award World Percussionist of the Year, Young Audiences of Virginia Artist of The Year, Five Fulbright-Hays Awards for collaborating with indigenous master musicians. The Washington Post stated, in a recent CD review, that Tom is ..."a multi-instrumental genius" for his compelling performance on over fifteen different instruments!

​Charles Williams - Internationally acclaimed opera singer, performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, The Barns at Wolf Trap, The Smithsonian, and the Kennedy Center, performed in theaters and opera houses and for radio and television in Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Zurich and Vienna, spoken word artist specializing in the poetry of Langston Hughes and other writers of the Harlem Renaissance, sings and teaches multiple music genres, vocal consultant for the Grammy award-winning group Sweet Honey in the Rock. "It's the voice of history, ageless yet strong -- and utterly convincing." - The Los Angeles Times

Enjoy the music and we welcome your questions for the speakers during the Q&A!

Ticket sales and donations will benefit election transparency projects conducted by non-partisan, non-profit organizations AUDIT USA, America Counts, and Citizens Oversight. To celebrate our 10th anniversary, our goal is to raise $10,000 through $10 ticket sales to take action for democracy at this critical time.

Learn about our "A Time to Break Silence" events.

25/12/2022

Good News! Ana “Anita” Moreno, a realtor and former title and escrow officer with Nogales roots, is set to serve as Santa Cruz County’s next recorder. The County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to appoint Moreno to the post, following the pending retirement of long-time Recorder Suzanne “Suzie” Sainz. Sainz, who was elected to seven consecutive terms as county recorder, announced her resignation earlier this month with two years left in her term. Effective Jan. 1, 2023, Moreno will replace Sainz for the remainder of the term, which ends on Dec. 31, 2024.
Tuesday’s appointment marked Moreno’s second pursuit of the county recorder’s post. In the 2020 Democratic primary election, Moreno ran and narrowly lost to Sainz by 96 votes.

Former candidate will replace soon-to-retire Suzie Sainz.