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Anchorage Election Commission special meeting of April 21: Holding Duke accountable on “ignore broken security seals” instruction

Submitted by on Sunday, 22 April 2012 – 8:06 AMNo Comment

by Melissa S. Green

Giving only two days’ notice, Assembly chair Ernie Hall announced on Thursday, April 19, that the Anchorage Election Commission would hold two special meetings to get further information about April 3 election irregularities. Here’s my report on Saturday’s meeting, and on the first mainstream media report on Deputy Municipal Clerk Jacqueline Duke’s instruction to election workers to ignore broken security seals on voting machines.

Special meeting of Anchorage Election Commission on April 3, 2012

Ernie Hall’s public notice, issued on April 19, read:

The Municipality of Anchorage Election Commission will hold a Special Meeting, open to the public, on Saturday, April 21, 2012, at 10:00 a.m. at the Loussac Library Wilda Marston Theatre, 3600 Denali Street. The meeting will continue on Monday, April 23, 2012 at 4:00 p.m. at City Hall, 632 W. 6th Avenue in Room 830 — the Mayor’s Conference Room on the 8th Floor.

The purpose of the Special Meeting is to interview people who were unable to vote in the April 3rd election due to ballot shortages, had difficulty voting, or have personal evidence of irregularities or failures in the election process. The Election Commission may also use this time to interview election officials and Clerk’s Office staff.

Election Commission Members will be available for individual interviews on Saturday until to 4:00 p.m. and again on Monday, April 23, 2012 from 4:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

The Commission intends to work individually to facilitate interviewing people in a timely manner. People should be prepared to identify themselves sufficiently to compare their information with the voter register and precinct information.

This Special Meeting will be the only opportunity to be interviewed by the Election Commission in person. People unable to attend may still email to Election2012@muni.org. In the e-mail, please provide your full name, precinct name or number, and identify if you voted, or that you were unable to vote. If you were unable to vote, please state why. Your e-mails will be provided to the Commission.

Ernie Hall
Chair of the Assembly

With only two days’ notice, and not exactly wide advertisement, it was no wonder that attendance at the Saturday portion of the special meeting was sparse: election workers and voters only barely outnumbered the media reporters and bloggers who attended in order to report on the meeting. I was one of the bloggers, and I believe the only media person who was there for the entire six-hour period. I was livetweeting my observations of the meeting @bentalaska. Jeanne Devon of The Mudflats was present for about half the meeting; partway through we also agreed on a hashtag for tweeting on it, #MOAE (standing for Municipality of Anchorage election).

Much of this report is in the form of tweets, but is supplemented by information from other sources. Other coverage can be read in these stories:

I recommend in particular the latter two: Casey Grove’s ADN story and Jeanne Devon’s story at The Mudflats.

Meeting begins; Jed Whittaker disputes procedure

I misheard Mr. Whittaker’s first name as “Jeff,” and tweeted his name as such. In fact, his first name (as reported later by KTVA) is Jed.

Mr. Whittaker protested the procedure of the special meeting. Rather than being held as a public meeting with public testimony that could be heard by all present, the meeting design involved one-on-one interviews by election commissioners of voters and election workers who came.  Whittaker’s vocal protest led to Deputy Municipal Clerk Jacqueline Duke telling him he was out of order and Municipal Attorney Dennis Wheeler threatening to have security personnel eject him from the building.  Whittaker ended up speaking one-on-one with an election commissioner, and later being interviewed by Kirsten Swann of KTVA Channel 11 News and Jeanne Devon of The Mudflats about both the special meeting’s procedure and about the election experience about which he had come to complain.

  • Election Commission on Prop5: 30,208 (43%) voted Yes RT @alaskadispatch: Final vote count in for Anchorage election http://t.co/EwLz0hZI #
  • At Loussac Library to livetweet #Election Commission public hearing. #
  • Meeting opened. Member of public is disputing procedure. Jacqueline Duke is scolding him & telling he’s put of order. #fb #
  • Jeff Whitaker is voter who is disputing process. Election Commissioners are interviewing people 1 by 1 not hearing testimony publicly. #fb #

Jed Whittaker disputes Election Commission procedure

Election Commissioners interview small number of people

The short two day notice, with little publicity, undoubtedly led to a low turnout of voters and election workers.

