Databases for elections released to Democrats
Published: 01.12.2008
Pima County Elections Division officials Friday turned over the computer databases for the 2006 elections to the Pima County Democratic Party, as directed by the Board of Supervisors earlier this week.
Democrats sought the databases - electronic records of the county's Diebold-GEMS voting system and ballot tabulating procedures - to look for irregularities that might show vote tampering.
Party officials also plan to use the information to create a tool that will automatically analyze elections systems and vote tabulations for aberrations that could point to elections fraud.
The Democrats prevailed in a lawsuit filed last year seeking the databases.
Elections officials and County Administrator Chuck Huckleberry had refused their request to examine them.
The surrender of the databases to a political party as part of their role as official elections observers may set a precedent.
"This is the biggest release of electronic data files ever in this country," said John R. Brakey, one of the computer experts assisting the Democrats in their case.
It didn't come easy. Superior Court Judge Michael Miller last month ordered the county to surrender most of the elections databases sought by the Democrats.
But the county delayed, contending that remaining legal issues from the lawsuit prevented it from doing so.
That prompted the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to order the release of the databases to Democrats, including those from the May 2006 Regional Transportation Authority election that were not part of Judge Miller's order.
Supervisor Ray Carroll, a Republican, pushed the board to release the information.
Friday, elections officials and local Democratic leaders sparred for three hours before agreeing on protocols for the copying and transfer of the databases.
The surrender of the electronic elections records could hold national implications for elections where computerized voting systems are used.
News reports of security weaknesses in such systems to errors or possible hacking to change election results have appeared frequently since the 2004 presidential election, where charges of fraud were voiced by Democrats in key states that helped re-elect President George W. Bush.
Brakey said after the database turnover to Democrats that the information obtained from them will be used to create a computerized tool that will help elections officials and political parties nationwide investigate their own local voting systems for security weaknesses that could be used to rig elections.
"We're going to build it and give it away," Brakey said.