Pima County Elections Integrity commissioner resigns, administrator refuses reform

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Pima County Elections Integrity commissioner, Michael (Mickey) Duniho resigned on Monday, after it became clear that officials had no interest in securing election integrity. Duniho, a well-respected retired NSA computer programmer, “finally concluded that no one in Pima County actually wants election reform and they are working together with the Secretary of State to make sure it never happens.”

Duniho told the ADI in an email, that the Pima County Elections Integrity Commission “is simply a way to waste all the election reformers’ time. Every suggestion we have made has been rejected. I will continue to be interested in election reform, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

Duniho was appointed to the Commission by Supervisor Ray Carroll six years ago. In his transmittal letter, Duniho wrote, “After much thought, I concluded that my efforts to bring about election reform through the EIC have been a complete waste of time, because County and State officials are determined not to allow any improvement in election transparency. I decided that my participation in the County’s Election Integrity Commission merely added to the façade of integrity that Pima County does not deserve. I believe the Commission has accomplished nothing, is a waste of everyone’s time, and should be abolished.”

On August 15, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry issued a memo in which he laid out an argument against election integrity reforms, including a claim that the County could not afford $1.8 million for precinct scanners.

Money was not an issue, on Monday when he asked the Board to approve an agreement to buy land from the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System for $7.5 million, including a $3 million down payment. The board voted 4-1 to buy the land in Painted Hills, in part with money from a 2004 open-space bond program for the down payment, according to the Arizona Daily Star.

However, last year, Pricilla Storm advised the State’s Military Installation Fund, that the fund’s money was needed to purchase land owned by developer Don Diamond because the County had run out of open space funds.

Supervisor Ally Miller was the lone vote against the purchase of the Painted Hills property.

Huckelberry is asking the taxpayers for the passage of millions of dollars in general obligation funds this year, and can ill-afford the risk of an election with integrity. In fact, it was the RTA Bond Election in 2006 that first raised concerns about the County’s elections and the integrity of its ballot counting process.

Bill Beard, a member of the Elections Integrity Commission, asked the Board earlier this month to purchase precinct scanners. Beard argued that the scanners offer a failsafe method to ensure ballots cast at the polls are not altered when tabulated through a central tabulation system.

Huckelberry wants a new central tabulating system. That prospect has raised red flags for those who know the County operates. Huckelberry, used the current 10 percent rate of failure to who sell the supervisors on a “new system of collection and vote tabulation that is now proposed in the central counting system.”

Dear Mr. Carroll,

I have spent many years at your request and that of others researching numbers of ways that elections in Pima County and the state could be made transparently honest. I have invested a great deal of research, much of it with others of the Pima County Election Integrity Commission and also with many others knowledgeable about methods of assuring the validity of elections. Six years ago I was honored by your appointment, having hopes for effective auditing of ballot counting in Pima County, and with the past experience of having witnessed apparently dishonest counts in my community. I now realize that these hopes and efforts have been wasted.

The Election Integrity Commission in its six years has made a number of clearly sensible recommendations for improving legal and accurate processes for Pima County’s elections. Each of the Commission’s lucid suggestions to the Board of Supervisors or to the Secretary of State has been rejected outright or put off to another day when it was ultimately rejected by one or the other. The most recent recommendation, a very simple trial of an improved auditing procedure, was rejected quickly and blatantly, adding to the belief that the Pima County Board of Supervisors, the Pima County Administrator and Election Director, and the Arizona Secretary of State are engaged in the (successful) effort to block any substantive effort to improve the public auditing of ballot counting. The only reasonable surmise at this point, considering the concerted and continued effort to prevent election reform, is that a majority of our county and state officials have a sincere stake in continued support of election fraud.

Coming to the understanding that the Election Integrity Commission has been thwarted in its serious and sane efforts for election integrity in Pima County and the state, and that there currently seems to be no hope for election integrity in Pima County, I tender my resignation from the Commission.

Sincerely,
Michael A. Duniho

According to numerous sources, recently, several small groups across the County have formed to either study or begin recalls of at least two of the Pima County supervisors. Efforts are being made to bring the various groups together to build a coalition of voters in the area to reach a consensus on how to proceed. The disparate groups share a growing distrust and dissatisfaction with the direction the County is taking on the elections, taxes, and the use of public monies.

On August 5, 2014 Duniho addressed the Pima County Board of Supervisors:

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