Election Commission hearing voter complaints 1 by 1: very few people here.

  • There are perhaps 15 voters not part of #Election Commission who were here when I arrived. KSKA reporter here. Jacqueline Duke here. #fb #
  • I also saw Barbara Gruenstein’s. #fb #

Another angry voter

This voter was later identified as Judy Whittaker, who was also interviewed by Jeanne Devon of The Mudlfats.

  • Angry voter. Jacqueline Duke: Would you like to speak to a commissioner? Voter: I would not like to speak to _A_ commissioner… #fb #
  • … (angry voter continued): “I’d like to speak to the whole damn bunch.” #election #fb #
  • RT @KTVA: @bentalaska #KTVA reporter tweeting from the scene alongside you: @kswannKTVA #
  • Angry voter earlier: “this would be like telling people testifying before the Assembly being told to speak with only 1 Assembly member” #fb #

Hold press accountable: The media failure to report on Jacqueline Duke’s instruction to election workers to ignore broken security seals on voting machines

Over the course of the day, I spoke with four local journalists about the failure, so far, of local mainstream media to report on Deputy Municipal Clerk Jacqueline Duke’s instruction to ignore broken security seals on the memory cards of voting machines.

This instruction was first reported by election worker Wendy Isbell to the blog The Mudflats, which reported her claim on April 15. Isbell also reported that the security seal on the voting machine at her precinct had a broken security seal. On Tuesday, April 17, Brad Friedman of the national blog The Brad Blog reported on a conversation he had with Duke, in which Duke confirmed that she had given that instruction. Bent Alaska summarized the information from The Mudflats and The Brad Blog the same day. With local media present, Wendy Isbell testified at the April 17 Anchorage Assembly meeting about Duke’s “ignore broken security seals” instruction and the broken seal she had seen; Linda Kellen Biegel and I also testified on this issue before the Assembly.

Then, on April 19, Steve Aufrecht of the blog What Do I Know? posted a 20-minute video interview with former deputy municipal clerk Guadalupe Marroquin, who preceded Jacqueline Duke as the person who supervised Anchorage municipal elections; among the topics Marroquin discussed was the importance of the security seals and other measures intended to guarantee the security and integrity of the election. One of these measures, the Data Processing Review Board, was made up of several IT experts who designed their own tests to challenge the programming of the AccuVote memory cards. Once satisfied, they sealed the AccuVote memory cards into place to prevent tampering. But the Data Processing Review Board was eliminated two years ago. Watch:

Despite all this information having come out over the past week, the Anchorage Assembly and the Election Commission to all appearances were ignoring the issue, and the mainstream local media had failed to report on it.  I turned my efforts toward trying to bring media attention to the issue, speaking over the course of the day with four local journalists from four different media organizations about it: Daysha Eaton of KSKA 91.1 FM (Anchorage public radio); Kirsten Swann of KTVA Channel 11; Abby Hancock of KTUU Channel 2 News, and Casey Grove of the Anchorage Daily News.  As of this writing, only one local media organization (Anchorage Daily News through a story filed by Casey Grove that evening) has reported on the issue. (KSKA has not yet filed a report on the April 21 special meeting.)

[Update: Moments after posting this story, I learned that KTVA Channel 11 News reporter Kate McPherson had filed a story, broadcast tonight, interviewing Assembly chair Ernie Hall about the broken ballot seal question. I’ll add a link to the story and embedded video when it becomes available.]

[Update 2: A story filed tonight by KSKA reporter Daysha Eaton also makes mention of the broken security seal issue. Both the KTVA and the KSKA stories have been added to the Reference list at the bottom of this post.]

  • Daysha Eaton of KSKA asks election precinct chair questions with an election commissioner & Deputy Clerk Jacqueline Duke listening. http://t.co/bM3KKbhs #

Duke turned her head toward me just as I took this photo, and, noticing me, then moved away from the table.

Daysha Eaton of KSKA asks election precinct chair questions with an election commissioner & Deputy Clerk Jacqueline Duke listening.

  • @kswannKTVA @KTVA when will you report on Duke’s instruction to election workers to ignore broken security seals on voting machines? #fb #
  • I just asked that same question to Daysha Eatin of KSKA right after listening to her interviewing Jacqueline Duke. #fb #
  • Typo: Daysha Eaton of KSKA. Daysha did ask some pretty goo[d] questions of Duke about this really weird process here. #fb #

(By “weird process here” I meant the Election Commission’s decision to conduct one-on-one interviews instead of holding a full public meeting with public testimony.)

  • I am near #election commissioner interviewing a Muldoon precinct chief. They are going into a lot of detail. #fb #
  • RT @kswannKTVA: *Jed Whittaker*. He received word his questioned ballot was not counted by he didn’t present ID at the poll. #election #fb #
  • RT @kswannKTVA: He says the election comm. is “deaf.” I asked if he tried to go to the canvass last…”What canvass?” #election #fb #
  • RT @kswannKTVA: Whittaker leaves hall, security standing by door. He says he sees a civil suit coming down the line #election #
  • RT @kswannKTVA: Whittaker calls mtg.”dog & pony show.” Other people in meeting talking about how difficult it was to find ballots. #election #
  • RT @celticdiva: @bentalaska Election canvass meeting information was hard to find for most people // yep #election #
  • Just learned Jeff Whitaker said he was told by municipal atty that if he didn’t pipe down he wd be removed from building. #election #
  • One commissioner telling Ernie Hall she thinks this is being done badly, #
  • … That voters she’s spoken with had expected to testify before entire #election commission. (overheard) #
  • Bent & @Mudflats agree on hashtag #moae for election tweets here on out. #
  • Watch @KTVA & @kska coverage. I have asked reporters @ both why they haven’t covered Duke “ignore broken security seals” instruction. #MOAE #
  • Not only officials need to be held accountable. So does local mainstream press when they fail to report known facts. @KTVA @kska #MOAE #

Ernie Hall, Assembly chair

Ernie Hall took over from Debbie Ossiander as chair of the Anchorage Assembly at last Tuesday’s Assembly meeting.

  • RT @Mudflats Sounds like Ernie Hall is putting together a commission to investigate election. Adam Trombley will chair. #MOAE #
  • Ernie Hall has been going to Election Commissioners 1 by 1 apparently to propose Trombley-led investigation commission. #MOAE #

Assembly chair Ernie Hall talks with an election commissioner

  • Wondering if ethics/election committee chair Harriet Drummond will be on Hall’s Trombley commission or if it will be stacked. #MOAE #
  • RT @CJBurgandy: @bentalaska Is Hall the only assembly member there, or is everyone there? // see next tweet #MOAE #
  • I have also seen but not talked with Dick Traini, I think Harriet Drummond may also be here. #MOAE #

(In fact, Harriet Drummond was not present, as I tweeted later.  I had misconstrued something I overheard. The only Assembly members I know to have been present for any part of meeting were Dick Traini, Paul Honeman, and Ernie Hall, who replaces Debbie Ossiander as chair of the Assembly at the April 17 Assembly meeting.)

  • Just did a brief interview with Assambly chair Ernie Hall – it was recorded – re: Duke “ignore broken security seals” instruction. #MOAE #
  • I asked Hall: will this isse be investigated? He answered “We will be investigating.” But was evasive about that specific topic. #MOAE #
  • I think I finally got Ernie Hall to agree that the specific question about Duke’s instruction will be part of investigation. #MOAE #

One of the things I was trying to nail down was whether this specific issue would be included in the investigation, or whether the investigation’s scope would be limited to the issues of ballot shortages, which seemed to be what this special meeting was all about.

Jeanne Devon of The Mudflats videotaped the exchange and included in her account of the meeting. Her introduction:

Green and I agreed we’d ask Ernie Hall, just to make sure that he understood our concern, and was planning to investigate that particular issue. I taped as Green asked Hall the question. She laid out the entire issue carefully, and then asked if it would be investigated. The exchange that followed was… interesting.

Watch the video to hear Green’s full background and question to Hall. She asks specifically if there will be an investigation into Jacqueline Duke admitting to telling election workers to ignore the broken security seals on voting machines.

Devon transcribed the portion of the conversation after I’d laid out the background of the broken security seal issue:

Green: Are you going to be investigating this?

Hall: We are investigating.

Green: Are you going to be investigating this issue. This specific issue.

Hall: That’s…. the answer I just gave you.

Green: You said you were investigating, but you didn’t say you were going to be investigating this issue. That’s a pretty general term.

Hall: You didn’t address anything in your entire statement other than that question.

Green: Are you going to be investigating Duke’s instruction to election workers to ignore broken security seals on ballot boxes?

Hall: I don’t know which one of us are having problems with our communication skills here. You’ve been very clear in the question that you’ve asked me, and I was very clear in my answer that yes, we are.

Green: What you said is “We will be investigating.” That’s a general statement. You could be investigating any number of things, but not this particular issue.

Hall: I’m not going to debate with you. I answered your question.

Green: So, in other words, we don’t know if you’re going to investigate.

Hall: You can come to the conclusion you want. You asked a very clear and specific question.

Green: I did, and you said “we are going to investigate.”

Hall: And I said yes.

Green: OK, you will be investigating Duke’s instructions to election workers.

Hall: That is the whole purpose of the third party investigator, is to deal with those issues.

Green: OK. We will look forward to hearing the election commission actually asking that specific question, as well as all the others.

Hall: Right. Very good.

Green: Thank you.

Hall: Thank you.

[Update: According to tonight’s KTVA report:

Hall also said there will also be a full investigation into reports that the security seal on some Accuvote machines were broken.

“I’m aware of that and I’ve asked the chair of the Election Commission to make sure they look specifically into that, which may involve testing some of the machines after the fact.”]

Other Assembly members

  • I am told Paul Honeman is also here. #MOAE #
  • Just has lengthy convo w/ @KTVA reporter @kswannKTVA who witnessed my entire convo with Ernie Hall. #MOAE #
  • RT @bentalaska: Correction to earlier report: Hall not setting up investigation commission headed by Trombley … (see next tweet) #MOAE #
  • … But proposing Trombley to head Assembly ethics/election committee, replacing Drummond. #MOAE #
  • Also, I mistook something I overheard … Drummonf is not here. #MOAE #

More on the media

  • Convo w @kswannKTVA of @KTVA about media failure to report important facts about this election incl. Minnery Feb 18 email… #MOAE #
  • … & failure to report on info known dice Tuesday re: Duke “ignore broken security seals” instruction. @kswannKTVA @KTVA #MOAE #
  • @kswannKTVA gave me @KTVA managing ed. Sean Doogan’s email & said she wd report on Duke instruction. #MOAE #
  • Of course what reporters report may be removed by editors before stories broadcast or published. #holdpressaccountable #MOAE #
  • RT @AleisterAk: @bentalaska Do any f these folks even see a problem with the Accuvote? I don’t think so… // agreed. #MOAE #
  • Pardon my occasional typos. As always when tweeting from iPhone, I am all thumbs. @MOAE #
  • Just spoke with KTUU reporter Abby Hancock about Duke “ignore broken security seals” instruction. #holdpressaccountable #MOAE #
  • RT @mdbarber: @bentalaska Thank you for tweeting what’s happening for those of us who can’t be there. We forgive your typos! // Thanks! #
  • Assembly member & mayoral candidate Paul Honeman says he’ll do all he can to ensure ballots not destroyed b4 investigations complete. #MOAE #
  • RT @kswannKTVA: It’s dead in here. #ktva #ancelection http://t.co/LOAAA6Xm #MOAE #

Election worker Wendy Isbell tells election commissioner and ADN reporter Casey Grover about Duke’s “ignore broken security seals” instruction

It was frequently possible to overhear portions of the one-on-one interviews; and in fact I overheard part of Wendy Isbell’s discussion with the election commissioner with whom she was speaking. I think their interview must have taken at least half an hour. Near the end of that period, Casey Grove of the Anchorage Daily News arrived, and when Isbell completed her interview with the election commissioner, I introduced her to Grove. He interviewed her, then me, and then went on to interview Jacqueline Duke.  He is, at this writing, the only local journalist who has reported on the “broken security seals” issue, in the report he filed that night —  “Voters, poll workers detail spring election problems: Broken seals on ballot boxes, four-hour wait for ballots among complaints.” [Update: As noted above, both KTVA and KSKA have now also reported on the broken security seal issue.]

  • Overhearing election worker tell Commissioner saying definitely fewer ballots at precinct than usual. #MOAE #
  • Wendy Isbell tells election commissioner ballot boxes should not “sleepover” at election workers homes. http://t.co/9kXX3QYX #

Wendy Isbell tells election commissioner ballot boxes should not "sleepover" at election workers homes.

  • Wendy Isbell talking with Casey Grove of the Anchorage Daily News about broken security seals. http://t.co/uDMjVfAH #

Wendy Isbell talking with Casey Grove of the Anchorage Daily News about broken security seals.

  • Wendy Isbell is now telling Casey Grove of ADN about voting machine issues. #MOAE #
  • “Flimsy” (Duke’s word) plastic security seals are hard plastic – broken one Wendy Isbell saw was cleanly cut. #MOAE #
  • @kswannKTVA of #KTVA also here can overhear everything Wendy Isbell is telling Casey Grove of ADN. #holdpressaccountable #MOAE #
  • Casey Grove of Anchorage Daily News now interviewing Jacqueline Duke. http://t.co/KNYWT8D6 #

(The photo I tweeted from my iPhone was a little fuzzy, so here I’ve replaced it with the one I took with my regular camera.)

Casey Grove of Anchorage Daily News now interviewing Jacqueline Duke.

  • I also talked w/ Casey Grove including about my personal history re: Prop 5 & my dissent about it last August. #MOAE #

(See more on this below.)

Meanwhile, the Alaska Press Club was holding its annual event, which was being attended by Anchorage Daily News columnist Julia O’Malley (among others), from whom I picked up this apropos tweet:

  • RT @adn_jomalley: b/c we don’t have answers, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask questions and leave them hanging there @nealconan #ask2012 #MOAE #

A steady trickle

  • Although traffic here re: Anchorage Election Commission is light, there has been steady stream of voters/election workers. #MOAE #
  • Paul Honeman: his own candidacy as mayor not the issue anymore: election integrity is. #MOAE http://t.co/EavE0TCn #

Paul Honeman: his own candidacy as mayor not the issue anymore: election integrity is. #MOAE

  • RT @snoopervizion: @bentalaska. We’re paying attention 2 hanky panky w/ #LGBT voting issue in #AK & learning from yr experiences. thx! #MOAE #
  • @snoopervizion you’re welcome. Advice: don’t just hold officials accountable, must also #holdpressaccountable #MOAE #
  • Casey Grove asked me if I had talked w/ Duke about broken seal question. I said it wasn’t up to me to ask: it was up to reporters. #MOAE #
  • It was at that point Duke walked by, I pointed her out to him, & he went over to interview her. #MOAE #
  • (I had already hooked him up w/ Wendy Isbell who had just finished talking w/ an election commissioner.) #MOAE #
  • Casey Grove (ADN) had not previously reported on April 3 election. #MOAE #
  • That appears to be prob w/ press: reporters changed off from other stories, not fully briefed on story they’re now assigned to. #MOAE #
  • Jacqueline Duke & I both have walked around, but we gave not exchanged any words. #MOAE #
  • I told Grove I wasn’t sure I could be civil with her. #MOAE #
  • I’m overhearing a person telling an election commissioner about the Brad Blog. #MOAE #

KTVA story

Kirsten Swann’s KTVA story failed to make any mention of the broken seal issue, other than to make a vague reference to the 2006 HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy,” which did nothing to explain its relevance: the documentary showed exactly how the memory cards on Diebold AccuVote machines could be tampered with. As explained by Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog,:

Plastic seals over memory cards — the extremely sensitive cartridges that hold the ballot design and track the election results tallied from the scanned paper ballots throughout the day — became a mandatory security precaution in the wake of the shocking 2005 hack of a mock election in Leon County, FL which succeeded in completely flipping the results of the election in such a way that one would never know it had been manipulated unless all of the paper ballots were counted by hand.

That startling hack was accomplished by tampering with the memory card before the election. It was all captured on film in HBO’s Emmy-nominated 2006 documentary Hacking Democracy. Here’s the actual hack, as it happened, as seen in the film…

Election Commission chair Gwen Matthew continues to maintain Diebold AccuVote machines pose no issues

  • Kelly Walters had 45-min talk w/ election commission chair who still maintains perfection of Diebold machine http://t.co/Xielq1HX #

Kelly Walters had 45-min talk w/ election commission chair who still maintains perfection of Diebold machines.

Packing up for the day

The Election Commission ended the day’s work and packed up to go home. They will hold another special meeting today, Monday, April 23 from 4:00 to 7:30 PM at the Mayor’s Conference Room, Room 830 on the 8th floor of City Hall, 632 W. 6th Avenue.

Some of the Election Commissioners, after they packed up for the day. #MOAE

  • I sent emails to @KTVA KSKA KTUU & ADN reporters I spoke w/. W/ links to @TheBradBlog & other stories re: Duke. #holdpressaccountable #MOAE #
  • Election Commission done for day. I will report more on this tomorrow. Tonight: Celebration of Change. #MOAE #fb #
  • Celebration of Change tix: Metro is out. Tix at door $25 – cash or check only (no credit cards). #fb #

Casey Grove’s ADN story

I went to Celebration of Change that night. At intermission, I checked my newsfeeds and read Casey Grove’s story in the Anchorage Daily News, in which he reported on his interviews with Wendy Isbell, me, and Jacqueline Duke:

Among those who did show up was Wendy Isbell, an election worker who also testified at Tuesday’s Assembly meeting. Isbell says she saw voting machines with broken seals, plastic pieces designed to prevent someone from tampering with a memory card that counts votes.

“I don’t see how they broke,” Isbell said. “They’re impossible to break. They were evenly cut.”

When another worker asked about the broken seals, Isbell says Deputy Municipal Clerk Jacqueline Duke told the worker, “If they’re broken, don’t worry about it.”

In fact, Isbell told Grove (I listened to and recorded the entire interview with my iPod’s Voice Memo app) that the seals are made of an extremely strong plastic similar to the material used for plastic handcuffs used by police, and that the seal she saw was cleanly cut through.

Grove’s story continued:

Gay rights activist and Bent Alaska blogger Melissa Green said the electioneers simply don’t know whether someone tampered with the machines. That’s the point of the seals, she said.

“This election has many questions,” Green said, “but the ballot boxes are the biggest.”

As I tweeted at the time,

  • I also talked w/ Casey Grove including about my personal history re: Prop 5 & my dissent about it last August. #MOAE #

My personal history in relationship with Prop 5 was not included in Grove’s story; but among other things I told him that I considered it completely possible the Prop 5 could have lost in an election in which election security and integrity was fully preserved.

But, of course, election security and integrity was not preserved:

  1. Ballot shortage: Precincts running out of ballots such that an unknown number of voters were disenfranchised — a problem exacerbated by misinformation sent out by Jim Minnery, to all appearances sent out intentionally, despite Minnery’s claim that the fault belonged to an anonymous clerk’s office staffer, and also by numerous nonresidents of Anchorage showing up to vote questioned ballots, thus using ballots that could have been used by fully qualified voters. The ballot shortage appears to be the only issue the Election Commission was intent upon investigating.
  2. Broken security seals on memory cards, such that we have no assurance that the voting machines counted votes accurately. Thus, a handcount is an essential part of any complete investigation. Furthermore, it’s become clear that the Municipal Clerk’s office and all its staff need some retraining and probably new procedures on ensuring voting machine security — assuming the problematic Diebold AccuVote machines continue in use.

Grove’s story again:

Duke, also at the meeting, said she saw no voting inaccuracies during testing of the machines.

“There are a lot of tests done prior to the election to prevent hacking, which is what these people are talking about,” Duke said.

However, as previously mentioned, Guadalupe Marroquin told Steve Aufrecht when he interviewed her that at last part of the pre-election testing of the machines conducted by the IT experts of the Data Processing Review Board no longer occurs, because that board was eliminated two years ago.  The Accuvote Testing Board, which remains, has far less vigorous procedures.  According to Marroquin, theh Data Processing Review Board also ensured that the memory cards on voting machines were sealed to prevent tampering — an effort which is wasted in any case if an election official instructs workers to ignore broken seals.

Grove continues:

Any evidence of fraud could easily be rooted out with a recount, Duke said. She also said Isbell’s retelling of her instruction about the broken voting machine seals was incomplete.

“What I said was, ‘If you open up on election morning, and you see it’s clearly broken from transport, don’t worry, I have extras,” Duke said.

The plastic is “flimsy,” she said, and can break easily. That’s not evidence of vote fraud, she said.

Needless to say, if the plastic is “flimsy,” then security seals which are not “flimsy” should be used: also a responsibility of officials like Duke charged with ensuring the security of voting machines and election integrity. Isbell, meanwhile, described the security seals as not being flimsy at all: “I don’t see how they broke,” Isbell said. “They’re impossible to break. They were evenly cut.”

But whether “flimsy” (Duke) or “impossible to break” (Isbell), whether “clearly broken from transport” (Duke) or “evenly cut” (Isbell), Duke’s instruction to replace broken seals with the “extras” contradicts the Municipality of Anchorage’s official election handbook, which state:

Make sure the small silver bar covering the memory card on the front of the Accu-Vote is sealed and the seal is not broken.

"Make sure the small silver bar covering the memory card on the front of the Accu-Vote is sealed and the seal is not broken." Instructions from the official MOA election handbook.

As Brad Friedman told The Mudflats,

If and when any seal on these machines are broken they are to be immediately taken out of service and quarantined for forensic investigation.  If that is not already the law in AK or Anchorage, then it is a grave security hole in the law.

Anyone who instructs someone to not report a broken seal and use such a machine anyway should be investigated for malfeasance, misfeasance and/or criminal election fraud.

Grove’s story again:

“I think perhaps people are unhappy with the (election) results, and they’ll find anything they can,” Duke said.

By this argument, the people should have the right to petition the government for redress of grievances only if they have no grievances.

It’s worth pointing out in any case that this isn’t the first time that Mudflats writer Jeanne Devon or radio host Shannyn Moore have seriously questioned the integrity of Anchorage and Alaska elections conducted using Diebold AccuVote machines. Both took considerable heat from their readers and listeners for agreeing with 2010’s U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller about the lack of integrity of elections in Alaska in spite of their vehement disagreement with just about everything else that Miller stands for. As Devon wrote last November:

As it always is with the human beings, the people tempted to abuse power are the ones who have it. So, election integrity is NOT a partisan issue. It is amazing though, that when you stick up for the principle, how often you will be accused of being partisan. Just ask Brad Friedman who, depending on what side happens to be in his cross-hairs, has been accused of being a Republican hack, or a “Democrat” hack.

It should be said also, that The Mudflats got its share of grief by agreeing with Joe Miller that the Alaskan voting system is broken, and needs to be repaired. But we march on anyway, because in this case, regardless of how brutal the game is between the red shirts and the blue shirts, we all must agree on the rules or there is no game.

In this election, the rules were broken.  The one reassurance I can take from Duke’s statements to Casey Grove was this:

Any evidence of fraud could easily be rooted out with a recount, Duke said.

I agree.  A recount. By HAND.

* * *

The rest of the day’s tweets

References

Video of tonight’s KTVA report:

Related posts:

  1. Anchorage Election Commission ignores broken security seals, recommends no independent investigation on broken election
  2. Anchorage election: Duke confirms she told election workers not to worry about broken security seals on voting machines
  3. Anchorage election update, 11 April 2012: Anchorage Assembly meeting
  4. Anchorage’s April 3 election: Some answers, many more questions
  5. Anchorage Assembly work session on April 3 election irregularities: The livetweets
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